Lesbian and Gay History

Catalog description

Critical exploration of the history of sexuality, focusing especially on the emergence of modern lesbian and gay identities. WMNST (HIST) 466 Lesbian and Gay History (3) (US;IL) This course will explore the relationships in different cultures and historical periods between the dominant culture and homosexuals, whom the culture deemed, at different times, sinful, deviant, criminal or, more recently, a minority community. Students will confront the very nature of difference, and how it has been played out in European and American history. The course will challenge students to deal with how societies define difference itself; how they isolate or punish deviants; and how the creation of the 'homosexual' helped establish not simply difference but 'normalcy' in a highly sexualized modern culture. Finally, the course will explore notions of identity itself, focusing on the creation of a modern gay and lesbian identity and its impact on broader questions of gender, community, civil rights, and political discourse in the United States.An example of evaluation methods would be: course presented in a seminar format with grades based on class participation, brief analytical papers, and a longer research or historiographic paper.