Crossroads in Cultural Studies
Istanbul 2006

Open session: Gender and the Media

In ‘More! New Sexualities in Girls’ and Women’s Magazines’ (1999), McRobbie alludes to three phases in feminist critique of magazines.
First, content reducing women to a passive category was rejected. Second,
Althusserian theory emphasised the role of ideology in the exercise of power. Thirdly, post-structuralism pointed to subjectivity as a site of knowledge and power. Because subjectivity is constituted as an on-going process, discursive formations compete with each other for regulation of socially desirable forms of individuality. Contemporary representations of gender in the media repeat similar narratives so as to establish the limits for the mapping of subjectivity: by defining alterity, these representations confirm identity as natural.
This session invites papers on gender and the media, dealing with:
· Gender and Methodology
· Performative Languages of Gender
· Gender and Ideology
· Gender and its Others
· Liberal and Radical Feminism
· Public/Private Debates
· Gender and Staging Media Events


Paper proposals consising in a maximum of 150 words to be submitted by
Jan 31, 2006, to Claudia Alvares (Lusofona University, Lisbon, Portugal)
claudia.alvares@ulusofona.pt
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