Asexuality Studies

Catalog description

While nonsexual lifestyles and nonerotic structures of intimacy are by no means new, the formation of an asexual community in the early 2000s and the attendant construction of asexuality as a viable sexual identity have compelled scholars of gender and sexuality studies to rethink much of what we thought we knew about sex. In this course, we will mobilize asexuality as a new category of analysis to ask, what challenges does asexuality bring to dominant understandings of sexual desire and relationships? And what new ideas does it contribute to feminist and queer studies? Throughout the course, we will approach a growing archive of asexual experience with an intersectional lens attuned to asexuality’s interaction with gender, hetero/sexuality, dis/ability, race/ethnicity, religion, age, and other social categories. We will disentangle pathologized asexuality from desexualization; explore an array of a/nonsexual practices and identities; enter ongoing debates on the politics of sexual refusal; and center nonerotic and non-dyadic structures of intimacy, such as singlehood, romantic friendship, and nonmonogamy. Given the interdisciplinary nature of this field, our readings will span sociology, critical health studies, medical anthropology, disability studies, literary studies, media studies, and queer and feminist theory. This course fulfills the requirements of an AOK2 (Western Heritage) course.