Media and Cultural Studies (Study Abroad)

This course focusses on the relationship between media, representation and power. We engage closely with the most influential cultural theories of modern times, putting them to work to understand how power operates through forms of mediation in late capitalist societies. We address these issues through analysis of a contemporary cultural phenomena ranging from the food poverty to the spectacular brand management of the British royal family, from Pride parades to our culture’s obsession with weight. We focus on a range of media including advertising, film, photography, multimedia art, theme parks, news media, social media and the internet.

Example topics covered include:

• Photography, beauty and ‘truth’
• Nationalism and spectacle
• Bodies and representation
• Capitalism, consumer culture and the branded self
• Art and the politics of representation
• Postmodern culture, simulation and war
• Queer theory and queer cultures
• Marxist theory, media and work

Everyday life is often described as bombarding us with images, and contemporary culture is therefore frequently understood as a visual culture.

• What do such statements actually mean?
• How far is our culture a visual culture?
• What role do media play in a visual culture?
• How is vision linked to practices – including representation, the gaze and embodiment – of power and inequality?
• In what ways might these practices be challenged or resisted? Does vision only involve seeing, or is visual culture multi-sensory?

This module will introduce theories and practices that have addressed these questions. Examples of topics studied include:

• The relationship between vision and knowledge
• The gaze and power (eg the gaze as gendered and raced)
• Media, representation and identity
• Technologies of vision
• Material practices of vision
• Vision as multi-sensory.

On this module you will have the opportunity to gain a critical understanding of recent and ongoing themes in Media and Cultural Studies and Sociology on the topic of vision and visuality, media and culture, develop different reading and writing skills and participate in lively discussions and analytical exercises.

Since real life problems are often complex, multiple types of data can be useful in understanding them. You will be given the opportunity to develop practical skills while undertaking pilot research on a real world problem.

This module aims to prepare you for an Independent Dissertation project in your final year. It is designed around active learning - helping you to develop skills to do your own research. Lectures address cross-cutting methodological debates as well as established methods (such as interviewing, discourse analysis, ethnography and quantitative surveys).

Most of your time, however, is spent in seminars where you will try out methods such as interviewing, analysing media texts, and doing observation on campus. There are ample opportunities for feedback as you develop ideas for your project-based final assessment, and build diverse skills to support your final year dissertation.

This module will introduce students to sociological thinking on climate change. Debates about climate change are shifting, and beginning to make much stronger links between a vast and complex planetary perspective (a globe in crisis) and the private sphere (the home, low-carbon lifestyles, urban living, consumer demand, etc.). In this context, social theorists have been considering what sociological thinking can offer to contemporary debates on climate change issues. The module aims to introduce you to a range of new and emerging sociological analyses which examine: climate change and social change; new subjectivities, institutions and collectives under climate change; climate activism; dynamics of crisis and denial; the contested politics of climate change science; the global political economy of climate change; utopias and dystopias of climate change.

This module explores the question of how information and communications technologies, in their multiple forms, figure in our everyday lives. The aim of the module is to develop an appreciation for the range of experiences affected by digital media, including the progressive expansion of life online, and the increasingly intimate relations between life online and off. We’ll explore global divisions of digital labour; hactivism. The module will consider the new possibilities that the changing social infrastructure of digital technologies afford, while also learning to look at the rhetorics and practices of the virtual with a questioning and critical eye. Throughout the course we’ll be attentive to issues of gender, race and other marks of sameness and difference as they operate among humans, and between humans and machines.

Family and intimate relationships form a crucial part of everyday social life. We are born into family and intimate relationships. We establish, maintain and dissolve family and intimate bonds over the life course. We navigate our changing relationship with parents, siblings, and relatives. We establish, maintain and re-establish intimate ties with partners and perhaps children.

But what are ‘families’? What makes intimate relationships ‘intimate’? How do people date, marry, separate, divorce, and re-partner? How do people ‘do’ families and intimacy in the everyday vicissitudes of match-making, romance, conflicts, care, money, domestic labour, and power? Why do people practise families and intimacy as they do? How do broader social, economic, political and cultural institutions configure our ‘private’ lives? How do the ways in which we relate to family members and intimate others shape the societies in which we live?

