For students with experience in writing nonfictional prose. Advanced study of rhetorical strategies and techniques of prose style. Considerable writing and revision required. In addition to analyzing the work of class members, students read and discuss the work of distinguished essayists chosen to represent a range of prose styles, subjects, and biographical patterns.

" This course is a workshop for students with some experience in writing essays, nonfiction prose. Our focus will be negotiating and representing identities grounded in gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality, and other categories of identity, either our own or others', in prose that is expository, exploratory, investigative, persuasive, lyrical, or incantatory. We will read nonfiction prose works by a wide array of writers who have used language to negotiate and represent aspects of identity and the ways the different determinants of identity intersect, compete, and cooperate."

The women's movement of the 1970's sent shock-waves through every corner of American life, transforming the way people thought about families, jobs, and every day interactions. By questioning traditional sex roles, feminism also encouraged the growth of the gay and lesbian rights movement. Previously, many gay men and lesbians had concealed their sexuality, but the 1970's witnessed the growth of assertive and visible gay and lesbian alternative cultures. As a college student at the University of Michigan and a union activist within the city bus company, Shelley Ettinger remembered living and participating in an active, assertive lesbian culture during the mid-1970's. Although gay men and lesbians still faced harassment and discrimination, they were no longer afraid to express their identities or to speak out against bias and discrimination.

Built around Plato's Symposium, Shakespeare (including A Midsummer Night's Dream), Catholic writings (including Humanae Vitae), and several movies, this course explores the nature of romance and erotic love. We will examine such topics as sexuality, marriage, and procreation with an eye towards how we can be better at being in love. The course generally tries to integrate the analytic approach of philosophy with the imaginative approach of literature.

Most of the major categories of adaptive behavior can be seen in all animals. This course begins with the evolution of behavior, the driver of nervous system evolution, reviewed using concepts developed in ethology, sociobiology, other comparative studies, and in studies of brain evolution. The roles of various types of plasticity are considered, as well as foraging and feeding, defensive and aggressive behavior, courtship and reproduction, migration and navigation, social activities and communication, with contributions of inherited patterns and cognitive abilities. Both field and laboratory based studies are reviewed; and finally, human behavior is considered within the context of primate studies.

This class examines how anthropology and speculative fiction (SF) each explore ideas about culture and society, technology, morality, and life in "other" worlds. We investigate this convergence of interest through analysis of SF in print, film, and other media. Concepts include traditional and contemporary anthropological topics, including first contact; gift exchange; gender, marriage, and kinship; law, morality, and cultural relativism; religion; race and embodiment; politics, violence, and war; medicine, healing, and consciousness; technology and environment. Thematic questions addressed in the class include: what is an alien? What is "the human"? Could SF be possible without anthropology?

This exercise asses students' knowledge about attitudes towards premarital sex.

The "new woman" of the 1910s and 1920s rejected the pieties (and often the politics) of the older generation, smoked and drank in public, celebrated the sexual revolution, and embraced consumer culture. The flapper portrayed in cartoons, ads, and nationally circulated journalism, however, was almost always white, with features that denoted Northern European origins. She was also frequently shown with luxury goods or in exclusive settings. But young women of many ethnic groups also took up flapper styles and embraced the spirit of youthful rebellion. A popular song attested to generational conflict among Mexican Americans in San Antonio. In "Las Pelonas"--"The Bobbed Heads," or "Flappers"--the singer lamented the influence of Anglo youth culture on his Mexican-American community. [English version follows original in Spanish.]

Alfred C. Kinsey published his pathbreaking research on sexual behavior in 1948 and 1953, reporting that premarital and extramarital sexual activity was not uncommon in American life. In fact, Kinsey argued, it had been part of a long-term shift beginning in the 1910s. Alarmed critics in the popular press attacked the study as a threat to the stability of the American family. In an era during which the family symbolized a retreat from Cold War and atomic age political and social tensions, some in the scientific community joined religious figures and cultural commentators in an ideological battle to strengthen the traditional domestic realm. In the following report in the popular magazine Collier's, a psychology professor characterized his research study as a follow-up to Kinsey that dealt with knowledge and attitudes about sex. Unlike Kinsey's work, however, this report explicitly served as a prescriptive guide--telling Americans how to avoid infidelity, escape divorce, and gain marital happiness through sex education. In attempting to change so-called "incorrect" attitudes, it presented as fact conclusions not warranted by the evidence offered-- that most men wanted wives who were not disinterested in sex but didn't and flaunt it either or that ultimately "the best sex is in marriage." In presenting these beliefs as facts, the report revealed ingrained cultural attitudes at odds with ideals of scientific objectivity. These values, however, conformed with efforts to use potentially disrupting sex research findings to strengthen the one socially approved channel for sexual behavior--marriage.

An officer of the Communications Workers of America Local 7704 in Salt Lake City and an out gay man, Cal Noyce began to raise issues of gay, lesbian, and bisexual equity within the union during the early 1990's. By forming an organization of gay trade unionists in Utah, as well as the national gay, lesbian, and bisexual group Pride at Work, Noyce joined a larger push to link the gay rights movement to the labor movement. Noyce and his associates won the support of Utah AFL-CIO president Ed Mayne, who, like many, recognized the organization as important way for organized labor to reach out to gay and lesbian communities and bring gay men and lesbians into the labor movement as motivated activists.

