CBA.ca.com:
About 11 minutes into Beyoncé's performance 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, she rolled across the stage alone on moving sidewalk, backlit by a giant array of lights spelling out the word "FEMINIST" while part of her hit, Flawless played.
Her unequivocal statement had feminists cheering. Arguably the most influential woman in entertainment was telling the world that being a feminist was great, that it wasn't a dirty word. "There it was, the most powerful, and certainly the most highly polished pop-culture message of my lifetime," wrote Rebecca Traister for The New Republic.
Now, that performance and Beyoncé's cultural influence — some might even say domination — are the subjects of an unusual new course called Gender and Performance at the University of Waterloo.
"I had to take up the work of this performer who is astute, an astute businesswoman, who is articulating a kind of feminism that is fascinating and very much of the 21st century and is definitely a mainstream feminism," said Naila Keleta-Mae, a professor at Waterloo who will teach the course this fall. "I was really interested in thinking about her work more critically."
"This is not an ode to Beyoncé, where we sit back and watch her videos and think about fully how amazing she is. What we have to think about is her influence and her impact, and what is the messaging that she is articulating, not only through words, but also through images," said Keleta-Mae.
The undergraduate course will be offered by the university's drama and speech communication department, and has no prerequisite, so anyone can sign up. It will focus on the impact of Beyoncé's eponymous 2013 album, Beyoncé. But students shouldn't expect the course to be a hit parade or that the performer won't come under critical scrutiny.
In the track Flawless, Beyoncé included a portion of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDx talk titled, "We should all be feminists."
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