106-020 Reading Sexuality

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 25 points of first year English, see Prerequisites, or first year women's studies, see Prerequisites.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject explores 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 in relation to available medical, psychoanalytic, philosophical and popular discourses. 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. By the end of the semester students should be able to explicate the complex imbrications of sexuality and other categories of identity such as gender and race and be able to analyse the representation of sexual identities and desires in key literary and cinematic texts.

Assessment

Class participation, and written work totalling 4000 words.

Prescribed Texts

A subject reader will be available.

• M Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: The Will to Knowledge. Penguin.
• O Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin.
• Film: W Wyler, The Children's Hour.