Making Sex and Gender: Understanding the History of the Body

3 units

This course provides an overview of history of the body in Europe and the United States from medieval to modern times using feminist and queer theoretical frameworks. We explore the shifting authority in defining a normal body as the fields of medicine and science become professionalized, the cultural interaction with science and medicine in the modern era, and how aesthetics and popular perception of science inform the notion of ideal body, gender, race, sex, and sexuality in the modern era.