SOCL19073   The Body, Sexuality & Society

This course introduces students to a branch of sociology that has seen rapid theoretical and empirical growth over the past 10 years. It examines some of the new methodologies and theories for understanding the gendered and sexual dimensions of the body in its different contexts: health and fitness, illness and disability, identity formation, ageing, sport, entertainment, politics and work. Specifically, it considers how bodies and sexualities have been socially constructed and reconstructed, critically discusses the social structures and processes which generate identities, and the relative strengths of some contemporary sociological frameworks for the analysis of the body and sexualities.