6 ECTS credits
180 h study time
Offer 1 with catalog number 1021099BER for all students in the 2nd semester at a (B) Bachelor - advanced level.
Diversity and identity have become key notions in contemporary societies. Both in popular and academic debate, socio-cultural issues related to social class, racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identities are being broached.
This course is particularly concerned with how media and popular culture have been dealing with (these debates on) diversity and aims to provide students with knowledge and insight into the role media and culture have assumed in the process of making sense of the world.
The approach of this course is threefold. First, it offers historical perspectives, contexts and milestones in the history of engaging with sociocultural diversity in popular media culture. Second, it provides key theoretical insights from media, communication, and cultural studies and social theory, which should help us make sense of the various ways used to engage with sociocultural diversity in popular media culture. Third, it offers reflections on contemporary trends, transformations and challenges that have emerged in late modern societies.
To achieve this goal, this course assumes a critical, holistic and contextual approach. It focuses on particular types of popular media culture (mainly film, popular music and television), takes into account the role of production, text, and reception in the process of making meaning of diversity and uses historical and timely examples/cases from media and popular culture as illustrations and point-of-references to the issues at stake.
This course combines different teaching methods:
• Lecture: offering an introduction to key concepts, important theories, and contemporary debates prevailing in the research on media, culture and diversity.
• Self-reliant study activities: students individually and independently process and assess additional scholarly literature that deals with the content of the course, as preparation to the formal lectures.
• Group work: Students work together on understanding a contemporary case that links up to one or more of the key issues and concepts presented within the course and present the case in class.
The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
Written Exam determines 75% of the final mark.
Other Exam determines 25% of the final mark.
Within the Written Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:
Within the Other Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:
The written exam consists of questions of reproduction, insight and application:
Evaluation assignment:
In order to pass the course, students have to participate in the evaluation of both components (i.e. written exam and group presentation).
If students pass the group assignment (score of 10/20 or more) but fail the written exam, students can retain the score of the group assignment in the resit and/or following academic year. The student has to e-mail the lecturer within a week (from the moment the results have been communicated) if they want to redo the assignment, which will be in the form of a modified and individual assignment.
Note: Further information on the assignments and grading is included in the seminar's guidelines that will be published on Ufora.
This offer is part of the following study plans:
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Communication Studies
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Political Sciences
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Sociology
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Startplan