In an increasingly interconnected world, family and intimate relationships — personal and private as they are — are increasingly shaped by social forces operating on a global scale. The changing forms and practices of families and intimacy also help shape social trends as grandeur as globalisation.

In this module, we explore theoretical and empirical issues pertaining to the resilience and transformation of family and intimate relationships in a global context.

This module focuses on racism and racial formations in the world today in both historical and contemporary perspectives. We will consider how ideas of race are historically constructed and look at how racism takes on different forms. Topics may include: the slave trade, colonialism and imperialism; ‘everyday racism’; structural racism; the social construction of ‘whiteness’; anti-racists politics and movements. The aim of the course is for you to gain an overview of various sociological approaches to explaining ‘race’, but also to gain an understanding of how such theories make a difference in the world today.

Television remains one of the most pervasive and prevalent communication mediums. It shapes how we perceive and make sense of the nation, and offers representational frameworks through which a sense of identity and community can be constructed. Television has its critics - who consider it vulgar, mundane, stupefying, 'chewing gum for the eyes' - yet despite consistent predictions of its decline, television appears to have weathered the storm of fragmentation and digitalisation and remains a crucial media site that shapes national values and debate. This module introduces students to the field of television studies, its empirical and theoretical tools and the critical perspectives that help us explore and evaluate the recent history of television and explore its possible futures.

Media is increasingly experienced transculturally. Those with good internet connections can access media from all over the globe. Our media is also increasingly produced transculturally, with influences from global cultures. In this module, we consider the opportunities and challenges of studying media in a transnational context. Designed specifically for international students, we reflect on how you navigate your experiences of studying media in different countries, intellectual environments, and academic systems. The module will provide opportunities for you to draw on the strength of your own transcultural backgrounds, your international and cross-cultural media experiences and understandings to decolonise media studies.

This module is only available to international students from designated partner universities and programmes who have not taken Part 1 in Lancaster.

Want to "go viral"? In this module you will make stuff: tweets, blogs, videos, GIFs, wikis, music mash-ups, photo essays, machinima, memes. We will hang out in social media worlds like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pirate Bay, 4chan, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Know Your Meme, tumblr. You will learn to tie all of these media and platforms together into a viral video and social media campaign. You will become digitally literate while at the same time exploring the most cutting edge new media theory. When you complete this module you will know how to make most types of simple digital media, you will develop a portfolio of content that may assist you in entrepreneurial work in the new media industries, and most importantly you will understand how new media are challenging existing forms of culture, politics, law, and business.

This module comprises a written dissertation (8,000 words) or a media project (4,000 words + practical project) that students will complete in their final year. It offers students the opportunity to undertake an independent piece of research (under supervision) and to apply their understanding of key concepts, theories and debates in media and culture to their own individual dissertation or project.

Students will plan, present and design a proposal in tutorial groups, with a detailed, step-by-step web-based guide available for extra support. They will develop an idea for a research project, work out what is possible, which methods to use, and begin to plan it. They will then communicate their dissertation proposal to other students and then write it up in a way that clearly states their research topic, aims and methods, and where it situates within wider sociological debates.

Students will carry out data collection and analysis, and write it up as a dissertation. They will meet regularly with their supervisors to discuss their progress. Media projects may include creative/journalistic writing, audio production, video materials, artefacts, photographs or online campaigns, materials and environments.

This module will explore how the politically powerful and the politically radical use the internet to consolidate and revolutionise the distribution of power around the globe.

Like many communication platforms before it, the internet is mobilised by the politically and economically powerful as well as those seeking radical change. However, unlike other platforms, it has created an almost universally accessible platform for public dialogue. Pro-democracy revolutionaries, freedom hackers, feminist mediasmiths, anti-capitalists, data leakers, and others use the internet to organise their social movements. Conversely, those opposed to the liberal project, such as authoritarians and extremist groups, also use the affordances of the internet to distribute their message and rally their supporters.

This module examines these issues and investigates the implications of “big data” control by governments and corporations. The module looks also at the understanding social networkers and other content uploaders have of this “big data” control along with the consequences that it comes with.

What does it mean to be global? How can we navigate global structures of power and meaning in and with media?

You will explore media products from different regions to prepare you for researching and working in a global media landscape. This includes exploring how issues of identity, 'race' and postcoloniality come into play in debates about globalisation.

