Course Details in 2026/27 Session

Module Title	LH Discourses, Disciplines and Dissidence: The Construction of Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century France
School	Lan, Cult, Art Hist & Music
Department	Modern Languages
Module Code	09 24745
Module Lead	Elliot Evans
Level	Honours Level
Credits	20
Semester	Semester 1 or 2
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions	None
Contact Hours	Lecture-10 hours Seminar-20 hours Guided independent study-170 hours Total: 200 hours
Exclusions
Description	This module introduces students to the ways in which the long nineteenth century (in Europe in general and in France in particular) saw the production of a wealth of knowledge and ideas about the meanings of masculinity and femininity and the nature of sexuality. Students are acquainted with the foundational texts of the disciplines of sexology and psychoanalysis, which took as their subject the study of sex, its deviations, its dysfunctions and its social implications. Much contemporaneous nineteenth-century creative writing responded and/or contributed to these cultural and medical trends by making sexuality and gender their prized subject matter. Guided by the insights of Michel Foucault’s critique of the history of sexuality, different types of text (psychological, psychoanalytical, social-theoretical, literary) are read together to demonstrate the interpenetration of the discourses that went to produce the field of knowledge known as ‘sexuality’. The gender political implications of these discourses, and the power relations they reflect, are brought to the attention of students via a consideration of feminist criticism. The module demonstrates both links and tensions between the concerns of ‘authoritative’ sexual science and experiments in literary writing of the century. Literary case studies include poems by Charles Baudelaire and novels by Emile Zola and the Decadent woman writer, Rachilde. The literary modes and schools in which these three writers worked - respectively, Modernism, Naturalism and Decadence - are considered in detail, as they shed light upon the authors’ differing attitudes towards their subject matter. (E.g. Zola’s Naturalist attempts to create, in literary form, case studies fit for sexual and criminal science stand in tension with Rachilde’s Decadent mockery of the authority disciplines and her celebration of sexual perversion and gender dissidence.)
Learning Outcomes	By the end of the module students should be able to: Demonstrate detailed knowledge and understanding of the intellectual context of both literary and scientific writing on sexuality in the nineteenth century. Apply and evaluate critical approaches to the material under analysis independently; argue at length and in detail about an aspect of the topic, supporting the argument with evidence from the text and with opinions from secondary literature. Critically analyse texts, showing awareness of their relation to the social, historical and generic context in which they were written, and present the results in writing. Using bibliographic material provided, and research undertaken using online and library-based resources, select, plan and carry out a programme of study leading to an essay on a chosen topic.
Assessment	24745-01 : 40-minute multiple choice test ing English (20%) : Class Test (20%) 24745-02 : 5000 word dissertation in English (80%) : Coursework (80%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions	Assessment: 4,000-word essay in English (100% of the final mark). Reassessment: No resits are permitted in final year. If students miss the assessed task owing to extenuating circumstances, the failed task would be rescheduled at a later date.
Other
Reading List