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GNDR 380 Fandoms, Stanning, Gender and Sexualities in Popular Culture

This course explores how fandom and stan, or devoted superfan, online communities have transculturally and globally complicated and reconstructed understandings of gender, sexualities, and popular media. This course will also examine how fandom communities are spaces of online belonging for queer and marginalized worldbuildin

Prerequisites

4 Undergraduate credits

Effective May 2, 2024 to present

Meets graduation requirements for

Learning outcomes

General

  • Explain the evolution and globalization of fandom and stan cultures and their possible social impacts outside of popular culture.
  • Discuss how fandom and stan communities critique and challenge conventional notions and social constructions of gender binaries and sexualities.
  • Analyze the contentions surrounding how geopolitics and identities complicate fandom and stan participation.
  • Appraise how online spaces perpetuate white supremacy, racism, sexism, misogyny, misogynoir, queerbaiting, biphobia, homophobia, and transphobia.
  • Synthesize the complexities concerning the digitization of identities in a changing world.
  • Describe the possibilities of global subcultural kinships and worldbuilding in online spaces.
  • Evaluate how fandom and stan cultures affect media literacy.

Minnesota Transfer Curriculum

Goal 5: History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences

  • Employ the methods and data that historians and social and behavioral scientists use to investigate the human condition.
  • Examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures.
  • Use and critique alternative explanatory systems or theories.
  • Develop and communicate alternative explanations or solutions for contemporary social issues.