This assignment requires students to draw upon ideas from 2 readings covered in Weeks 2-5, to analyse the relationship between the ideological messages and the aesthetic strategies in any advertisement of your choice. Specifically, it asks you to focus on how gender is being constructed in the advertisement/s you have chosen for analysis, paying particular attention to the various ways in which meaning is created therein.

Some questions that you should attend to include:

• Who is the intended audience/addressee? (demographic, gender, sexuality, race, class etc)
• What assumptions about gender are mobilised in the advertisement/campaign?
• How are femininity and/or masculinity being represented? How/does the advertisement challenge or reinforce dominant understandings of gender?
• How do the different aspects of the texts – such as its written, visual, aural elements – work to construct a particular narrative about the product?
• What does it promise to provide to its (potential) consumers?
• How might the kind of reading the advertisement seeks to encourage be challenged?

Type of advertisement: The advertisement or campaign can be from various forms of media – newspaper, magazine, billboard, internet, radio or television – from the 21st century. You should not analyse any that we have dealt with in depth in class. You can choose advertisements from any context/country; if in a language other than English, please provide translations. You should include a link to the advertisement in your reference list and/or screen shots of any images which you discuss in detail.

Secondary material: For this assessment, students are not required to draw upon critical material from outside the course but instead should use the required (and, if relevant, recommended) readings to help develop their analysis.

Referencing: In terms of referencing style, there is no preferred style as long as you are consistent (i.e. If you choose Harvard, make sure all references appear in that style) and all material has an appropriate citation.

Format: Your assignment be double-spaced and include a reference list, noting the course readings you have drawn upon as well as the details of the advertisement/s, including hyperlinks where relevant.

Reading lists:

Validivia, A.N. (2021) ‘Feminist Media Studies: We need to take intersectionality seriously’, in Ebert, S. & Bachman, I. eds, Reflections on Feminist Communication and Media Scholarship: Theory, Method, Impact, Routledge: London, pp. 133-47

Guimarães Corrêa L. (2020) ‘Intersectionality: A challenge for cultural studies in the 2020s’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 23.6: 823-832.

Gill. R. (2007) ‘Elements of a Sensibility’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10:2, 147- 166.

Dosekun, S. (2015) ‘For Western Girls Only: Post-feminism as transnational culture?’, Feminist Media Studies, 15:6, 960-975.

Feasey, R. (2009) ‘Spray More, Get More: Masculinity, Television advertising and the Lynx effect’, Journal of Gender Studies, 18:4, 357-368.

Knudsen, G. & Andersen, L., (2020) “Changing Masculinity, One Ad at a Time”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 15(2), p.63–78.

Varghese, N. & Kumar, N. (2020) ‘Feminism in advertising: irony or revolution? A critical review of femvertising’, Feminist Media Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2020.1825510 (Links to an external site.)

Wallis, C. & Shen, Y. (2018) ‘The SK-II #changedestiny campaign and the limits of commodity activism for women’s equality in neo/non-liberal China’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 35:4, 376-389.

Requirements: 1000 words