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Sexualities

Module description

This module explores the conceptual frameworks that shape approaches to the history of sexuality. While sexuality might appear to be a universal human (even biological) element of our personalities and identities, this module introduces you to the claim, central to much recent historians’ work, that the thinking about ourselves as having a sexual identity is peculiar to some twentieth century cultures. As a result, the history of sexuality invites us to explore the different ways bodies and desires have been conceptualised in different times and places. What concepts have been deployed to make sense of human sexual experiences? What shifting categories (gender, race, nature, age) have been critical to the ways in which societies organise sexual behaviours, or demarcate the moral from the immoral, the pathological from the unhealthy, the normal from the abnormal, the legal from the illegal or the appropriate from the distasteful? Drawing upon case-studies drawn from across geographies, chronologies and scales you will be encouraged to reflect on how sexual categories and modes of regulation reflect different political, social and cultural contexts shedding light and offering new perspectives on our own worlds.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This ‘Concepts’ module requires you to engage with historical ideas and theories relating to sexual behaviours that are applicable across time and space.  You will be encouraged to think beyond the detail of your Special Subjects and Dissertations, using a range of illustrative case studies to examine broader ideas.  You will have to consider how ideas and concepts about sexual activities vary, develop, or manifest consistently in different time periods and places, and why they are constructed as they are. What can this tell us about past peoples and societies, and what are the implications for the world in which we now live? 

All History ‘Concepts’ modules are partly project-based, requiring you to take the initiative.  In the first half of term, a team of tutors will introduce themes, concepts, and ideas, setting you up for the rest of the module.  The second half of term is student-led: you will work in groups to develop your understanding of a theme relating to sex/sexuality and lead a seminar to teach fellow students more about your chosen theme through a series of case-studies.   

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Analyse and explain key developments in the histories of sexuality across different historical time-periods and geographical regions
• 2. Evaluate carefully and critically the approaches that historians and scholars working in other disciplines have taken to the concept of sexuality
• 3. Define suitable research topics for independent study/student-led seminars on the history of sexuality.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Analyse the key developments in complex and unfamiliar political, social, cultural or intellectual environments
• 5. Evaluate different and complex types of historical source and historiography.
• 6. Present work in the format expected of historians, including footnoting and bibliographical references.
• 7. Identify and deploy correct terminology in a comprehensible and sophisticated manner
• 8. Evaluate critically different approaches to history in a contested area

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 9. Work both in a team and independently in order to prepare and lead a seminar
• 10. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment.

Syllabus plan

We will interrogate and historicise the various concepts associated with the history of sexuality, showing how their meaning shifts in different contexts, places and time periods. We will also explore concepts once key to organising sex in the past that are no longer part of our lexicon  While content may vary from year to year, it is anticipated that the module may cover some or all of the following: human sexuality; heterosexuality; homosexuality; marriage; rape and sexual violence; pornography; prostitution.    

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

The re-assessment consists of a 3000-word Written Assignment, as in the original assessment, but replaces leading a student-led seminar and participating in seminars with recordings and supporting materials that correspond to one student’s contribution to such a seminar. The introduction should outline the student’s understanding of the topic; the longer recording should explain how the seminar would be structured and organised, as well as detailing the material to be used. This will enable the marker to gain a sense of what the student’s understanding of their concept and its specific application in the seminar, what the student intended to do in the seminar, and the rationale for this activity, as well as enabling them to assess the student’s oral seminar-leading skills. 

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment. 

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%. 

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Bristow, Joseph, Sexuality, New York and London: Routledge, 1997.
• Dinshaw, Carolyn, Getting medieval: sexualities and communities, pre- and postmodern, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
• Ellingson, Stephen and M. Christian Green (eds), Religion and Sexuality in Cross-cultural Perspective, London: Routledge, 2002.
• Fisher, Kate and Sarah Toulalan (eds), Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011.
• Garton, Stephen, Histories of Sexuality, Antiquity to Sexual Revolution, London: Equinox, 2004.
• Houlbrook, Matt and Harry Cocks (eds), The Modern History of Sexuality, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006.
• Nye, Robert (ed.), Sexuality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999
• Peakman, Julie (general ed), A Cultural History of Sexuality, Oxford: Berg, 2011 (6 vols.)
  Stearns, Peter N., Sexuality in World History, London and New York: Routledge, 2009.
• Toulalan, Sarah and Kate Fisher (eds) The Routledge History of Sex and the Body in the West, 1500 to the Present, London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

Key words search

History; Sexuality; Gender