COML 2760

Desire

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2014-2015 Catalog.

"Language is a skin," the critic Roland Barthes once wrote: "I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire." Sexual desire has a history, even a literary history, which we will examine through an introductory survey of European dramatic literature from Plato and Aristophanes to Jean Genet and Caryl Churchill, as well as a survey of classic readings in Western sexual theory from the Ancient Greeks through Freud and Foucault to contemporary feminism and queer theory. Topics for discussion will include Greek pederasty, Christian mysticism, hysteria, sadomasochism, pornography, cybersex, and other performative pleasures.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)

When Offered Spring.

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