HIST 445 - Colonial Intimacies: Gender and Sexuality in European Imperialism

FC SSCI CD WINT

4 credits
In this seminar, we examine the diverse ways that historians and critical theorists have interpreted the role of gender and sexuality in European imperial expansion and colonial rule in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. As a class, we analyze how imperial power operated through the regulation of bodies, marriage, family structures, reproduction, and sexual norms, and how these forms of governance intersected with race, class, and political authority. At the same time, we explore the ways that colonized communities negotiated and contested these intimate forms of governance as they produced new ideas about gender, sexuality, and social identity.