Intimacy and Social Change

Catalog description

This course looks at the role of intimacy in social life. Students are given an overview of the changing nature of intimate relations and how these intimacies have been affected by various cultural, political, economic, and technological trends. Intimacy is seen here as foundational to important human relationships including parent-infant relations, familial relations, friendships, religious affiliation, romantic relationships, patient-practitioner relations, psychotherapeutic relations and sexual relations. How the nature, depth and quality of intimacy have changed over time and how we've come to socially construct its various forms and meanings is sociologically examined here.