2016-2017 Graduate Academic Catalogue 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2016-2017 Graduate Academic Catalogue [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Add to Portfolio (opens a new window)

LS 752 - Sex and Modernity

(3.00 cr.)

Human beings have always been interested in sex, but modern civilization is downright obsessed with it. Indeed, revolutions in both sexual behavior and attitudes toward love and sex are central to the phenomenon called "modernity." Questions of sexuality now preoccupy political struggles, religious debates, social movements, and psychological theories, to say nothing of the role played by sex in the emergence of a commodity culture. Sexuality is the central metaphor, the privileged myth of modern world. Students examine the nature and function of sexuality in modern life through readings from psychological and political theorists and from literature. In doing so, they consider questions about the history of conceptions of love and sex, a history that takes them back to the ancient world. Students are also required to absorb some key lessons from some of greatest thinkers of the modern period, including Foucault, Freud, de Beauvoir, and Arendt. Literary works by Fauset, Wedekind, Nabokov, and others. Taught from a feminist perspective.



Add to Portfolio (opens a new window)