Università Roma Tre

In the first part of the course, origins and history of advertising will be illustrated, along with the organization of advertising industry and its main professional figures; drawing on many case studies, different advertising techniques and strategies will be presented, showing how these change according to different media (printed ads, TV commercials, web ads, etc. will be taken into consideration). Finally, theoretical frameworks will be discussed and applied to specific advertisements.
The second part of the course focuses on what is probably to be considered advertising’s main ‘resource’ and most longstanding weakness at the same time: the use of stereotypes. After addressing stereotypes in theoretical terms and explaining the reasons for their widespread use and ‘efficacy’, we will focus on three categories of stereotypes commonly found in advertisements: 1) gender and ‘heteronormativity’ (how are female and male subjects and bodies depicted in ads? What are the reasons for and the effects of privileging heterosexual couples?); 2) age (which products/services/goods is the use of elderly in advertising limited to? Are old women and old men ‘used’ in the same way?); 3) race (in which roles non-Caucasian people feature in in advertising images and discourse?). Several forms of communication will be deconstructed and re-constructed in order to challenge common places and to analyze how (hetero)sexism, racism, and ageism work in advertising.

The course textbooks are the followings:
• Annamaria Testa, La pubblicità, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003
• Laura Corradi, Specchio delle sue brame: analisi socio-politica delle pubblicità . Genere, classe, razza, età ed etero sessismo, Roma, Ediesse, 2012
Integrative teaching material will be made available on the www.mediastudies.it website