The Program in Sexuality Studies seeks to provide both informal and institutional support for research on sexuality at the University of Michigan. The goals of the program are threefold: to provide visibility for sexuality studies at U-M through seminars and conferences, with the goal of bringing together faculty and students from different disciplines; to facilitate interdisciplinary projects in the area of sexuality studies through the mentoring of graduate students; and to instigate curricular recognition of sexuality studies through the creation of a graduate certificate.
As representations of sexuality are increasingly obvious in everything we read and see, it becomes increasingly apparent that as scholars and teachers we should be able to offer our students tools for thinking about cultural expressions of sexuality. An interdisciplinary program area in sexuality studies will provide a site in which faculty members and graduate students may engage together in the intellectual project of promoting critical and historical thinking about some of the representations that we most take for granted. One strength of the program area will be in the history of sexuality, and in the exploration of the ways in which studies of historical formations of sexuality might offer new ways of thinking about modern sexualities.
Goals
1. Visibility and connections. The program area in sexuality studies will provide a base from which to feature research on sexualities. A series of lectures, colloquia, and conferences will bring together faculty and students with common interests and provide the starting place for collaborations that will extend this project after its formal affiliation with IRWG ends. We will invite prominent scholars from outside the University of Michigan to present aspects of their research in a variety of settings at Michigan, and we will work to identify University of Michigan scholars already engaged in sexuality studies and to demonstrate the importance of the study of sexualities in research on past and present cultures.
2. Mentoring. Like all interdisciplinary fields of research, sexuality studies presents particular challenges to graduate students. An important project of the program area in sexuality studies will be to provide graduate students with the opportunity for interdisciplinary mentoring. The program area will publicize a mentoring program to graduate students, and the advisory committee, along with individual faculty members, will help graduate students identify mentors whom they might not otherwise meet or feel comfortable approaching for advice.
3. Curricular goals. One of the primary goals of the program area in sexuality studies is to identify courses already being taught on sexuality studies in various departments and schools, to identify faculty members interested in teaching courses on sexuality, and to work to find opportunities for such teaching, whether in the faculty member's own department or, if appropriate, in Women's Studies. Through the process of identifying existing courses and encouraging the development of new courses in sexuality studies, members of the program area hope to make visible the importance of sexuality studies in the University and ultimately both to encourage the hiring of new faculty in the area, and to propose a graduate certificate in sexuality studies, to be awarded through the Women's Studies Program.
For more information, contact program director Peggy McCracken (Women's Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures) at peggymcc@umich.edu.