The central regulating function of the Church through images, doctrines, and such practices as confession, is one key focus. Another focus will be social behavior, again examined with the aid of material drawn from history, art history, and literature. Specific topics will also include the body and food, the masculine body, the maternal body, and erotica both verbal and visual. Required written work will consist of an annotated bibliography and a final paper. Regular participation in seminar discussion is also essential.
Enrollment is limited.
The purpose of this class will be to explore the relationship between construction of gender and conceptions of identity in the Renaissance. Regulated by the corollary disciplines of religion and civility, sexuality is the site of many of the most pressing transformations in the Renaissance. Placing the Renaissance discourse of sexual desire against the influential statements of Plato. St. Paul, and St. Augustine, we will use sexuality as a register of changes in social behavior and religious thought in the period. Attention will be paid throughout the term to representations of the body and sexuality in the visual arts, to changing notions of bodily privacy in clothing and domestic architecture, to medical theories about hygiene and sexual functioning, and to social history.