Sex, Love, and Race in African American Life and History

Catalog description

This course discusses the political and social implications of sex, race and personal relationships in U.S. political and social history. In this class, we examine how so-called ‘emotional,’ human experiences such as falling in love, engaging in a sexual relationship, marriage, coming out of the closet, and other deeply personal events over the course of a lifetime are shaped by political, legal and historical forces. This course will examine the history of marriage rights, claims to ethnic and racial identity, activism among multiracial people in the United States, sex education in public schools, and debates about marriage and family rights in the 20th and 21st centuries.