A HISTORY OF SEXUALITY

From where do our ideas and firmly held convictions about sexuality come? This course will improvise a genealogy of the term "sexuality" to underscore its construction by a vast network of academic, literary, philosophical, and medical institutions. Our critical investigation will begin in the nineteenth century with the invention of sexology as a scientific subfield, and we will arrive at the deployment of sexuality in contemporary political antagonisms. We will consider how sexuality delineates the field of the normal from the pathological (Ellis, Freud); how it functions as a "dense transfer point for relations of power" (Foucault, Mbembe); how it undergirds racism and colonial ideologies (Fanon, Puar); how it encrypts the inexpressible in important works of literature and film. Importantly, we will ask how "queerness" both affirms and disrupts the designs that this elusive concept has for us all.