Course Description


FIMS 9501L-650 (Summer 2021)   Good and Mad: Women, Emotion, Media and the Public Sphere

Instructor: R. Smith Fullerton

Course Description
In the context of #metoo, the acquittal of Jian Ghomeshi, the Women’s March, Idle No More, and other angry ‘moments,’ it may feel like women’s rage has suddenly burst into our public conversations. But long before these and other events, women’s anger has been a nation-shaping force, often viewed as politically problematic, but also as subversive and as a catalyst for change. 

In this seminar course, working from Fraser’s and Landes’ critiques of Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, we will trace the history of women’s anger, beginning with the Suffragettes and moving forward to current happenings. Using a variety of interdisciplinary feminist methodologies and frameworks, we will explore how women’s anger is conveyed publicly in a selection of media (news, popular, mainstream, alternative) and how it’s represented and received. Through select case studies, we will consider how its expression has been discouraged, mocked and  delegitimized, and how its reception has depended on race, status and the politics of the women raging. Participants in this course will have an opportunity to read, critique and discuss existing research and representations, and then to incorporate theoretical perspectives of their own choosing in their seminars and papers. 

0.5 course



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