Dr Astrida Neimanis, B508

The course is an option on MSc Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc Gender, MSc Gender, Policy and Inequalities, MSc Gender, Media and Culture, and MSc Gender (Research). It is also an available option for students taking MSc Biomedicine, Bioscience and Society, MSc Global Media and Communications (with Fudan or USC), MSc Media, Communication and Development, MSc Culture and Society, MSc Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies. Students who are taking degrees outside of the Gender Institute will need to demonstrate prior knowledge of gender theory to participate. Research students can apply to audit the course.

In today's globalised world, sexuality is significant as both an object of study and for providing a range of analytical frameworks. Far from being a private, Western concern, sexuality is key to understanding questions of human rights, health and social policy, representation, kinship and access to resources, national and international identities and communities, and the historical and contemporary intersections between race and gender. The course will foreground both a wide range of theoretical perspectives on sexuality, and various case studies that illustrate key problems in thinking through sexuality from a global perspective.

The course brings together contemporary Western theories of sexuality and cross-cultural knowledges about sexuality to foreground the importance of a global perspective. The course does not focus on specific regional sites as such, but on the encounters between different meanings of sexuality and sexual practice in the context of global flows of knowledge and people.

The course lays out some theoretical contexts for understanding sexuality in a global frame, and asks us to consider the limits of particular epistemological and methodological approaches to sexual meanings. The key questions raised concern how different bodies, communities and practices are linked through sexuality. The course will highlight how histories of, and concepts associated with, colonialism, morality, nation-states, social movements, agency, ethics and globalization cannot be fully understood without a focus on sexuality. Specific examples of how, where and under what circumstances global flows of sexual meaning are produced, negotiated and contested will also be examined in depth.

The course is interdisciplinary, both in terms of its objects of study and the theoretical frameworks introduced. We will draw on feminist theory, anthropology, queer theory and postcolonial theory, and address empirical, legal, medical and representational concerns. The emerging field of inquiry that utilises these interdisciplinary approaches is often described as 'transnational sexuality studies'.

A joint presentation and essay outline (due in week 8).

Two-hour integrated lecture/seminar. Seminars are held before the lecture each week. This is to encourage active student learning and group discussion of key texts less lead by the direction of the lecture.

Sander Gilman (1992) "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century Art, Medicine and Literature," in J Donald & A Rattansi, Eds (1992)Race, Culture and Difference (London: Sage); Don Kulick & Margaret Wilson, Eds (1995) Taboo: Sex, identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork (New York: Routledge); Sasho A Lambevski (1999) "Suck My Nation - Masculinity, Ethnicity and the Politics of (Homo)sex," Sexualities 2.4; Heideh Moghissi (1999) "Oriental Sexuality: Real and Imagined", in Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: the Limits of Postmodern Analysis (London: Zed Books); Cindy Patton (1990) "Inventing 'African AIDS'," Inventing AIDS (New York: Routledge); Cindy Patton & Benigno Sanchez-Eppler, Eds (2000) Queer Diasporas (Durham: Duke University Press); Jyoti Puri (1999) Women, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India: Narratives of Gender and Sexuality (New York: Routledge); Jennifer Robertson (2004) Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: an Anthropological Reader (London: Blackwell); Laura Ann Stoler (1995) 'Colonial Studies and the History of Sexuality', Race and the Education of Desire (Durham: Duke University Press); Martha Vicinus (1992) "'They wonder to which sex I belong': The Historical Roots of the Modern Lesbian Identity", Feminist Studies, 18. 3.

A 4,000 word essay (100%).