Monday, January 28, 2013

If you could change one thing....

If you could change one thing about the way in which intimate couplings are organized at UCSB what would it be?

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

Hedwig and the Angry Inch - for Platonic clarification

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
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 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.