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CS92PROD
Gender and Sexuality Before Modernity: Jewish and Christian Perspectives

HIST 298
Spring 2009 not offered
Crosslisting: FGSS 298, RELI 390
Course Cluster: Christianity Studies

Religious leaders today mourn the disappearance "traditional values," destroyed as they claim by promiscuity and secularism of the modern era. This course will examine these supposed premodern "traditional" values concerning gender and sexuality in the West, mostly from a Jewish and Christian perspective (with some attention paid to Muslim texts and societies). Was there sexual openness before modernity? What is the place of women and sex in the Bible? What about the Talmud? Or, more generally, the premodern society? These questions will be examined based on texts and images from the Bible and the ancient Greek philosophers to medieval Christian theologians and Jewish rabbis like Nachmanides, Maimonides, to the 18th-century Enlightenment writers such as Denis Diderot, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others.

Essential Capabilities: Information Literacy, Writing
Students will have opportunities to revise their written assignments after receiving my feedback on their drafts. They will also have an opportunity to work with a writing tutor.

For Information Literacy, students will have an opportunity to learn how to use electronic resources in a special session with a librarian; they will learn how to use the EndNote program; and will have an assignment using the Special Collections.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS HIST
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (STS)

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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