Credits: 3 (3-0-0)
Description
Sexual governance or state surveillance of issues pertaining to sexuality, marriage and mobility highlight the problematic division between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’. The ‘intimate’ sphere is no longer one that is outside the purview of states; indeed the ‘private’ or the ‘intimate’ is often co-produced as a corollary of the public face of a state’s legitimacy. Nationalism and patriotism are heavily grounded in issues pertaining to culture and sexuality, often thought of as ‘private’. This course will provide a historical and sociological perspective to how sexual governance – the control of women’s sexuality, conjugality and the definition of ‘marriage’ and the ‘family’ by a patriarchal state shows that the state has always concerned itself with the intimate lives of its citizens.