Gender, Representations, and Digital Media: Reclaiming Empowerment by Marginalized Communities
Course Overview
This seminar introduces key concepts for understanding gender, representation, and empowerment in the age of digital media. Women from war-torn regions such as Syria are frequently portrayed in English-language media and scholarship as passive victims in need of rescue, while refugee men are often framed as threatening figures or potential security risks. These reductive and racialized representations erase historical, political, and social agency, while reinforcing global hierarchies between the Global North and the Global South. The course examines how marginalized communities—particularly Syrian women—challenge and resist these dominant narratives by strategically using digital media to reclaim agency, assert dignity, and foster collective empowerment. Through intersectional and decolonial feminist frameworks, participants will critically explore how media representations are shaped by race, gender, coloniality, war, and migration.
*This course may be applied toward the Consortium’s Certificate in Gender Studies.
Seminar Leaders
Dr. Ahmad Barakat
Department of Political Science and International Studies Teaching Fellow
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
Dr Ahmad Barakat has policy expertise in the politics of the Middle East. He is a teaching fellow at the University of Birmingham. His research examines the politics of the Middle East with focus on the political economy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab Spring, the refugee crisis and media, ISIS, Islamism, and extremism. His work has appeared in a number of leading journals such as Oxford, Routledge, and the University of St. Andrews. He is a former Syrian diplomat, UN staff, and human rights expert.
Dr. Katty Alhayek
Assistant Professor
TORONTO METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA
Dr. Katty Alhayek is an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada. Alhayek’s research centers around themes of marginality, media, audiences, gender, intersectionality, and displacement in a transnational context. Alhayek completed her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States of America with a graduate certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies.
Syllabus and Readings
Course Schedule
MONDAY, OCT 5
Week 1: Decolonizing Knowledge on Gender, Representations, and Digital Media: Who Produces Knowledge and Whose Voices are Heard?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain (2018). “#CommunicationSoWhite.” Journal of Communication, 68(2), 254–266. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003
- Eden Renee Ng, Patricia Hill Collins, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Treva B. Lindsey (2020). “#CommunicationSoWhite: Race and Power in the Academy and Beyond.” Communication, Culture & Critique, 13(2), 143–151. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaa011
Further Reading:
- Stuart Hall (2019 [1977]). “The Hinterland of Science: Ideology and the Sociology of Knowledge.” In David Morley (Ed.), Stuart Hall: Essential Essays, Volume 1: Foundations of Cultural Studies (pp. 111–138). Duke University Press.
MONDAY, OCT 12
Week 2: Gender and Victimizing Representations: Why Are Marginalized Communities Portrayed as Passive and Powerless?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Eileen Pittaway and Linda Bartolomei (2001). “Refugees, Race, and Gender: The Multiple Discrimination against Refugee Women.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 19(6), 21–32.
- Nora Bloch (2022). “Is a Woman a Better Refugee Than a Man? Gender Representations of Refugees in the Polish Public Debate.” Studia Migracyjne – Przegląd Polonijny, 48(1), 53–70.
Further reading:
- Joan Wallach Scott (1986). “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” The American Historical Review, 91(5), 1053–1075.
MONDAY, OCT 19
Week 3: Gender and Empowerment: Who Defines Empowerment and why?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Reading:
- Naila Kabeer (1999). “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment.” Development and Change, 30(3), 435–464.
Further Readings:
- Naila Kabeer (2019). “Women’s Empowerment and the Question of Choice.” Journal of International Affairs, 72(2), 209–214.
- Katty Alhayek (2016). “ICTs, Agency, and Gender in Syrian Activists’ Work among Syrian Refugees in Jordan.” Gender, Technology and Development, 20(3), 333–351.
MONDAY, OCT 26
Week 4: Co-opting empowerment: How Have Institutions and Corporations Redefined Empowerment?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Andrea Cornwall (2016). “Beyond ‘Empowerment Lite’: Women’s Empowerment, Neoliberal Development and Global Justice.” Cadernos Pagu, 52, 1–31.
