Seminar in Historical Analysis (405-0-22)
Topic
Sexual Knowledges
Instructors
Tessie P Liu
467/491-3150
Harris Hall Room 327
Professor Liu is a specialist in French history, modern European social and cultural history, comparative women’s history and gender studies. She is an Associate Professor in the History Department and in the Gender Studies Program. This course on the wild boy of Aveyron is one of her favorite classes because of the important enduring issues raised by the compelling story of Victor, the wild child, on education, psychology, and human nature.
Meeting Info
Harris Hall L40: Fri 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
Topic: Sexual Knowledge: Science, Archives, Traces
Sexuality studies has flourished in recent decades amidst the multiplicities of desires, identities, and bodies. As loci of meaning-making, hierarchical differentiation, and political struggles, as well as the space of transgressive imagination and alternative subjectivities, sexuality studies has never been neutral. This course focuses on the scholarly debates over the practices and politics of sexual knowledges across historical moments, locations, and projects. We will analyze how this knowledge was (and is) produced, what counts as knowledge, who gets recognized as an Aexpert@ (and why), and who collects and curates. Our work will especially highlight the dynamic relations between story-telling, assembling, documentation, and interpretation. In doing so, we critically examine the multiple meanings of archives, their origins, and uses. Equally, we problematize the silences and so-called ephemera. Readings will include works on sexuality and bio-politics, classic works in sexology, and ethnographies. The course will also consider film and other media as well as digital archives. Finally, I hope to arrange Zoom conversations with archivists, collections curators and investigators on how they navigate collections as well as how they have assembled their research.
Learning Objectives
Critical reading and research design
Evaluation Method
Weekly discussions, 3 short essays, lead class discussion three times, final research paper
Class Materials (Required)
All the assigned readings will be uploaded on Canvas
Class Notes
History Area(s) of Concentration: Americas, European, Asia/Middle East
Class Attributes
Graduate Students Only