Sex and the City
Hist 291.00
Spring 2013
Prof. Andrew Ross
Department of History
Kenyon College
Seitz House 3
E-mail: rossa@kenyon.edu
Office Hours: Tu-Th 1-3, W 2-3 and by appointment
Course Website: https://www.andrewisraelross.com/s13satc
Course Description: This course will examine the complicated relationship between sexuality and urban space by challenging the notion that our environment simply serves as the background for activities that take place within it. Instead, we will discuss how the modern city simultaneously shaped and was shaped by the development of modern sexual identities from the Enlightenment to the present day. The creation of sophisticated police forces, government bureaucracies, and consumer cultures in European and American cities between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries was deeply implicated with the emergence of gay and lesbian identities and subcultures, gendered ideologies of public and private, and the sexual sciences. Readings comprise primarily of secondary sources, supplemented by in-class primary source readings and visual material. Topics covered include prostitution, gay and lesbian sexualities, public and private space, sexual violence, and race and imperialism in cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, and New York in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course proceeds through four themes: (1) fundamental concepts in the study of sex and the city; (2) space and sex work; (3) gay and lesbian subcultures; and (4) power, space, and sex.
Course Objectives:
By the end of the semester, students will be able to:
- identify and understand key themes and concepts in the history of sexuality
- relate the history of sexuality to that of urban culture
- read and critically engage with secondary source materials
- present original research in writing, visually, and orally
Required Texts:
Hubbard, Phil. Cities and Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 2012.
All other readings will be available online or in class.
Course Format: Class will meet twice a week. Regular class meetings will be a mix of discussion and lecture, with time for group work and small writing assignments.
Course Requirements: Students are required to attend all classes and complete all assignments. Failure to complete any assignment will result in failing the entire course.
- Attendance and Participation: Attendance in class is a requirement in order to pass this course and role will be taken everyday. You are permitted to miss three classes before your grade begins to suffer. Active participation in class discussion is expected as well.
- Readings: All readings are due the day for which they are listed on the syllabus.
- Quizzes: We will have four quizzes through the course of the semester. Format will be a mix of short answer, identification, and essay. Identifications require you to identify the a term and its significance. Your lowest quiz grade will not count towards your final grade, but you must take all four quizzes. Quizzes will last 45 minutes.
- Research Project and Poster Presentation: The major assignment for this course involves historicizing a contemporary controversy over sexuality in a particular city. For this assignment you will be working in groups of three to four people. The assignment comes in two parts:
- Research Project: Through the course of the semester, each member of the group will write a series of short essays (4-6 pages) that complete different step necessary to properly historicizing a contemporary controversy. Each member of the group should choose a different aspect of the controversy to focus on. For instance, if your project is “Legalized Prostitution in Nevada,” then one group member could look at brothels, another on the relationship between prostitution and gambling, another on the economics of sex work, and the final member on politics. The first essay will require you to identify the controversy, the city with which you are concerned, and the contemporary terms of the debate over your particular area of concern. The second essay will trace the history of the controversy. The third essay brings these two parts together and elaborates an argument that establishes the ways in which the history of the debate inflects contemporary concerns.
- Poster Presentation: Each group will, alongside the students in Sociology 291: Sexuality and Society, present their work to the Kenyon Community in the form of a poster presentation. A poster presentation is almost precisely what it sounds like: the use of a visual presentation to display your research while making yourself available to elaborate on it for those interested. What this means is that each group must prepare – together – a poster that synthesizes your individual research, while preparing to answer questions about that research for those who come to the presentation. Each member of the group will receive the same grade on the basis of the quality of the poster itself and on your ability to respond to questions posed. A rubric will be provided. The poster presentation will be held on Sunday, April 28 from 1:00 – 4:00p.
Grade Breakdown:
Quizzes: 30%
Research Project: 30%
Poster Presentation: 25%
Attendance and Participation: 15%
Paperless Grading: In an effort to both save trees and improve the quality of my comments to you, your papers MUST be turned in electronically. You will do so via e-mail, with a subject heading “Sex and the City Assignment from YOUR NAME.” Accepted file formats are .doc, and .docx. Depending on the assignment, I may convert your paper to .pdf prior to grading. I will e-mail you your paper directly after all assignments have been graded. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding this policy.
Grade Appeals: There are no grade appeals! I’m more than happy to talk to you about your grade and how you can improve your work (in fact, I highly encourage you to do so), but please do not ask me to change your grade.
Late Assignments: All assignments are due in class the day they are listed on the syllabus. Late assignments will be deducted one grade for each day late. If I have not received your essay after four days you will automatically fail the assignment. If I never receive an assignment you will fail the course.
Contacting Me: The best way to get in touch with me is through e-mail. Please allow 24 hours for a response; if you have not heard from me in that time, do not hesitate to send another note. My office hours are at the top of this syllabus; if those times are not convenient for you I am happy to make other arrangements. I hope you will all come by my office at some point during the semester. Please check your Kenyon e-mail regularly and please keep apprised of materials available on the class website.
Online Resources: The course website can be found at http://www.andrewisraelross.com/s13satc. There you will find a copy of the syllabus, announcements, and other resources relevant to the course, including PowerPoint slides.
Technology in the Classroom: Please feel free to use your laptops, netbooks or tablets for taking notes in class, but please refrain from checking your e-mail, Facebook, twitter, etc. Also feel free to utilize e-book editions of class texts. I must personally approve all recordings of class lectures. Such approval will only be granted in exceptional circumstances.
Plagiarism and Academic Honesty: All students must follow the College’s policies regarding academic honesty as outlined in the Kenyon College Catalog. If you have any questions regarding this issue, please consult with me before submitting work. All work for this class must be your own and completed specifically for this class and all materials consulted, paraphrased and quoted must be cited.
