Sex and the City

In this course students will explore how the modern American city has come to be understood as a site of both sexual peril and pleasure from the perspectives of urban subjects such as migrants, tourists, career women, politicians, perverts, and drug users. Through history, memoir, literature, film, and music, we will review case studies of contested sexual practices (e.g. public sex, pornography, and gentrification in Times Square) as well as experimental urban sexual expressions (e.g. ballroom culture in Detroit) to understand how sexuality is central to the lived experience of capitalist economic and technological expansion.