Gender and Sexuality

• Department of History

Histories of gender, of sexuality and of queerness are crucial, fascinating, and multifaceted. In ten sessions this seminar will encounter and investigate a range of approaches to these fields. Discussions will highlight interdisciplinary and intersectional perspectives.

Based on selected seminar readings the seminar will discuss: persecution and emancipation, the feminist sex wars, issues around reproduction, questions of affect, queer consumer cultures, trans* histories, and queer temporalities. Along the way we examine visual and textual sources as we encounter figures like Philip Prince Eulenburg or events like the Compton’s Cafeteria riot.

Narrating histories of gender, sexuality and queerness is a challenging task. One needs to come to terms with varied identifications, with what appear to be minute differences, with stark injustices and above all, with complex dynamics. The first two sessions will discuss conceptual questions about the history of gender and of sexuality respectively. Sessions three through nine discuss more specific topics. And in our last session we will look at a variety of sources that researchers can use to write histories of gender and sexuality.