Feminism and Television

FMSU9FT is an Honours-level module designed to interrogate the historical and contemporary contribution of feminism to the discipline of television studies. For Film and Media students, the module serves an extra function of allowing students to develop their learning from previous modules, such as Understanding Audiences, Reading Film and Television and The Moving Image, in terms of their skills in critical reflection, textual analysis and their understanding of feminist theory. Feminism is becoming increasingly popular and visible at the current moment. This visibility is particularly apparent in fictional television programming, with many prominent series across various different genres featuring independent female protagonists with feminist leanings, many of which have been created by women or had significant female involvement in their production. But the relationship between feminism and television has a much longer and more complex history, which this module will explore. The division of Communications, Media and Culture is a distinctive place in which to take a module of this type because of our expertise in feminist media theory and television studies and gender studies more widely. In this respect, the module acts as a potential pathway for students onto the MA/MSc in Gender Studies, hosted in Stirling University’s Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies. Feminist television studies has four dominant strands: content analysis of representations of women on television; research into women as television audiences; textual analysis of programmes for and about women; production studies of women who work or have worked in the television industry. This module will explore each of these areas in turn, examining the links between them and engaging with both historical and contemporary key debates in feminist television studies. It will introduce students to a range of different methodological approaches utilised by feminist television scholars and explore the representation of gender and feminist issues across diverse genres and formats.