Global Sexualities

Catalog description

This course considers sex- and gender-related practices, desires, and identities around the world with an emphasis on non-Western contexts. In the first part of the course, students will become familiar with some of the problematic assumptions that have imbued theorizing gender and sexuality from within Western frameworks. Additionally, it will examine alternatives to approaching knowledge production about other peoples and practices that decenter a Western gaze. After becoming acquainted with this general approach, the course continues with a survey of contemporary issues and debates centering on different ways of knowing that inform sexual cultures. Special topics of focus may include sexual migration, globalization, and its impacts on Indigenous sexual/gender identities; transnational comparisons of sex work; virtual intimacies; body modification and desire; and the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, among others. RESTRICTED TO HSX STUDENTS