Rethinking Sex: Critical Approaches to Compulsory Sexuality

Catalog description

This course explores nonsexual ways of being and being-in-relation, investigating the ways in which our lives are structured not just by compulsory heterosexuality, but also by compulsory sexuality. Challenging the Freudian supposition that all human beings are sexual subjects, we will think critically about naturalized assumptions regarding sex, intimacy, attraction, and desire, opening up new frameworks, orientations, and language informed by queer and feminist discourse. We will engage sex as a form of political power whose influence extends far beyond the act of heterosexual intercourse itself, pervading and organizing our everyday lives along the lines of race, gender, ability, class, and religion. Texts will draw upon queer and feminist theory, cultural studies, disability studies, feminist science and technology studies, gender and sexuality studies, and popular culture.