Sexuality has long shaped racial and civilizational assessments of what it means to be modern. In this course, we will investigate the role of colonialism and neocolonialism in racial imaginations of gender and sexuality and how these histories shape contemporary understandings of LGBTQ politics, reproductive and sexual rights, and anti-colonial resistance around the world. We will explore histories of sexual control, colonial and racial difference, and marginalized, queer, and trans sexualities in colonial and postcolonial spaces, including parts of West Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The course will cover many forms of sexuality, including interracial relationships between colonizer and colonized peoples, questions of sexual violence, queer desires, sexual outcasts like “prostitutes,” transgender rights, and the politics of gender difference and LGBTQ rights in the postcolonial world.
WOMGEN 1426