GENDER & SEXUALITY STUDIES PROGRAM

Introduction to Sexuality & Cinema

This course serves as both an introduction to analyzing films in an academic context and as a survey of major ideas in sexuality studies, particularly in the last few decades. Indeed, popular notions of sex and of cinema have frequently evolved in tandem. Together, they affect how we perceive sexuality, whether our own or other people’s; what we take to be most “natural” or most “constructed” about sexual identities, behaviors, and politics; and how we classify what is real or artificial, conservative or transgressive, narrow or universal in our movies.

In the early weeks, lectures will refute some popular misperceptions about classical Hollywood and sexuality: for example, that women’s desires were always rendered subordinate to men’s, or that gay film criticism is a recent invention. During these weeks, we will also brush up on basic skills of formal film analysis, which students are not expected to know in advance. As the quarter proceeds, through a combination of film screenings, critical readings, and large- and small-group discussions, we will conduct a series of broad inquiries, distinguishing gender from sexuality, testing clichés about “repression” and “liberation,” and delving into the politics of sex and of cinema. Simultaneously, we will examine specific trends and case studies that ultimately reshaped the whole field, including feminist film theory in the 1970s, AIDS and its discourses in the 1980s, and New Queer Cinema in the 1990s.

All of this material prompts high-stakes discussions about the cultural status of film; the ways of “reading” a movie; the relevance of sexuality studies across historical and professional contexts; and related considerations of corporate industry, class, race, nationality, public health, and political activism.