HIST 378
The History of Sexuality in America
Last Offered Fall 2010
Division II
Cross-listed WGST 378
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Sex is often thought of as an unchanging need, behavior, or instinct–a form of experience without history. And yet even in the recent past, sexual desires, acts, identities, attitudes, and technologies have undergone profound transformations. This course explores those transformations, tracing the shifting and contested meanings and experiences of sex and sexuality from the pre-colonial period to the present, and examining how and why sexuality has become so central to identities, culture, politics, and history. To understand how sexuality has been regulated by the state and what sexuality has meant to ordinary Americans in the past, we will use a wide range of primary sources, including as private letters, law cases, photographs, films, and music. Many of the topics are relevant to contemporary public debates, including controversies over censorship, sexual violence, gay and lesbian sexualities, transgender identities and politics, abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases.