Sex, Media and Culture, 10.0 credits

Sex, Media och Kultur, 10.0 hp

7FTEM14

Course level

Third-cycle Education

Description

Sex and sexualities are ubiquitous presences in contemporary media cultures and public discourse, from health panics surrounding the effects of easily-accessible online pornography, to ongoing (and age-old) moral panics about “good” sex and “bad” sex, fears of “sexualisation,” or the growing market for all kinds of sex technologies: porn, sex toys, sexual performance drugs (Viagra, Cialis, etc.), recreational drugs (GHB, methamphetamine, cathinones, etc.), online sex work (OnlyFans, JustForFans), dating and hook-up apps (Grindr, Tinder, Recon, Hinge, Scruff, etc.).

In this course, we will approach sex cultures as pillars of modern and contemporary forms of subjectivation, centring the role and affordances of different media in producing, disseminating, and sustaining different sex cultures and, thus, sexual subjects.

Importantly, here, “media” does not only include artefacts more commonly associated with modern and contemporary mediascapes (e.g. film, print media, television, digital media, etc.), but is also extends to the material body itself as an enfleshed interface of sensations and affects, desires, and identities. That is, the body as the medium that embodies, mediates and modulates relationships between the self and the world, the medium that bleeds the self into the world and the world into the self. Similarly, by “media” we will also mean the various technological prostheses that have played and continue to play important roles in cultures of sex and processes of sexual subjectivation: prescription and recreational drugs, sex toys, cosmetic implants, pornography, and so on.

Sex, Media, and Culture will, therefore, navigate the complex political and ethical nature of our sex cultures: Sex cultures can and often do reproduce wider systems of knowledge, whether hegemonic or minoritised. Yet, they also can function as laboratories for experiments with new ways of relating to oneself and others, to interrogate the boundaries between the one and the many, and to embody ourselves differently, sometimes in more capacious ways with the potential to shape wider aspects of our lives and our being-in-the-world.

For more information and enrolment, please contact joao.florencio@liu.se

Entry requirements

Entry requirement for studies on third-cycle education courses

  • second-cycle degree,
  • 240 credits in required courses, including at least 60 second-cycle credits, or
  • acquisition of equivalent knowledge in some other manner
  • at least 60 credits in gender studies, sexuality studies, cultural studies, media studies or related disciplines.

Specific information

This course is primarily aimed at doctoral students in Gender Studies.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course the students will be able to:

  • Contribute to existing public and scientific debates about sexuality, understood as a strongly mediated pillar of 21st century lives and subjectivities.
  • Summarise and discuss core texts in sexuality studies, media studies and cultural studies to a professional standard of rigour and critical analysis.
  • Reflect on particular aspects of mediated sex and sexuality as they relate to their own research projects.
  • Further develop their interdisciplinary competence as researchers in Gender Studies.

Contents

Sex, Media and Culture, a core area course for doctoral students in Gender Studies at TemaG, offers students an intensive introduction to debates in contemporary sexuality studies as they intersect with media technologies and cultural formations.

This PhD course will be held in person (with the possibility of hybrid attendance for students from other universities), and it combines foundational critical perspectives in media and cultural studies, alongside scholarship on sexuality as it is both lived and mediated through the body, technological apparatuses, institutions, and constellations of value and meaning.

While not attempting to address every single issue that arises where sex, media and culture overlap, the course will provide students with a strong set of critical and methodological tools that will enrich their researcher toolbox.

Educational methods

Educational methods applied in this course are lectures, seminars, and independent study.

Examination

To complete the course, students must attend all scheduled sessions and write an essay of 7000–8000 words to be submitted within 3 months of the end of the course.

The essay must be an original scholarly work in which the student draws from the course literature and from further independent research to discuss a topic of their own choosing that relates or is relevant to their own doctoral research work. Suggestions for further reading can be provided by the course coordinator on request. Graded essays will be returned to students within 3 months of submission.

Students who have not achieved a pass result will be offered one more assessment opportunity. This will be offered at a later time, after the end of the course. The scope of the re-assessment will be the same as the regular assessment.

Grading

Two-grade scale

Course literature

A list of recommended literature will be provided by the course coordinator before the start of the course.

General information

The course is planned and carried out according to what is stated in this syllabus. Course evaluation, analysis and suggestions for improvement should be fed back to the Research and PhD studies Committee (FUN) by the course coordinator.