- 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
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.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Autumn Term 2022-23 to Spring Term 2022-23 |
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. 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
What is “sexuality”?
Concepts and debates around sexuality
Decolonising sexualities [1] challenging heteronormativity
Decolonising sexualities [2] thinking through cultural diversity
Sexualities, courtship, and marriage
Sexualities and the trade in sexual services
Sexualities, bodies, health, and disease
Spring Term
Sexualities, norms, and socialisation
Sexualities, law, and violence
Sexualities, states, and empires
Sexualities and inequalities
Sexualities, dissidence, and challenge
Imagining sexualities
Visualising sexualities
Results and prospects
Task | Length | % of module mark |
---|---|---|
Groupwork Group Project |
N/A | 33 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) Open Exam - Sexualities |
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 Group Project |
N/A | 33 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) Open Exam - Sexualities |
8 hours | 67 |
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.
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