German Intellectual History: Gender and Sexuality in German Culture and Thought

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to gender and sexuality in German culture and thought. Moving between texts and films with an explicit focus on gender and sexuality and those with a more surreptitious, figurative gendered logic, we will analyze literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics, and documents from sexuality studies. Indeed, the German tradition demonstrates in a compelling way that gender and sexuality are at stake in all cultural production. The German Geschlecht — meaning at once sex, gender, stock, race, lineage, generation — points to the impossibility of delimiting the question of sexuality.