 Sociology 21: Human Sexuality
Details: As we discussed at the beginning of the semester, sociology begins with the Industrial Revolution and its influences on how living in a modern, industrialized society affect us and, in this class, how these things have specifically affected human sexuality.
Our focus in the class has been less of a clinical, textbook investigation of human sexuality and more about how we communicate about human sexuality.
Drawing upon the various theoretical perspectives that sociology offers, we’ve considered human sexuality in terms of the various frames that sociologists use to define modern society itself: The Stage (Goffman), The Factory (Marx), The Prison (Foucault), The Church/Temple (Durkheim) and The Starship (Parsons).
In your final paper please reflect on what you feel you learned either about human sexuality and/or gender itself from the frameworks we considered and/or what you feel you may have learned about how we communicate about human sexuality and/or gender.
Feel free to write the paper as a kind of reflection on your experience in the class itself as you took it and how your thinking may have been affected or altered by what you feel you learned.
Again, the idea is to write less of an academic paper than to write a reflection on what you may have learned academically 🙂
Your final paper SHOULD:
–be personal.
–be 3 to 5 pages long (although it can be as long as you want, as long as it’s good;-))
–have a creative title and underneath the title have a favorite quote of yours from the readings or lecture summaries (from this class only).
–be double-spaced with 12 point font.
–be written in a personal, first person style such as you use in your journal reflections. Try to be as natural and real as possible. Don’t be afraid to be funny. But also remember that none of these things are substitutes for showing yourself and me what you’ve learned about human sexuality this semester.
–you may focus on or write about any ONE of the sociological perspectives — The Stage (Goffman), The Factory (Marx), The Prison (Foucault), The Church/Temple (Durkheim) and The Starship (Parsons) — or you may choose to write about MORE than one, it is completely up to you.
But whichever of the topic(s) you choose, you should connect them to you and your life (e.g., you can reflect on your own experiences and what you feel you learned about them in class) as well as the sociology we’ve been studying.
–include at least 3 to 5 citations from the assigned readings that you liked including my lecture summaries.
–discuss some, a few or a couple of specific sociological ideas and concepts you’ve learned about or that you feel have helped you understand yourself better.
–demonstrate what you actually learned in this class and, especially, what you’ve learned about yourself.
Your paper should NOT:
–refer to any readings other than those assigned for this class.
I can’t grade you on your life.
I can only grade you on how you connect your experiences or thoughts in these areas to sociology.
If you don’t connect your experiences to sociological concepts that we’ve studied don’t expect a grade higher than a C.
–be a first person essay about your *opinions* regarding human sexuality.
You don’t need to take a college class to have opinions, you came in here with them.
So the idea is to show me what you’ve learned during the semester sociologically and how that helps you understand human sexuality in ways you hadn’t thought about before.
Image preview for” as we discussed at the beginning of the semester, sociology begins with the Industrial Revolution and its influences on how living in a modern”
APA
1004 words