Course Description

This course examines the ways in which sexuality has been an integral part of American History. Topics include sexual practices and governance in the colonial period; the politics of homosexuality from the colonial period to the present; rape and sexual abuse; transformations in the legal codes and cultural values surrounding abortion from the 19th century to the present; perspectives on prostitution with special attention to the "vice crusaders" of the late nineteen century; how and why the sexual system of "virtue and vice" of the Victorian period was transformed into a system of "normality" and "deviance" in the twentieth century; the effects of mass culture and consumer values on the popular meaning of sexuality and the consumption of pornography; the "sexual revolution" of the nineteen sixties and seventies; and the question of the role of sexuality in identity formation at the turn of the 21st century.