GSS 324 - Sex, Law, Modernity (= HIS 324)

This course, team-taught by a historian of European gender and a legal and literary scholar of the Hispanic world, will introduce students to the ways that early modern and modern Western societies have intervened in and defined categories of illicit sexual desire, identity, and conduct. Modern European states took an abiding interest in regulating what they considered to be disordered and deviant sexual persons- the Homosexual, the Prostitute, the Intersexed. These same states took a marked interest in enforcing public health and hygiene by way of laws targeting private sexual behavior, from birth control to interracial relationships. These interventions expressed sharp anxieties about the character of modern life: urbanization, industrialization, democratization, the rise of the middle classes, empire. The course will combine an interrogation of primary texts from the early modern and modern periods with secondary and theoretical works dealing with history, law, and sexuality.

Satisfies a major requirement in History

Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.  Only counted in one track.

Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies  Only counted in one track.

Satisfies a distribution requirement in Historical Thought