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This course will explore the regulation of sex in twentieth century Britain. Why did questions of sexuality come to occupy such a prominent place in a society supposedly so prudent and reserved about sexual matters? How did the management and practice of sex generate new networks of power and government over the century? When and how did people come to see themselves as sexual subjects? Over the first 4 weeks students will be introduced to a range of historiographical, methodological and archival issues that confront the historian of sexuality in twentieth century Britain. Students will then develop their own research interests around a number of possible themes such as: the medical and psychiatric sciences; popular culture; the law; race and empire; agony aunts and advice manuals; movements of sexual liberation; sex and political scandal. Students will be expected to regularly discuss their ideas, research strategies and written work with the group as a whole. In addition to producing a 30 page research paper weekly reports in the form of a research journal will be required. This journal should be submitted by email on the Tuesday preceding our Thursday workshop meetings (ie. 25 September, 16 October, 30 October, 16 November, 4 December). Assessment: 10% attendance, 35% journal, 65% dissertation.
Required texts:
Joseph Bristow, Sexuality (1997).
Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: An Introduction
(1981). ISBN: 0679724699
Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds.), Sexology Uncensored: The
Documents of Sexual Science (1998).
*Course Reader
Recommended general surveys on reserve
Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of
Sexuality in Britain Since 1800 (1981).
Lesley Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain Since
1880 (2000).
28 August: Introduction
30 August: Thinking
about Sex
Joseph Bristow, Sexuality (1997), except ch.3
4 September: Foucault and the Colonial Order of Sex
Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: An Introduction
(1981).
*Ann Stoler's Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's
History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (1995),
chs.1&2.
6 September: Sexology and the Making of Sexual Subjects?
Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds.), Sexology Uncensored: The
Documents of Sexual Science (1998), intro, pt.1-3
Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 141-60.
Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, 47-64.
11 September: Sex, Race and the Population Question.
Bland and Doan (eds.), Sexology Uncensored, pts.4-7.
*Michael Banton, The Coloured Quarter (1955), ch.7.
Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 122-40, 187-221, 232-39
Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, chs.4, 5 &7.
13 September: Sex and the Law
*Laura Doan, "'Acts of female indecency': Sexology's intervention
in legislating lesbianism" in Bland and Doan (eds.), Sexology
in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires (1998), 198-213.
*James Vernon, *"'For some queer reason ...' The trials and
tribulations of Colonel Barker's masquerade in interwar Britain"
Signs, 25, 1 (Autumn 2000):
*Chris Waters, "Disorders of the mind, disorders of the body
social: Peter Wildeblood and the making of the modern homosexual"
in Becky Coneking et al (eds.), Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing
Britain, 1945-1964 (1999): 134-51.
*Frank Mort, "Mapping Sexual London: The Wolfenden Committee
on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1954-57" New Formations,
92 (1999): 92-113.
Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 239-49.
Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, 99-115, 150-166
27 September: Workshop: Outline Research Project
18 October: Workshop: Report on Research
1 November: Workshop: Plan of Dissertation
20 November: Workshop: Exchange Complete Drafts
6 December: Workshop: Submission and Review
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