HIST392

Scholars in many disciplines have been asking new questions about the meaning of sexuality and of taken-for-granted categories like "gay" and "straight", even "male" and "female", masculine and feminine. This course will look at a series of issues in the history of sexuality, including: homosexual subcultures in the past; female same-sex love relationships; "passing" women; prostitution; the Victorian sexual "system"; sex and slavery in the U.S. and Caribbean; sex reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the Nazi suppression of homosexuality; the history of birth control use; changing courtship patterns; the gay and lesbian rights movements; the sexual revolution of the 1960s; AIDS and its meanings; and teen sex and motherhood today. Our aim is not only to survey the great variety of sexual patterns and behaviors in recent European and American history, but also to think more analytically about the issues and activities we associate with sexuality.