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Sexualities in History - HIS00099H

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  • Department: History
  • Module co-ordinator: Dr. Joanna de Groot
  • Credit value: 40 credits
  • Credit level: H
  • Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
    • See module specification for other years: 2021-22

Module summary

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 American and Caribbean plantations, to mediaeval Spanish towns, 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, patterns, and processes of change affecting past sexualities. The second element involves reflecting on how understanding of sexualities is shaped by language, images and ideas, by influences coming from religion, medicine, culture, psychology, and education as well as by the everyday assumptions found in humour, entertainment, advertising, and ordinary conversation. You will be learning about past situations and experiences and also assessing ideas and interpretations.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Autumn Term 2022-23 to Spring Term 2022-23

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

  • To introduce students to the practice of comparative history;
  • To enable students to acquire skills and understanding of that practice by studying a particular topic or theme; and
  • To enable students to reflect on the possibilities and difficulties involved in comparative history

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

  • Grasp the key approaches and challenges involved in comparative history;
  • Understand a range of aspects of the topic or theme which they have studied;
  • Be able to use and evaluate comparative approaches to that topic or theme; and
  • Have learned to discuss and write about comparative history
  • Have developed skills in group work

Module content

Teaching Programme:

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1 of the autumn term. Students prepare for and participate in fifteen three-hour seminars. These take place 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. There will also be a 2 hour revision session in the summer term.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

Autumn Term

  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 Term

  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

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Groupwork
Group Project		 N/A 33
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled)
Open Exam - Sexualities		 8 hours 67

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

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.

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Groupwork
Group Project		 N/A 33
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled)
Open Exam - Sexualities		 8 hours 67

Module feedback

Following their formative assessment task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.

Work will be returned to students in their discussion groups and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their procedural work with their tutor (or module convenor) during 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 deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

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:

Clark, Anna, Desire: a history of European sexuality, Routledge 2008

Phillips, Kim, and Barry Reay [eds.]. Sexualities in history: A reader. Routledge, 2013

Halperin, David. How to do the history of homosexuality. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.