- Department: History
- Module co-ordinator: Dr. Joanna de Groot
- Credit value: 40 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2021-22
- See module specification for other years: 2022-23
This course gives you the opportunity to explore the comparative history of sexualities - note the plural! - across times from the fifth century BC to the twentieth century AD, and places from townships in the USA to ancient Rome, early modern Florence and nineteenth century Istanbul or London. You will investigate and interpret how people in the past have understood sexual behaviour, sexual desires, sexual relationships, and sexual rules, and how they have acted on and reacted to those understandings. Your work for the module will have an empirical element and a conceptual element which will support and interact with one another. The first element involves studying specific historical settings, texts, and circumstances to gain a sense of the diversities and processes of change affecting sexualities in the past. The second element involves reflecting on how understanding of sexualities is shaped by language, images and ideas, by influences coming from religion, medicine, cultural studies, and psychology, and by the everyday assumptions of humour, advertising, and ordinary conversation. You will be learning about past situations and experiences and also assessing ideas and interpretations.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Autumn Term 2021-22 to Spring Term 2021-22 |
The aims of this module are:
Students who complete this module successfully will:
Teaching Programme:
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1 of the autumn term, and a 3-hour seminar in weeks 2-5 and 7-9 of the autumn term and weeks 2-5 and 7-10 of the spring term. Both the autumn and spring terms include a reading week for final year students and so there will be no teaching in week 6. Students prepare for and participate in fifteen three-hour seminars.
Seminar topics are likely to include the following:
Autumn
1. What is “sexuality”?
2. Concepts and debates around sexuality
3. Decolonising sexualities [1] challenging heteronormativity
4. Decolonising sexualities [2] thinking through cultural diversity
5. Sexualities, courtship, and marriage
6. Sexualities and the trade in sexual services
7. Sexualities, bodies, health, and disease
Spring
1. Sexualities, norms, and socialisation
2. Sexualities, law, and violence
3. Sexualities, states, and empires
4. Sexualities and inequalities
5. Sexualities, dissidence, and challenge
6. Imagining sexualities
7. Visualising sexualities
8. Results and prospects
Task | Length | % of module mark |
---|---|---|
Groupwork Project |
N/A | 33 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) 24-Hour Open Exam |
8 hours | 67 |
None
For procedural work, the students will make group presentations towards the end of the autumn term. In addition, they may choose to submit an optional 2,000 word formative essay between weeks 7-9 of the autumn term. Essays should not be submitted in the same week as group project presentations are scheduled.
For summative assessment students will complete a 4,000-word group project due in week 6 of the spring term -- this will account for 33% of the final mark. They will then also take a 2,000-word 24-hour open exam during the common assessment period in the summer term, usually released at 11:00 on day 1 and submitted at 11:00 on day 2. The open exam will be worth 67% of the final mark.
Task | Length | % of module mark |
---|---|---|
Groupwork Project |
N/A | 33 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) 24-Hour Open Exam |
8 hours | 67 |
Following their formative assessment task, students will receive feedback that will include comments and a mark. If this takes the form of live feedback in class it will be supported by a written comment sheet.
All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their procedural work during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 20 working days of the submission. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
Foucault, Michel. The history of sexuality. New York: Vintage, 1990 [other eds available] vol.1
Phillips, Kim, and Barry Reay [eds.]. Sexualities in history: A reader. Routledge, 2013.
Halperin, David. How to do the history of homosexuality. University of Chicago Press, 2004.