Sexuality in Social Context

Catalog description

Despite the ubiquity of sexual imagery in contemporary Western popular culture, most people regard sexuality to be an intimate topic that concerns the drives, experiences and pleasures of individuals. In this course, we will examine the social and pluralistic character of sexual desires, meanings, practices and politics, their variations, cultural locations, institutional determinants and even geopolitical dimensions. We will begin by surveying some of the most influential theoretical works from psychoanalysis, sexology and early sociological writings on sexualities, paying particular attention to how they undergird more contemporary social thought. We then move on to examine the influence of queer theoretical critique on sociological thinking about heterosexuality, whiteness, sexual diversity, and cross-national differences in the interrelationships between gender and sexuality. We will end the course by looking at three discrete topics within the larger sociological subfield of sexuality studies: global sex work, the ethics of participants observation in sexual; communities and contemporary discourses of sexual consent (the last with a particular focus on campus sexual cultures)