Sexual Revolutions:Women, Gender, & Sex in Modern Europe

Catalog description

We examine the history of debates about the nature and place of women in the history of modern Europe, and how gender difference has been employed in the construction and negotiation of political and social relations. We investigate the birth of feminism, as well as other cultural discourses and political movements that engaged shifting notions of gender and sexuality: homosexuality and the “invention” of heterosexuality, labor activism, reproductive science, race and empire, prostitution, revolution, and fascism. This course also explores the experience of sexuality in the modern era-how women and men viewed and managed their bodies and sexual lives, including tension-ridden norms of masculinity. Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.