Gender, Sexuality, and History (321-0-20)
Topic
Capitalism and Desire: Mapping Sexualities in 19th
Instructors
Tessie P Liu
467/491-3150
Harris Hall Room 327
Meeting Info
TBA: TBA
Overview of class
"By transforming love into romance, capitalist society allows us to continue desiring." By structuring satisfaction as ever incomplete, capitalism propels us to seek "the new, the better, and the more," writes film scholar Todd McGowan. Testing this contention on the "psychic costs of free markets," this class will take students to mid-nineteenth century Paris, when the modern iconic city of romance, with its elegant bridges, wide boulevards, endless fashion displays, and vibrant café life, was created in the capitalist transformation of its physical space and social relationships. Based on readings from feminist and queer theory, urban geography, sociology, art history, literature, and social history, we will use these various perspectives to study our main laboratory: the massive urban renewal projects under Baron Haussmann during the Second Empire of Napoleon III that demolished the twisted winding streets of old Paris to build a modern capital city of commerce and leisure. Using three of Emile Zola's novels on the "Haussmannization" of Paris, we will examine how changes in the physical structure altered the old connections between illicit sexualities and nonconforming gender practices. We will investigate how the new department stores, apartment buildings, the café-concerts, open-air promenades, and parks promoted bourgeois gender norms and sexual identities. In turn, we will ask how, with its new opportunities and deep losses, the moral economy of capitalism (its logic of production, profit taking, and social transactions) encouraged new subjectivities that ultimately reshaped both public and intimate spaces, as well as notions of pleasure and criminality. Most importantly, we will ask: what happened to love? The class combines lectures, in-class discussions, with short weekly assignments. With the guidance of the instructor, students will design and write a research paper (7 to 10 pages) reflecting on these topics.
Learning Objectives
This course fulfills the Historical Studies Foundational Discipline: 1.Course materials focus on primary sources such as memoirs, contemporary novels, paintings, propaganda posters, historical maps, and films. Students will learn to analyze these sources critically with the aid of secondary sources such as scholarly articles and book chapters. 2.Develop skills of historical analysis in understanding change over time and understand how to evaluate individual and group behavior in historical and cultural context. 3. Express the results of historical investigation in essays with guided prompts. Students will have the opportunity to debate their interpretations with each other in group discussions led by the instructor.
Teaching Method
Lectures, In class discussion, Writing Assignments, Group Work, Class Participation,Visit to NU Special Collections
Evaluation Method
Three short presentations, three short response papers, one 7-10 page research essay
Class Materials (Required)
In Canvas
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area