2019-20 Academic Catalog

The politics of sex are everywhere--in media, law, medicine, and everyday life. To say that sex is political is to imply that sex intersects with other interests--nation and market building, globalization, and so forth. In this course, we will explore various "sex panics," as they ask us to revisit the boundaries of the "normative" in relation to sex and its intersections with race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, and ability. Sex panics--and, as we'll also explore, "sex scandals" occasion not only the revision of discourses on sex but on identity, politics, and cultures more broadly.