Syllabus
Annotation
How and why did sex and sexuality become subjects of study? How are our experiences of sex and sexuality shaped by a history of "scientific" explorations of desire? Why has sexuality become so central to our understanding of identity? What was sex like before "sexuality" was invented and how did the “invention” of (hetero)sexuality transform social hierarchies of gender relations and institutional definitions of sexuality? This introductory graduate seminar explores these and other questions by approaching sex and sexuality as socially, historically, and culturally contingent concepts. We will consider sex and sexuality as they relate to other categories of identity, including race, class, ethnicity, nation, and ability.
Our theoretical and historical investigations will create the groundwork for understanding and rethinking how sexuality is understood in society and culture today. Necessarily, explorations of sexuality will lead us to deconstruct and rethink the binary constructions not only of gender but the body itself.
Producing a fluid and unstable subject, however, inevitably opens questions of recognition, collective identities and civil rights. How can we fight for and legally protect an identity, which is not stable and easily identifiable? Is it better that “lesbian”, “gay” and “transgender” are clear identities / communities, that can effectively formulate their collective subjectivity positions and political / civil rights or is it more productive to not think in these firm categories in order to create a more inclusive environment for individually-based subjectivity? What are the pros and cons of thinking in transgender and queer terms as an answer to the heteronormative binary prescriptions and constrictions? How to reconcile struggles for individual autonomy with efforts for structural changes? Students will be encouraged to think about these questions in relation to their national contexts in order to enrich our common understandings of causes and consequences of institutional heteronormativity, structural inequalities and heterosexual privilege.