Universalizing Sexuality

This doctoral seminar will address how the universalization of sexuality as an essential human (and sometime animal) attribute that transcends cultures began to be studied in U.S. academia in earnest in the 1970s, proceeding apace with the mobilization for sexual rights in U.S. domestic social activism, and by the 1980s with the mobilization of universal human rights as a central agenda for both U.S. foreign policy and international activism. With the era of globalization, these trends intensified with the aggressive proliferation of Western-funded non-governmental organizations in the Global North and South. The seminar will examine the literature on the universalization of sexual rights and identities by U.S. and European activists and scholars and the implication this has for sexual citizenship in the Global North and for sexuality studies itself in the Western Academy. Of particular interest to the seminar will be the resistance attributed by this literature to Islam, Muslims, and Arabs to assimilate into this new regime of universal sexuality, whether located in the Muslim or Arab worlds, or among Muslim populations in Europe and the United States and how the latter’s presence in the heart of the Global North may influence sexual citizenship negatively