Description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for College Honors students. Introduction to four major sex scandals that took place in London between 1870 and 1895 to understand ways in which institutions create frameworks for understanding dissident sexualities and gender identities, and relations between sexual scandals and legal actions. Sodomy trial of Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park. Examination of extent of queer networks among gay men, transgender individuals, and their apparently straight admirers during time of Offences against the Person Act 1861. The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, in which journalist W. T. Stead exposed extent of sexual trafficking of children. Series of murders in which bodies of women (several of whom were sex workers) were mutilated and disemboweled, attributed to Jack the Ripper. Trials of Oscar Wilde who was sent to jail for two years in solitary confinement with hard labor for gross indecency. P/NP or letter grading.

Units: 5.0