COML1027 - Sex and Representation

Sex is everywhere. It's intimately individual and jarringly universal. It's about ourselves, and it's about being together with others. It comes from within us with great force, and it's forced upon us from the outside by our societies and communities. It is experienced as extremely authentic while also regulated through an intricate network of cultural codes, traditions, and laws that articulate explicit as well as implicit attitudes toward gender and sexuality. In this course, we will explore how, throughout different historical and cultural contexts, writers and thinkers grappled with issues such as normal and deviant sexual practices, masculinity and femininity, and the intersection between gender and cultural categories such as race, class, and nationality. An introductory course in literary studies, this course will focus on a wide range of genres in the tradition of world literature, aiming at providing the students with basic skills to critically analyze and engage with literary texts and cultural artifacts. We will read, watch, and discuss texts in various genres (prose, poetry, essays, drama, film, theory) and from different cultural backgrounds (ancient and modern; from America, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East).