Syllabus

GNDS 125: Gender, Race, and Popular Culture

Winter 2025

Course Description

GNDS 125 explores popular culture from feminist and anti-racist perspectives, with attention to sexuality, gender, race, and nation in a variety of media. In this class, we will examine and unpack how race, gender, sexuality, and class are constructed and re-constructed in mass media and popular culture. Specifically, we will investigate how popular culture elements are framed through the processes of production, consumption, representation, and reception. The course is not an appreciation of popular culture; rather, it aims to develop a critical understanding of media productions and cultural texts that are produced through social, political, cultural, and historical contexts. In this class, through intersectional analysis, students will engage critically with the most contemporary examples of popular culture.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, student who actively participate in the course will be able to:

1.  Identify and apply key concepts and theories drawn from gender and feminist studies, antiracist and decolonization studies, and media studies;

2. Apply media literacy skills to make connections between everyday events, popular culture, politics, and social justice issues as global citizens;

3.  Engage in unlearning around the construction, representation and entrenchment of gender, race, sexuality, class, (dis)ability, ethnicity and nationhood in popular culture and develop and apply a feminist, critical, and intersectionallens to analyze popular culture products;

4.  Critically reflect on power, privilege, and oppression and how they are implicated and

operate in popular culture and the new media, including evaluating one’s own positionality;

5.  Utilize an intersectional approach to analyze how the racialization processes and other  experiences of various social groups are revealed, subverted, and/or challenged through popular culture;

6. Actively and creatively respond to popular culture, exploring resistance as well as consumption or consumptive relationships with received knowledge(s) about gender, race, and social justice;

7. Apply academic research and writing skills as well as ethical citation practices for the field of Gender Studies.

Course Material

You will need to purchase a ticket at the ReelOut Queer Film Festival 2025. More info in Film Review section below. All the other material will be provided online through the course onQ  site and Queen’s University Course Reserves. Please make sure that you have turned your notifications on to receive alerts from the course onQ.

GNDS 125 Assessment Components

*Detailed instructions for each grading component will be posted on the course onQ.

** Each assignment submission will have a 3-day grace period. That is, your assignments will be accepted without penalty up to 72 hours after the due dates.

*** Students with Accommodations should refer to Accommodations for Disabilities section in this syllabus on how to use the accommodations recommended by QUSAS.

Quizzes

There will be two (2) quizzes, each worth 5% (for a total of total  10%). The quizzes will be completed via onQ. Details will be provided in class.

ReelOut Film Review

For this assignment, you will write a review for a film in the ReelOut Queer Festival Film, Kingston, Ontario and Videofest. This assignment requires that you watch a film at ReelOut 2025- the fee per screening is $15 plus tax. You will prepare a brief assignment to introduce the festival, review the film you watched, and reflect on your experience of attending a queer film festival. The 2025 festival runs from January 30th to February 8th. The details of the screenings are available on their website: https://reelout2025.eventive.org/welcome

Creative Project

Students will create a plan for and then develop a creative project on a pop cultural theme that relates to this course. These projects will be shared with classmates via Padlet. The project is an opportunity to critically assess an aspect of pop culture, discuss its influence, and its effects on audiences.

Proposal & Final Paper

For the final paper, GNDS  125 students will critically evaluate a popular culture piece from feminist and anti-racist perspectives with attention to sexuality, gender, race, and nation. You are expected to write an essay through an intersectional feminist lens by applying two course concepts to analyze an example of popular culture.

The essays will be approximately  1500 words excluding the cover and references pages. The papers will be graded on your analysis of the popular culture piece; your thesis and working  definition of the two course concepts; writing, flow of argument, grammar, engagement with academic resources, and proper citation format.

Participation

20% of the final grade will be based on tutorial attendance and active participation.  You are

expected to arrive at the tutorial on time having completed the assigned readings of the

corresponding week. Teaching assistants (TAs) will assign participation grades twice during the  term based on your attendance and active participation that contributes to the learning of your peers. Active participation will be assessed on an ongoing basis by your tutorial leader with a    mix of in-class exercises and activities. Failure to attend 3 tutorials without appropriate

documentation will result in a loss of the final grade by  10%.

This term, GNDS  125 is offered as an on-campus course in two sections. The course sections, lectures and tutorials are not interchangeable. You may attend only the tutorials you are

registered in on SOLUS.

Lectures are given by me each Tuesday on campus.  Some weeks I will be allocating time to    discuss upcoming assignments and respond to your questions. Do your best to review assigned course materials before class each week. You are encouraged to prepare your questions or

comments for lectures as you will get chances to share them.

Tutorials are led by Teaching Assistants and will start in the second week of classes. You need to attend the tutorial group that you have been assigned to on your SOLUS. Your TA will also

contact you through the ‘tutorial discussion board’ on the course onQ. In Winter term, GNDS 125 is offered as an on-campus course in two sections. The course sections, lectures and

tutorials are not interchangeable. You may attend only the lectures and tutorials you are

registered in on SOLUS. Both lectures and tutorials will proceed on campus and attendance is required.

GNDS 125 Guidelines and Expectations

Grace Period

All written assignments have a 3-day grace period to offer students some extra time and flexibility– be it because of a short-term illness, competing assignment deadlines, a small “life interruption” leading up to the assignment, etc. What this means is that assignments are due on their original due date but will be accepted without penalty up to 72 hours after time. The grace period serves as a built-in extension if you might need it. You do NOT need permission to use the grace period.

Extensions will NOT be granted on top of the grace period, save for extenuating circumstances. Assignments submitted after the grace period will incur a late penalty of -1/3 letter grade per day (including weekends), up to four (4) days after the end of the grace period. For example, if you earned a B+ on a paper but it was submitted one day after the grace period ended, it would become a B after two days, a B-, etc. Assignments will not be accepted after one week from the original due date.

Grading Policy: “Mixed Marking”

In this course, some components will be graded using numerical percentage marks.  Other components will receive letter grades, which for purposes of calculating your course average, will be translated into numerical equivalents using the Faculty of Arts and Science approved scale (see below). Your course average will then be converted to a final letter grade according to Queen's Official Grade Conversion Scale (see below).