Undergraduate Course: Introduction to The Modern History of Sexuality (HIST10492)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Today, sex is at the tip of society's tongue. What really is this thing called 'sexuality' and how did it become such a ubiquitous social and political issue? This course offers an introduction to the sexual past that seeks to answer this question with a primary focus on Europe, but which also explores the intersections of sex, race and colonialism. |
| Course description |
Human sexuality is commonly understood in biological terms, explained as driven by natural instincts and as part of a slow evolutionary process. Sexuality, in this view, is a timeless constant and hardly has a history. But this course will serve to demonstrate that much of what is taken for granted when it comes to sex shrouds an often-counterintuitive complexity of historical developments. The very notion of sexuality, for example, has only become thinkable in the past 150 years. In many ways, modern Europe and its colonial empires were where the intense preoccupation with problems of sex and reproduction produced an immense apparatus of knowledge that Michel Foucault described as a veritable scientia sexualis.
The intersections of gender, sexuality and race have historically served to shape social power structures between men and women, straights and queers, colonizers and the colonized, and combinations of the above. Students will learn various ways in which historians have approached laying bare these power mechanisms in the past. In so doing, they will explore the extensive ways in which 'sex' has been and continues to be intensely political. Ultimately, rather than reproduce a Whiggish history of sexuality that informed the sexual revolution and its earliest historiography, this course will serve to upset such readings by examining the continuous ambivalence that surrounds sexuality in European society and by taking issue with the tenacious Eurocentrism that lies at the heart of even the most sophisticated analyses of sexual modernity.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass or passes in 40 credits of first level historical courses or equivalent and a pass or passes in 40 credits of second level historical courses or equivalent.
Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Secretary to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 504030). |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 History courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. Applicants should note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2022/23, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
2,000 word essay (40%)«br /»
3,000 word literature review on a topic of student's own choosing after consulting with the Course Organiser (60%) |
| Feedback |
Students will receive feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser during their published office hours for this course or by appointment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand sexuality as a historical and highly elastic construct.
- Detail the emergence of sexuality as a subject of historical inquiry over the twentieth century.
- Connect sexuality to other markers of difference (like race and gender) as one of the key axes of how social power relations are organised.
- Identify and explain key moments in the modern history of sexuality and how they have (re)shaped European and colonised societies beyond Europe.
- Apply the insights from both parts of the course in an analytical piece of writing that demonstrates their understanding of historical constructivism.
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Reading List
DAVIDSON Arnold I., "Closing up the Corpses. Diseases of Sexuality and the Emergence of the Psychiatric Style of Reasoning", in: George BOOLOS (ed.), Meaning and Method: Essays in Honor of Hilary Putnam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 295-325.
FAUSTO-STERLING Anne, "Gender, Race, and Nation. The Comparative Anatomy of 'Hottentot' Women in Europe, 1815-1817", in: Jennifer TERRY and Jennifer URLA (eds.), Deviant Bodies. Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995, 19-48.
FOUCAULT Michel, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, translated by Robert HURLEY, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
FREUD Sigmund, "'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness", in: Sigmund FREUD and Joan RIVIERE (eds.), Collected Papers, 5 vols., vol. 2, London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953 [1908], 82-99.
HERZOG Dagmar, Sexuality in Europe. A Twentieth-Century History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
MARCUSE Herbert, Eros and Civilization, Routledge: London, 1998 [1955].
RUBIN Gayle, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality", in: Carole S. VANCE (ed.), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984, 267-319.
SHEPPARD Todd, Sex, France and Arab Men, 1962-1979, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
STOLER Ann Laura, "Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power. Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia", in: Roger N. LANCASTER and Micaela DI LEONARDO (eds.), The Gender/Sexuality Reader. Culture, History, Political Autonomy, New York and London: Routledge, 1997, 13-36.
SUTTON Katie, "'We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun'. The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany", German Studies Review, 35/2, 2012, 335-354. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Students will have obtained an understanding of sex and sexuality as highly elastic historical constructs.
- They will be familiarised with a number of key texts by founding authors of the field.
- They will have explored a variety of important themes in the historiography of modern European sexualities, on which they will have analysed historiographical texts both in terms of the arguments made and the methodologies used.
- Students will be able to think critically and reflectively about sexuality in intersectional terms. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | |
Course secretary | Miss Clara Burns
Tel: (0131 6)50 4459
Email: clara.burns@ed.ac.uk |
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