If you could change one thing about the way in which intimate couplings are organized at UCSB what would it be?
Love is a four letter word. This blog is for the students in my course on love, sex and God at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Students are encouraged to respond with their opinions and accounts that bear on topics discussed in class. All personal blog posts should be signed with the year and gender of the poster only. The posting of student assignments should include the student's name.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Orgasm Rates in Hook Ups
England et. al document the low rate of female orgasm in hookups. Why do you think the rate is so low: 19% in their 2008 article? And why are women nonetheless not any less satisfied with these encounters than their male partners?
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Syllabus 2013
Sociology 150: Sex,
Love and God
Professor Roger Friedland friedland@religion.ucsb.edu
TA: Katelynn Bishop k_bishop@umail.ucsb.edu
Winter, 2013
Tuesday-Thursdays, 8:00 – 9:15
Phelps 3515
Office Hours: Tuesday 10:30-12:00, HSSB 3083
Course Blog: http://sexloveandgodthecourse.blogspot.com/
ERes password: minerva
Love has become problematic in American culture, a source of
considerable private and public anxiety.
Love’s conditions of possibility are no longer taken for granted. This is nowhere more evident than in
America’s youth culture, where “hooking up,” an apparently new erotic
formation, has emerged, at least if one believes the popular press and the
stories of worried parents, particularly those with daughters. Sexuality is not only a personal issue, it
has become a religious one, not only in this country but as an object of
concern for politicized religions around the world.
This course is trans-disciplinary, drawing on historical,
philosophical, sociological, evolutionary, physiological, religious and
political sources and approaches. It
first examines the ways in which erotic love has been figured in the history of
Western civilization and then explores the organization of high school and
college sexual and romantic life against this backdrop, following the arc from
Hellenism to the “hook-up.” It then
moves into the physiological and evolutionary bases of sexual desire and romantic
attachment, and then ways in which these may condition the organization of the
erotic lives of emerging adults. And it
closes with the ways in which the erotic has become politicized by religious
movements around the world, including Islamic movements, and how students’
religious beliefs shape their erotic lives.
There is a significant amount of reading for this
class. It should be read for the class
in which it is listed as we will have in-class discussion of the readings.
Your grade will be based one-half on your midterm and one
half on your final examination.
Lecture and Reading Schedule:
January 8: Introduction
January 10-15: The Philosophy of Love
Read: Plato, The Symposium,
(New York: Penguin Classics) 0140449272
January 17-22: High School Romance
Read: Sharon Thompson, Going
all the Way: Teenage Girls’ Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy, (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1996), 0809015994,
pp. 1-140.
January 22: pp. 141-285.
January 24: Hooking
Up. Read:
Paul England, Emily Shafer and Alison Fogarty, “Hooking Up and Forming
Romantic Relationships on Today’s College Campuses,” in Michael A. Kimmel and
Amy Aronson, The Gendered Society Reader,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 531-547. (e-reserves)
Paula England and Jonathan Bearak, “Gender, Meanings,
and Casual Sex,” unpublished paper, (e-reserves).
January 29: The
Erotics of UCSB.
Read: Elizabeth
A. Armstrong, Paula England and Alison C. K. Fogarty, “Sexual Practices,
Learning and Love: Accounting for Women’s Orgasm in College Hookups and
Relationships,” presented at the American Sociological Association, August,
2009 (e-reserves)
January 31: Read: Kathleen
A. Bogle, Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and
Relationships on Campus, (New York: NYU Press, 2008), 0814799698, Pp. 1-95
February 5: Read: Bogle,
Hooking Up, Pp. 96-186.
February 7: Read: Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong, “Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood: Double Binds and Flawed Options” Gender and Society, 2009; 23; 589. (e-reserves)
February 7: Read: Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong, “Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood: Double Binds and Flawed Options” Gender and Society, 2009; 23; 589. (e-reserves)
February 12: Mid-term
examination
February 14-19: Young
Sex in Comparative Perspective
Read: Amy T. Schalet, Not
Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex, University of
Chicago Press, 2011, 0-226-73619-9
February 19: Pp. 107-206
February 21-26 The Physiology of Love
Read: Helen Fisher, Why We
Love?: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, (New York: Henry Holt and
Co. 2004). 0-8050-7796-0. Pp. 1-98.
February 26: Fisher, Why We Love? Pp. 99-219.
February 28-March 5:
Religion, Love and Sex in Islam
Read: Fatima Mernissi, Beyond
the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society, Revised Edition, Indiana
University Press, 0-253-20423-2.
March 7-12: God and
Your Underpants
Read: Linda Kintz, “Sacred Intimacy,”
pp. 17-54, in Between Jesus and the Market.
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).
Amy
M. Burdette, Christopher G. Ellison, Terrence D. Hill, Norval D. Glenn, “Hooking
Up” at College: Does Religion Make a Difference?” Journal for the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 48, No.
3, 2009, pp. 535-551.
March 14: Review
March 21: Thursday. Final
Examination. 8-11.
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