On June 26, 2013, people gathered at the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village to celebrate the Supreme Court rulings affirming LGBT marriage equality. (Image courtesy of Michael Fleshman on flickr. License CC BY-NC.)
Instructor(s)
Prof. Caley Horan
MIT Course Number
WGS.110J / 21H.108J
As Taught In
Spring 2016
Level
Undergraduate
Course Description
Course Features
Course Description
This course offers an introduction to the history of gender, sex, and sexuality in the modern United States, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first. It begins with an overview of historical approaches to the field, emphasizing the changing nature of sexual and gender identities over time. The remainder of the course flows chronologically, tracing the expanding and contracting nature of attempts to control, construct, and contain sexual and gender identities, as well as the efforts of those who worked to resist, reject, and reform institutionalized heterosexuality and mainstream configurations of gendered power.