Further reading:
- Srilatha Batliwala (2007). “Taking the Power out of Empowerment – An Experiential Account.” Development in Practice, 17(4–5), 557–565.
MONDAY, NOV 2
Week 5: Digital Media and Agency: How Do Marginalized Communities Reclaim Voice and Visibility Online?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Radhika Gajjala (2007). “Shifting Frames: Race, Ethnicity, and Intercultural Communication in Online Social Networking and Virtual Work.” An Interrupted Postcolonial/Feminist Cyberethnography. Feminist Media Studies, 7(3), 335–350.
Further reading:
- Koen Leurs and Sandra Ponzanesi (Eds.). (2024). Doing Digital Migration Studies: Theories and Practices of the Everyday. Amsterdam University Press.
MONDAY, NOV 9
Week 6: Digital Counter-Discourse and Healing: How Do Marginalized Communities Use Digital Media for Resistance and Collective Care?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading
- Katty Alhayek (2025). “Digital Empowering Positivity: Syrian Women’s Counter-Discourse for Resistance and Healing.” Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 1–15.
Further reading:
- Kishonna L. Gray and B. Adeyemo (2021). “Not ‘Falling for the Okey-Doke’: #BlackLivesMatter as Resistance to Disinformation in Online Communities.” Feminist Media Studies, 21(5), 868–871.
MONDAY, NOV 16
Week 7: Ethics and Decolonial Research: How Should Marginalized Communities be Represented and Studied?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Katty Alhayek and Basilues Zeno (2023). “Decolonizing Displacement Research: Betweener Autoethnography as a Method of Resistance.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 55(3), 548–555.
Further reading:
- Andrew Thompson, Lindsay Stringfellow, Mairi Maclean, and Abeer Nazzal (2021). “Ethical Considerations and Challenges for Using Digital Ethnography to Research Vulnerable Populations.” Journal of Business Research, 124, 676–683.
- Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books. Chapter 9, Chapter 10, and Conclusion (pp. 163–200).
MONDAY, NOV 23
Week 8: Gender and Digital Repression: How Is Gender Weaponized Through Digital Transnational Repression?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Noura Aljizawi et al. (2024). No Escape: The Weaponization of Gender for the Purposes of Digital Transnational Repression. Read Section 3 (pp. 18–48) and Section 6: Policy Recommendations. Published by Citizen Lab, University of Toronto.
Further reading:
- Ronald J. Deibert (2020). Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society. House of Anansi Press.
MONDAY, NOV 30
Week 9: Media Narratives, Security, and the Politics of Fear: How Refugee Representations are Racialized and Securitized through Media Discourse.
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Ahmad Barakat (2024). “The Syrian Refugee Crisis and Global Security Threats – A Case Study of Germany.” The University of St Andrews, 15(2) (2023). Available at: https://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/syria/article/view/2730
Further reading:
- Stuart Hall (1981). “The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media.” In George Bridges and Rosalind Brunt (Eds.), Silver Linings: Some Strategies for the Eighties (pp. 28–52). Lawrence and Wishart.
MONDAY, DEC 7
Week 10: Hierarchies of Victimhood and Reclaiming Representation: Why are Some Victims Considered more “worthy” of Sympathy than Others? How Do Colonial and Racial Logics Shape Public Empathy and Media Visibility?
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested reading:
- Ahmad Barakat (2026). Orientalism and Hierarchy of Victims. The Journal of Communication and Media Studies. https://doi.org/10.18848/2470-9247/cgp/a135
- Ahmad Barakat (2021). “The Images of Syrian Refugees in the Mainstream Narrative – Case Study of Lebanon.” The University of St Andrews, 12(1), 203–229. Available at: https://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/syria/article/view/2170
Further reading:
- Lila Abu-Lughod (2013). Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard University Press.
Certificates of Satisfactory Completion
Participants who attend 8 out of 10 complete seminar sessions are eligible to receive a Certificate of Satisfactory Completion signed by the Dean of The New School for Social Research.