- This event has ended.
Due to health concerns and current Clark University protocols, this event has been canceled.
To say that “sex is everywhere” has long been a truism in critiques of contemporary culture. But what if we push beyond a sense of sex as an individualized, often private form of desire and instead contemplate sexuality as a social construction, always emergent in historical moments. Clark University faculty Nina Kushner (History) and John Palella (Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies) will come together to share their respective expertise in the history and discourses of sexuality to interrogate commonly held attitudes and assumptions about a topic that need not be taboo. Sex, our historians argue, constitutes power and control, cultural and social scripts, politics and personhood. It is as much a public articulation of the body politic as it is a personal identification of self. Bringing together periods as seemingly diverse as 18th-century France and the 20th-century US, this lively conversation might just convince you that sex is not so much everywhere as it is everything.
Admission is free and open to the public.
This event is co-sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities; the Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies; and the Department of History at Clark University.