Overview of Course

Gender and Communication is designed to increase students’ understanding of relationships between gender, communication, and cultures, and develop awareness, academic thinking, and research skills concerning gendered issues in their professional and personal lives. We will explore gendered issues via analysis of historical and contemporary discourses, mediated and material artifacts, and personal experiences and cultures. Students will also learn to use critical self-reflexivity, and study the concept and effects/affects of intersectionality.

The course has six major objectives: (1) to acquaint students with the concepts, principles, and theories of gender/ed communication; (2) to provide students with information about construction, communication, and re-negotiation of gender in other cultures; (3) to provide students with strategies for effective gender communication, (4) to encourage students to understand gender-rooted concepts of power/privilege vs. marginalization/oppression in intercultural contexts while actively engaging in related global experiences, (5) to enable successful connectivity between theoretical knowledge and rich and profoundly diverse experiential learning, enabled through the unique Semester at Sea experience; and (6) to transform students into intellectually skilled, gender-aware, ethical and empathetic world citizens, able to act as agents of change.