The National Police Gazette portrays, in a characteristically lurid fashion, an industrial accident in a North Grosvenor, Connecticut, cotton mill. Many late-nineteenth century businessmen ignored hazardous working conditions, since they had little financial incentive to make the workplace safer. In 1881 alone, 30,000 railway workers were killed or injured on the job, and industrial hazards existed in other industries, including textiles. A national weekly magazine, the National Police Gazette enthusiastically violated the mores of genteel culture, focusing on legal and illegal sports, violent crimes and accidents, and sex. Women were often depicted as perpetrators or victims of violence, providing titillation to the weekly magazine's male readership.

Margaret Sanger gained notoriety as an advocate for contraception, which she defined as essential for women's freedom. By the late 1920s, however, Sanger's radicalism had become muted. In "The Civilizing Force of Birth Control," she addressed middle-class constituencies with the argument that contraception would strengthen marriage. Like many liberal intellectuals of the time, Sanger was a eugenicist--she believed in managing human reproduction to improve "the race" through better breeding. Many eugenicists were concerned about declining fertility among college-educated and middle-class women, even as they also worried about what they saw as the excessive fertility of poorer women. However, unlike many eugenicists who urged elite women to have more children, Sanger argued that birth control for all women would serve the cause of eugenics. This essay appeared in Sex in Civilization (1929), a voluminous collection of commentary that suggested the emergence of a new species of expert--the sexologist.

This video segment adapted from NOVA explains the difference between weather and climate and features groundbreaking analysis revealing that Earth's climate has changed much faster than previously believed.

Mae West spent her career on the stage and screen skirting--and sometimes transgressing--the boundaries of sexual and moral propriety. In 1926 and 1927, she outraged some critics (and landed herself in jail) with two sensational Broadway productions, Sex (a play she wrote about a Montreal prostitute, in which she also starred) and The Drag (a "homosexual comedy-drama" that she wrote and staged). In 1928, New York police arrested her again, this time for her play about a troupe of female impersonators, Pleasure Man. In 1932, she brought her brand of ribald humor to the movies. West's move from Broadway to Hollywood was surprising, given the substantially tighter moral scrutiny under which the film industry operated. Adopted in 1930 by the Association of Motion Picture Producers, the Motion Picture Production Code, excerpted below, spelled out in detail what was and was not permissible in the nation's most popular form of entertainment.

The role of the family in human evolution, and as a symbol in our own social and political lives. Topics include: sex, marriage, and parenting; the labor market; class, race, and ethnicity; and the family's probable future. We begin by considering briefly the evolution of the family, its cross-cultural variability, and its history in the West. We next examine how the family is currently defined in the U.S., discussing different views about what families should look like. Class and ethnic variability and the effects of changing gender roles are discussed in this section. We next look at sexuality, traditional and non-traditional marriage, parenting, divorce, family violence, family economics, poverty, and family policy. Controversial issues dealt with include day care, welfare policy, and the "Family Values" debate.

Through a range of political, social, and organizational venues, African-American women struggled to participate in the racial awareness and pride that characterized the "New Negro" movement of the 1920s. Alain Locke's important 1925 compilation of Harlem Renaissance writings, The New Negro, included an essay by Elise Johnson McDougald, a prominent black educator, social investigator, and journalist. McDougald's essay, originally published in the Survey, employed socioeconomic analysis to explore the particular problems, as well as contributions to society, of four groups of black women, from wealthy to working-class. Seeking to repudiate the monolithic way in which black women were perceived and represented by white America, McDougald not only focused on economics but also challenged stereotypical representations of blacks in the arts and advertising, as well as those surrounding black women's sexuality.

In the 1920s, new sexual ideologies reshaped prescriptions for marriage, incorporating moderate versions of feminism. Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood shared the romantic radicalism of Floyd Dell and other Greenwich Village bohemians in the early 20th century. They practiced open marriage, though not without pain and confusion. Written in 1916 for the Provincetown Players, an innovative theater group that operated between 1915 and 1922, Enemies was an autobiographical meditation on the emotional struggles of a couple in a non-monogamous marriage. The characters expressed considerable bitterness, yet in the end affirmed their partnership. In the first draft of the play the characters bore the names of their authors, clearly suggesting its autobiographical inspiration.

Although Title VII of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and sex, as of 2002, no Federal law prevents an employer from discrimination based on sexual orientation. With the advent of the gay liberation movement in 1969, grassroots and national groups fought for legal protection for gay men and lesbians in the workplace, educational institutions, and housing. In 1972, East Lansing, Michigan, became the first city to forbid discrimination in local government hiring based on sexual orientation. While more than 175 localities and 13 states have passed similar antidiscrimination legislation, opponents have successfully campaigned to stop or repeal such laws by arguing that they conferred "special rights" on gay men and lesbians. Colorado voters in a 1992 referendum adopted an amendment to their State Constitution to prohibit protection of persons based on their "homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships." Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the Colorado amendment violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and President Bill Clinton issued an Executive Order in 1998 that explicitly prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation for Executive Branch civilian employment, gay and lesbian employees remain unprotected from discriminatory practices in many areas of the country. In the following testimony to a House subcommittee in 1994, five advocates for federal legislation presented arguments and personal accounts to demonstrate the need to establish, in the words of one of the witnesses, "the equal right to work in the U.S."

Fourteen essays by high school seniors who participated in the Queer Foundation's 2006 high school English essay contest.
Permission is hereby granted to teachers and counselors to reproduce and use these student-produced essays in their schools for educational purposes only, provided that credit is given to the Queer Foundation's Effective Writing and Scholarships Program.