Women’s Studies examines the scholarship and theory on the history, status, contributions, and experiences of women in diverse cultural communities, and on the significance of gender as a social construct and as an analytical category. Women’s Studies challenges the gendered knowledge base that was assumed to be universal. As an interdisciplinary course of study, Women’s
Native studies is a relatively new discipline. Although there is no common definition, it is generally distinguished as dialogue between Western and Aboriginal perspectives to a critique of Native-state relations. Many focus on the need for an Aboriginal perspective that encompasses Aboriginal history grounded in colonization, traditional knowledge and language, Aboriginal rights, and decolonization focusing
The question of what counts as “feminist popular culture” arises from an engagement with foundational debates within cultural studies as to the primary site for cultural reproduction and contestation. These debates are reflected in the competing definitions of “popular culture” that circulate in the literature, namely: (1) the ideological products of mainstream commercial culture addressed
Questions and discussion about the most appropriate goals for and organization of educational experiences in communication drive the area of curriculum studies. Curriculum studies are projects that examine the content, structure, and organization of communication curricula. These projects have focused on each level of educational endeavor from the elementary school classroom to the graduate seminar
Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores the linkages between society, politics, identity (or the person), and the full range of what is called ‘‘culture,’’ from high culture and the popular arts or mass entertainment, to beliefs, discourses, and communicative practices. Cultural studies has drawn on different national traditions of inquiry into these connections
Childhood studies refers to a reorientation in the interdisciplinary study of children and childhood. The study of children and childhood has a long history in many disciplines, including anthropology, but childhood studies seeks to expand and reorient how the study of children and childhood is conceptualized and approached. Anthropology’s role is central to this reorientation
Cultural studies is a recent, innovative, and interdisciplinary project that has had a significant presence in the field of communication since the late 1970s, as well as in other humanities and social sciences. Cultural studies is concerned with describing and intervening in the ways in which texts, discourses, and other cultural practices are produced within
The main objective of Delphi studies is to collect expert knowledge for decision-making. In Delphi studies experts’ ideas and opinions are systematically surveyed. The data are gathered through a series of questionnaires interspersed with controlled and anonymous feedback (Häder & Häder 2000). The goal of most Delphi studies is to create a group consensus in
While the term “case study” (or “case method”) is widespread in social methodology and media research, it is nevertheless a complex concept. McCartney (1970, 30) defines a case study as “a descriptive report analyzing a social unit as a whole (e.g. individual, family, organization, etc.) in qualitative terms.” With a different focus but in a
Ethnographic studies of science have their origins in the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS) that emerged out of the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, and environmentalism of the 1960s. STS research illustrates that science and technology are a human achievement, composed of actors, social systems, and social processes. Or, in other words, science