106-218/318 Reading Sexuality

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Subject Description:

This subject understands categories of sexuality as historically and culturally contingent rather than as natural expressions of a private self. It provides the historical and theoretical frameworks for understanding the rise of specific sexualities - homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, queer - in relation to available medical, psychoanalytic, philosophical and popular discourses. It enables students to explicate the complex imbrications of sexuality and other categories of identity, such as gender and race. Drawing on recent formations in lesbian and gay studies, this subject reads a diverse range of cultural texts from the proceedings of court cases to personal advertisements, from celebrity gossip columns to popular film, to argue that sexuality is a central, if incoherent, aspect of contemporary everyday life.

Assessment:

Prescribed Texts:

A course reader will be available from the department.

• N Bartlett, Who Was That Man? A Present for Mr Oscar Wilde, Penguin.
• K Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us, Vintage.
• R Hall, The Well of Loneliness, Virago.
• A Jagose, Queer Theory, MUP.
• E Michaels, Unbecoming: An AIDS Diary, EmPress.
• C Tsiolkis, Loaded, Reed.
• J Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Abacus.
• Films:, Black Widow
• , Cruising
• , Paris is Burning