Disabilities: If you have a hidden or visible disability that may require classroom or test accommodations, please see me privately as soon as possible during a scheduled office hour. If you have not already done so, you must register with the Coordinator of Disability Services, Erin Salva, salvae@kenyon.edu, or x5145, who is the individual responsible for coordinating accommodations and services for students with disabilities. All information and documentation of disabilities are strictly confidential. No accommodations will be granted in this course without notification from the Office of Disability Services.
Course Schedule
Part 1: Fundamental Concepts in the Study of Sex and the City
Week 1: January 14 – January 18: The History of Sexuality
Tuesday: Introductions
Thursday: Can Sex Have a History?
Reading: Robert A. Padgug, ,“Sexual Matters: On Conceptualizing Sexuality in History,” in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, ed. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 14-31.
Week 2: January 21 – January 25: Sex and Space
Tuesday: Cities and Sexualities
Reading: Hubbard, Chapter 1
Thursday: Sex in Public
Reading: Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public.” In Publics and Countepublics (Cambridge, Mass: Zone Books, 2002), 187-208.
Week 3: January 28 – February 1: The Politics of Space
Tuesday: Sex Work, Practice, and the Meaning of Space
Reading: Phil Hubbard and Teela Sanders, “Making Space for Sex Work: Female Street Prostitution and the Production of Urban Space,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27.1 (2003): 75-89.
Thursday: Modernity, Capitalism, and Sexuality
Reading: John D’Emilio,“Capitalism and Gay Identity,” in The Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, et. al.(Routledge, 1993), 467-479.
Part 1: Prostitution and Sex Work
Week 4: February 4 – February 8: History and Prostitution
Tuesday: Quiz and Introduction
Reading: Hubbard, Chapter 2
Thursday: Regulating Prostitution
Reading: Timothy Gilfoyle, “Prostitutes in History: From Parables of Pornography to Metaphors of Modernity,” American Historical Review 104.1 (Feb 1999): 117-141.
Week 5: February 11 – February 15: The Politics of Prostitution
Tuesday: Seminal Drains
Reading: Charles Bernheimer, “Parent-Duchâtelet: Engineer of Abjection,” in Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 8-33.
Thursday: Feminism and Prostitution
Reading: Walkowitz, Judith R. “Male Vice and Female Virtue: Feminism and the Politics of Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 419-38.
Friday by 5:00p: Essay 1 Due
Week 6: February 18 – February 22: Race, Class and Sex Work
Tuesday: “White Slavery”
Reading: Kevin J. Mumford, “Jack Johnson and the Abolition of White Slavery,”in Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 3-18.
Thursday: “Women on the Town”
Reading:Christine Stansell, “Women on the Town: Sexual Exchange and Prostitution,” in City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 171-192.
Week 7: February 25 – March 1: Changing Cultures of Prostitution
Tuesday: Prostitution and the Twentieth-Century
Reading: Mary Louise Roberts, “The Silver Foxhole: The GIs and Prostitution in Paris, 1944-1945, French Historical Studies 33.1 (2010): 99-128.
Thursday: Quiz 2
Spring Break: March 3 – March 17
Part 3: Gay and Lesbian Subcultures
Week 8: March 18 – March 22: Cities of Men
Tuesday: Representing the Gay City
Reading: Matt Cook, “Introduction” and “London and the Cities of the Plain,” in London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1-41.
Thursday: Class Identity and Gay Male Subculture
Reading: George Chauncey, “The Forging of Queer Identities and the Emergence of Heterosexuality in Middle-Class Culture,” in Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 99-127.
Week 9: March 25 – March 29: Cities of Women
Tuesday: Invisible Women?
Reading: Sautman, Francesca Canadé, “Invisible Women: Lesbian Working-class Culture in France, 1880-1930,” in Homosexuality in Modern France, ed. Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, 177-201 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Thursday: Women in Public
Reading: Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, “‘We’re Going to Be Legends, Just like Columbus Is’: The Butch-Fem Image and the Lesbian Fight for Public Space,” in Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993), 151-190.
Friday by 5:00p: Essay 2 Due
Week 10: April 1 – April 5: Gay Ideologies
Tuesday: The Emerging Politics of Homosexuality
Reading: Shari Benstock, “Paris Lesbianism and the Politics of Reaction, 1900-1940,” in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Bauml Duberman, et al (New York: New American Library, 1989), 332-346.
Thursday: Strategies of Gay Liberation
Reading: Julian Jackson, “Sex, Politics and Morality in France, 1954-1982,” History Workshop Journal 61 (2006): 77-102.
Part 4: Power, Space, and Sex
Week 11: April 8 – April 12: Ideologies of Space
Tuesday: Quiz 3 and Introduction
Reading: Hubbard, Chapters 3 and 4
Thursday: Defining Public and Private Space
Reading: Sharon Marcus, “Seeing through Paris, 1820-1848,” in Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 17-50.
Week 12: April 15 – April 19: Race, Class, and the Control of Space
Tuesday: Crossing Boundaries: Sexual Power, Slumming, and Class
Reading: Ann McClintock, “’Massa’ and Maids: Power and Desire in the Imperial Metropolis,” in Imperial Leather (New York: Routledge, 1995), 75-131.
Thursday: The Uses of Sexual Violence
Reading: Judith Walkowitz, “Jack the Ripper,” in City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 191- 228.
Friday by 5:00p: Essay 3 Due
Week 13: April 22 – 26: Urban Anxiety, Control, and Sexuality
Tuesday: Contemporary Politics of Public Sex
Reading: Michael Warner, “Zoning Out Sex,” in The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 149-194.
Thursday: Quiz 4
Week 14: April 29 – May 3: Wrap Up
Tuesday: Poster Sessions
Thursday: Review and Discussion