Women's & Gender Studies 210 - Anthro. of Sexuality

(Offered as WAGS 210 and ANTH 210.)  This course draws on anthropological literature to study the socio-cultural making of human sexuality and its variations, including theories of sexuality as a domain of human experience. It seeks to critically examine some of the most intimate and often taken-for-granted aspects of human life and locate sexual acts, desires and relations in particular historical and cultural contexts. The course offers analytical tools to understand and evaluate different methods and approaches to the study of human sexuality.  We will examine the relation of sex to kinship/family, to reproduction and to romance. As we read about the bodily experience of sexual pleasure, we will explore how sexual taboos, norms and morality develop in various cultures and why sex acquires explosive political dimensions during certain historical periods. The course will explore the gendered and racial dimensions of human sexual experience in the context of class, nation and empire. How do class divisions produce different sexual culture? What economies of sex are involved in sex work, marriage and immigration? What has been the role of sexuality in projects of nation building and in colonial encounters? When, where and how did sexuality become a matter of identity?  In addition to a focus on contemporary ethnographic studies of sexuality in various parts of the world, we will read theoretical and historical texts that have been influential in shaping the anthropological approaches to sexuality. We will also briefly address scientific theories of sexuality.  Two meetings per week.

Fall semester. Professor Sadjadi.