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CS92PROD
Regulating Intimacy: Secularism, Sovereignty, Citizenship
FGSS 225
Spring 2013
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: RELI 481

Secularism is routinely defined as the relegation of religion to the private sphere, separate from public politics. Similarly, in secular-liberal societies, sexuality is in principal a private affair, beyond the purview of state interference. Indeed, secularism has come to be seen as the form of political rule that liberates women's sexuality from the clutches of religion, and from Islam in particular. Yet the secular-modern nation-state--in its colonial and post-colonial iterations--has also consistently regulated sex and religion, witnessed in the policing of "native," immigrant, and queer sexualities, in the construction of the family as a separate legal and moral domain, and in the surveillance and transformation of minority religious communities. Drawing on feminist, anthropological, and historical scholarship, this course critically examines the distinction between public and private central to state sovereignty and to the formation of modern, secular, sexually "normal" citizens. First examining the regulation of sexuality and of religion as parallel phenomena, the course ultimately asks what the relationship is between "proper" religion and "proper" sexuality in secular state formations.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS FGSS
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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