Course Offerings by term

This course introduces students to key concepts, theories and texts in the study of gender and media in a global context. By examining a range of media texts, modes of representation and production, we can analyse established patterns of how gender has come to be depicted and constructed by media, but also changes and challenges to these patterns. Particular emphasis will be placed on the role of power, discourse and ideology in these contexts. Topics of study will include gender roles, body image, empowerment, spectatorship and performance, sexuality, stereotypes and exploitation; examples will be drawn from media forms including advertising, film, television, journalism and the internet. An overview of important feminist, poststructuralist and queer theories will be central to critical approaches to this material.

The world of advertising has seen dramatic change over the past decades and what used to be mass communication still in the 90s is about to evolve into the "market of one" as described by P&G, a global consumer goods company. The availability of Big Data and man's capacity to use massive amounts of information will soon allow advertisers to target people individually, directly catering to their personal needs and desires. However, in this quickly changing world of communications, the basic workings of advertising & communications have remained the same. While media choices have evolved, understanding and applying the rules and factors that produce effective advertising has not and will not change in the foreseeable future. This class provides a thorough understanding of what works in advertising and what doesn't. Among other things, students will acquire the skills to write a single-minded copy strategy and creative brief, how to plan for the right media in offline and online, how identify the target audience and how to recognize good creative ideas. The course will convey initial notions on how to develop advertising concepts in print, TV, digital and content strategy as well as social media communications. The course will look at over 100 ads as illustrations and for analysis purposes and will teach students the elementary principles of how to develop effective advertising by using a teaching method inspired by the Harvard Business School.

This course is designed for students working in the journalism workshops – magazine, online news, video production. The student will work in one of the journalism workshops under the guidance of a faculty member. The student will be actively engaged in the newsroom activities for the workshop selected. The faculty member will mentor, monitor and evaluate participation and work produced.

This course aims for a critical practice of fashion communication. It relies on the principle of “learning by doing”: learning how to communicate fashion through writing, photography, film, digital and new media, exhibition curation, styling and performances. Training multi-skilled, innovative and critical fashion communicators of the twenty-first century but also professionals interested in questions of global fashion communication is the objective in response to the heterogenous and transitory professional field of fashion. Together, we will investigate the new conventions and challenges, processes and practices of twenty-first century media through lectures and workshops, presentations and projects, and the direct involvement with AUP ASM. The class will experientially explore different ways of communication fashion through writing (journalistic, academic, commercial, advertorial, informational), visual (photography, drawing, film, video, and television), material (styling and curating fashion- performative: fashion performance, dance), digital (digital media such as blogs and Instagram accounts, video, virtual reality, online fashion resources, virtual and 3D fashion shows).

At the end of the class, each student will have achieved a multimedia project on a specific topic of their choice made of a text, a film, a podcast, a photo... Each class will be part of the overall project.

Fashion Studies minors can must write to registraroffice@aup.edu to be enrolled in this course.