Description:
Americans have created and maintained hierarchies of power by casting certain people and sexual behaviors as unnatural and immoral. At various historical moments “mannish” women, Filipino migrant workers, and black men on the “down low” were all cast as sexual deviants who threatened the nation’s welfare. At the same time, however, public discussions about sexual deviance have alerted Americans to the possibility of alternative sexual relationships and communities. This course will examine why Americans’ definitions of sexual deviance have changed, and how “sexual deviants” have contested their stigmatization. We will explore topics including Progressive Era anti-miscegenation law, psychoanalytic understandings of incest in the 1950s, and the modern asexuality rights movement. Studying sexual deviance will reveal that our conceptions of sexual normalcy are more complex and less stable than we might expect.
Possible Texts:
Excerpts from:
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1990)
Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (2007)
Nayan Shah, Stranger Intimacy (2011)
Lisa Duggan, Sapphic Slashers (2000)
Articles:
Robert Hill, “We Share a Sacred Secret’: Gender, Domesticity, and Containment in
Transvestia's Histories and Letters from Crossdressers and Their Wives,” Journal of Social History 44.3 (2011): 729-750.
Sandra Eder, “The Volatility of Sex: Intersexuality, Gender and Clinical Practice in the 1950s,” Gender & History, 22.3 (November 2010): 692–707.
Ana Raquel Minian “’Indiscriminate and Shameless Sex’: The Strategic Use of Sexuality by the United Farm Workers,” American Quarterly, 65.1 (March 2013): 63-90.
Thaddeus Russell, “The Color of Discipline: Civil Rights and Black Sexuality,” American Quarterly 60.1 (2008): 101-128.
Films: Coming Out Under Fire (1994)
Assignments (include % of grade):
Attendance, class participation, discussion questions – 20%
Deviance Diary (5 assignments 500 words each)– 30%
Short Papers (3 papers each 1,000-1,5000 words) – 30%