Sex, Power and Culture

Catalog description

This course invites students to learn the skills necessary to identify, analyze, and ultimately transform the cultural, social, and political forces that shape and are shaped by sex and sexuality. Approaching sexuality as a system of norms, values, beliefs, and patterns of interaction, students will learn how sexuality intersects with with gender, race, age, ethnicity, religion, ability, and other axes of power and privilege. Students will be introduced to the current body of empirical data and theory to identify how these intersecting systems of power take shape in patterns of human interaction such as forming relationships, dating rituals and sexual scripts, and interpersonal conflict and violence. In sum, students will develop the skills to 1) analyze how their own interpersonal and intimate relationships are embedded within and constitutive of broader systems of power and 2) how to work individually and collectively to change them.