About

Course Description
This course aims to investigate how the discourse of sexuality was created by and represented in two of Emory’s publications (Emory Wheel, Emory Report– formerly called Campus Report). These representations will then be located within a larger historical and theoretical context of sexual identity, sexual health, and sexual violence. Half of our class time will be spent in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) uncovering a record of what was and was not discussed in these publications.  The other half of class time will be spent discussing scholarship that will locate and situate our findings while engaging new technologies to help develop a final presentation of our work. Students will not only be introduced to the history and present of sexuality discourse at Emory (and in the South), they will also learn how to do archival research and develop digital scholarship.

Course Objectives
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate skill in critical thinking, writing, archival research, oral presentation, and group discussion.
  2. Analyze, synthesize, and evaluate scholarship on sexuality and local discourses of sexuality at Emory.
  3. Engage with digital scholarship, use it to develop a public conversation about sexuality at Emory, and describe the importance of such a task.

Historical Context for the Course
This course is a continuation of the work begun by the Transforming Community Project (TCP).  TCP’s first community dialogues focused on the history of race relations at Emory. In January 2011, Emory debuted a community dialogue on Sexuality. In the year previous to the debut of this dialogue, Tiken Savang, an undergraduate in Emory College, Michael Shutt, the Director of the Office of LGBT Life, and Donna Troka, Associate Director of the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence (CFDE) worked together to develop a sexuality curriculum. The research done in this class will add to the already amassed database of artifacts about sexuality at Emory from Emory’s archives.