Politics 387FX - Advanced Topics in Politics: 'The Feminist Sex Wars'

In the late 1970s through the 1980s, a series of contentious debates erupted in American feminism over pornography, prostitution, sadomasochism, and other issues related to sex, power, pleasure, desire, erotic community, and violence. This was a time of prolific theorizing and bitter conflict known as the "feminist sex wars." This course tries to make sense of some common contemporary discourses on pornography, sexual representation, sexual conduct, and sexual ethics by exploring their sources in the feminist political and theoretical debates of the sex wars, as well as examining how feminist engagement with these issues was entangled in larger political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. We will also question how the feminist sex wars are remembered and theorized today and what kind of stories about the feminist sex wars are repeatedly told in different institutional contexts.

Prereq: 8 credits in the department.