Students will have the opportunity to take units that apply these theories and methodologies to a range of contemporary issues and practices. Students may choose to concentrate either on gender studies or cultural studies, or to devise a major that integrates both fields. Units in the major reveal how gender and sexuality are socially constructed and reproduced, and how hierarchies of gender and sexuality are implicated in all aspects of social life. Students will examine interrelations between gender, race, class and sexuality in a variety of cultural, historical and political contexts. In addition, students will have the opportunity to explore the construction of social identities and power relations, and the role of gender and sexuality in citizenship, state politics, development, war and international relations.
Cultural studies is concerned with questions of meaning, identity, production and consumption.
Cultural Studies is also concerned with cultural politics at the local, national, regional and international level. Students will have the opportunity to study the role of the media in contemporary culture, and will be introduced to important concepts for the study of culture such as mass culture, popular culture, representation, the sign, the text, the body, sexuality, power, subjectivity, pleasure and consumption. Units in the major draw on a wide range of texts from elite and popular culture, including magazines, newspapers, film, art, photography, political tracts, video, the internet and performance art.