This online course explores the ways in which media culture induces people to perceive various dominant and dominated and/or colonized groups of people.

Instruction employs critical perspectives to examine how gender, sexuality, racial and ethnic marginalized peoples, class relations, and other subaltern or subordinated groups are presented and often misrepresented in media.

Participants deconstruct norms of masculinity and femininity generated by industries, such as television, film, and advertising, that perpetuate and naturalize the commodification of women's bodies.

Special attention is paid to bodies and modes of sexuality that transgress (representations of the queer body or women of color, for example). Participants construct alternative imagery and generate new ideas about gender and sexuality through discussion and various projects.

Sheena Malhotra, PhD in Communication Studies, University of New Mexico; Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, CSU Northridge. Dr. Malhotra's work focuses on gender, media, race, and culture.