Sex Wars: Religion and Gender in the Public Sphere

Catalog description

Religious traditions have always had a lot to say about sex, gender, and sexuality—be it eunuchs under Roman rule or reproductive autonomy in the US today. Many heated and long-standing public debates take place at this very intersection. While we tend to imagine religion as inherently sex negative, religious communities have diverse and diverging approaches to sex and sexuality. In this course, we turn to “Sex Wars” in the public imagination, including but not limited to: abortion, gay marriage, sodomy, contraception, trans life, child and sexual abuse, consent, and the AIDS crisis. Using resources from religious studies and gender studies, we will investigate the way such public debates appear and recur, deepening our understanding of the relationship between religion, gender, and public discourse, and developing tools to both research on and intervene in these ongoing debates.