This course considers the role of the visual in constructing women's bodies in transnational space. We will investigate how media, visual art, film, graphic novels, merchandising and performance represent women in the context of global economic and political circuits. How do women's bodies facilitate the negotiation and containment of national and diasporic spaces and why are they frequently called upon to stage the effects of war and political aggression? What role does race, ethnicity, sexuality, class and religion play in how women's bodies are differentiated from one another? How does mainstream (Western) feminist theory become challenged by these differences and why is it important to push against easy assumptions of feminism as a "universal" concept? These questions will be approached through the lens of transnational feminist media studies from a U.S. perspective as we interrogate binaries that emerge between the Global North and South in the wake of the "war on terror" and critically examine assumptions that are routinely made about women, power and agency in the Global South from Western perspectives. Topics include the U.S. media representation of Muslim and non-Western women in the "war on terror"; Palestinian-born artist Mona Hatoum; the work of Iranian female artists including the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi, Shirin Neshat's film Women Without Men as well as Cul de Sac, starring Kiana Firouz, an Iranian lesbian who successfully sought asylum in the UK; South Asian diasporic filmmakers including Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair; photography projects featuring female migrant domestic workers in Singapore and Ireland and U.S. pop artist Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls act with its accompanying fashion and lifestyle merchandise line. By examining these objects in conversation with critical theory and cultural/political histories, we will gain a vocabulary key to engaging with the intersection between gender, feminism and global politics from the perspective of visual studies and arts practice.