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 contemporary media and popular culture deal with (these debates on) diversity and aims to provide students with knowledge and insight into the role media and culture assume in the process of making sense of the world.
Drawing on various perspectives within media, communication, and cultural studies, this course starts with the following questions on media, culture, and diversity: What approaches are used by media and popular culture to represent diversity? What kinds of diversity are tackled and which ones are ignored? How do audiences respond to representations of diversity? To answer these and other diversity-related questions, this course assumes a critical, holistic and contextual approach. It focuses on particular types of media (film, popular music, television, digital media…), takes into account the role of production and reception in the process of making meaning of diversity, and uses historical and contemporary examples/cases from Western media and popular culture as illustrations 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 Canvas.
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