HNUH268X

Can sex be sold? Is prostitution work or violence, and who gets to decide if it is legal or illegal? The sex industry has provoked considerable debate in academia, policy circles, and aid organizations globally. This interdisciplinary seminar will engage with these debates through an exploration of histories of prostitution across time and space, and in a variety of theoretical and material contexts. Our main focus will be on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, but we will also explore cases from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. We will use this transnational lens to interrogate social and cultural assumptions about bodies, agency, and social institutions. We will also consider a variety of social movements from anti-prostitution to SlutWalks, and regulatory policies from criminalization to legalization, and how they intersect with race. This course invites students to move beyond the surface and form their own approach to these body politics.