Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies (490-0-23)

Topic

Histories of Sexual Difference

Instructors

Zavier Nunn

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 224: Wed 2:00PM - 5:00PM

Overview of class

"Sex has no history. It is a natural fact, grounded in the functioning of the body, and, as such, it lies outside of history and culture." These words come not from a neoconservative mouthpiece, but from the renowned queer theorist and historian David Halperin, writing on the historicity of sexuality in 1989. As his footnotes clarify, if sex does have a history, then "that history is a matter for the evolutionary biologist, not for the historian."

Halperin's remarks predate Judith Butler's field-altering Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993), yet the post-structural turn did little to unsettle the presumed stability of sex as the ground from which gender trouble and sexual non-normativity emerge. In this sense, Halperin is symptomatic of a broader position shared—often uneasily—by queer theorists, (some gender-critical) feminists, conservatives, and political leaders alike: gender is malleable and sexuality has a history, but sex possesses an enduring, ahistorical meaning rooted in the material body and untouched by cultural, political, or economic transformation.

This graduate seminar contends with the assumption that the meaning of biological difference is transparent and self-evident. Rather than presuming the stable ontologization of sex across time, the course historicizes sexual difference itself. It takes seriously the proposition that sex is mutable—not only at the level of individual embodiment, but at the level of history. Sex, and the organizing principles through which sexual difference has been understood, have changed dramatically across time and place. The question, then, is not simply whether sex has a history, but to what end sex has been made to change.

We will read texts drawn from feminist history, intersex history, trans history, histories of the body, and legal and medical historiography. Together, these works explore not only how sexual difference has been historically constituted, but how historians and theorists have approached this problem through distinct methodologies. While grounded in historical inquiry, the course remains theory-forward in its interpretation of the past.

We will be reading full-length books rather than excerpts or articles. In limited cases, e-book versions may be available on Canvas, but students should plan to purchase hard copies.

Teaching Method

Seminar

Evaluation Method

- Readings and class participation: 30%
- Leading discussion for one class (15-25 mins): 15%
- Book review 20%
- Final paper presentation/workshop in last class: 5%
- Final paper (15 pages): 30%

Class Materials (Required)

Preliminary reading list (subject to change): Leah DeVun, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (2021).

Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (2004).

Geertje Mak, Doubting Sex: Inscriptions, Bodies, and Selves in Nineteenth-Century Hermaphrodite Case Histories (2012).

Chandak Sengoopta, The Most Secret Quintessence of Life: Sex, Glands, and Hormones, 1850-1950 (2006).

Katie Sutton, Sex Between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-Speaking World, 1890s-1930s (2019).

Beans Velocci, Sex Isn't Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary (2026).

Ketil Slagstad, Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine (2025).

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Pre-registration is reserved for Gender & Sexuality Studies students