• What counts as a disaster?
• Is it still reasonable to speak of ‘natural’ or human-made’ disasters?
• Do disasters have a beginning, middle and end?
• Is it possible to make disaster-proof systems?

This module uses case studies of disasters (technical and social) to explore these questions and what sociology can teach us about them.

How do we make sense of the various understanding of being a fan nowadays? How has the experience of being part of a media audience transformed over the decades in different parts of the world? In what ways do fan culture and audience community manifest social transformations in both the local and global scale?

This module aims to provide you with a critical understanding of fandom and audiences in a global and transnational context. You will first be introduced to the contested concepts and typologies of ‘audience’ and ‘fan’ and the cultural hierarchy of knowledge underneath theses definitions. The module will focus on four dimensions – participation, pleasure, performance, and power – by investigating fan culture and audience communities of a wide range of transmedia texts (television, music, film, and other media) in a global perspective. You will analyse the multi-layered dynamics between individual fan, fan community, audience participation, media texts, and the industry through sociological and interdisciplinary lenses, for example, cultural studies, feminist studies, queer studies, and postcolonial studies.

This module investigates gender inequalities within society through a focus on historical and contemporary debates in feminist theory and activism. The module has an `intersectional` focus that means we will consider gender inequalities as bound up with other forms of discrimination and marginalisation, particularly racial and ethnic inequalities, disability and social class.

The module will challenge you to think about `what feminism means today` through a consideration of key aspects of feminist thought and activism from the late 1960s onwards. We will consider the continued relevance of the idea of ‘The Personal is Political’ and ‘consciousness raising’. We will overview feminist approaches to social research and explore feminist interventions in practices of gender inequality, for example inequalities in paid and unpaid work, childcare and women’s health. You will complete an intergenerational interview research project on ‘women, work and social change’ through which you will analyse and reflect upon your experience of the research process.

We will also take the feminist manifesto as a central document which expresses lived experiences of gender inequalities and collective desire for social change. Through some practices of inequalities, such as art, beauty contests, capitalism and patriarchy, we will explore the contemporary resonance of ideas such as black feminisms, art activism, the occupy movement and backlash.

By the end of the module you will have been given the opportunity to become familiar with some of the key debates within feminism today. We aim for you to be able to make connections between feminist theory and forms of feminist practice. The module engages you in debate, original research and feminist activism through analysis of varied media including academic texts, advertising, art, film, news media and social media.

In this module, you will learn about the basics of journalism -- reporting and storytelling using digital technologies. From audio recording and video production to writing, photography, and innovations using data, technology, and interviews, this module is an introduction to journalism of today and tomorrow. You will also interact with key theories and practices of journalism, discussing and debating international perspectives. In the end, you will have a final journalistic product based on a story of your selection.

Belonging to a nation is widely seen to be as natural as belonging to a family or a home. This module will explore how such assumptions about national belonging come about by introducing students to a range of theoretical approaches and debates.

You will explore how notions of belonging are socially constructed, how the nation is defined, who belongs and who doesn’t. The module addresses these notions by examining what everyday practices, discourses and representations reveal about the ways people think about, and inhabit, the nation. The module also pays particular attention to nation formation in relation to debates about multiculturalism, diversity and migration and asks: What are the impacts of migration and multiculturalism on definitions of the nation? How is multiculturalism defined and perceived?

Although focus will be on the example of Britain, the issues raised will be of interest to all students concerned with the effects of nationalisms and ideas of belonging and entitlement, which many countries of the contemporary world are presently debating in the context of the 'Age of migration' (Castles and Miller 1998).

This module addresses contemporary debates in sociology and cinema by focusing on a single film each week. Its overall aim is to employ cinema for the purpose of social diagnosis.

The module engages with cinema as a social fact, before linking together cinema (producing images of the social) and sociality (socialisation of the image) for analysis.

This module analyses the relationship between society and terror, taking point of departure in the discussion of 9/11 and the political responses it has provoked. The module focuses on how different forms of terror are related to the changing nature of society and how terror can be theorized from a sociological point of view. It also explores how the study of terror can contribute to the discipline of sociology. An example of concepts covered are: terror, the war against terrorism, dispositif, nihilism, flow, consumerism, post-politics, politics of security.