Sex, Love, and Marriage in the Middle Ages

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2018

This course explores the many ways that passion, love, and obligation bound men and women to one another over the course of nearly two millennia, from first-century Rome to sixteenth-century Italy. In particular, it focuses on how those bonds were organized legally and institutionally, on the social roles created by such relationships, and on the connection (or lack thereof) between marriage, love, and sexual passion. Although marital and sexual relationships in the West long were viewed as properly heterosexual in nature, the class also considers how homosocial and homosexual desires have affected them throughout history.

Sex, Love, and Marriage syllabus (Fall 2018)3.38 MB