Mar 28, 2024  
2022-2023 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2022-2023 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

CDSJ 2900 The politics of Sex Work


Feminist discourses on sex work/prostitution have long debated whether prostitution is work or violence, and if sex workers are agents or victims. Contributing to this debate are moralistic public perceptions, which stigmatize sex workers as only seeking pleasure for money and/or view sex workers as victims of sex trafficking. This course will use an interdisciplinary framework to explore the intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, and nationality in imagining and constructing the body for pleasure and exploitation. It will examine the complexity of sex work, current global debates on sex as labor, and the different approaches proposed by various actors (abolitionists, sex worker led movements, civil society groups) to address violence, criminalization, health and safety, labor conditions, and bodily autonomy as well as the competing articulations of “rights” and “justice” between communities and sex workers. This is a UCC Area 4 course.
Credits: 3.0