GS 263 - History of Sexuality in America

Course Cross-listed with HIS 263
3 credit(s)
This course analyzes historical changes in the social organization and cultural meaning of sexual practices and desires in the United States. Students examine the establishment of sexual norms in Colonial and 19th-century America; the role of sex during the era of slavery; the contested boundaries drawn between same-sex and different-sex sociability, friendship and eroticism; the cultural conflicts about prostitution, cross-racial sex, and sex education; and the emergence of heterosexuality and homosexuality as the predominant categories of sexual experience, identity and politics.

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