PWS 362 Sex, Morality and the Media (3 credits)

Consideration of the role of mass media forms (books, magazines, movies, television, world wide web) in the evolution of cultural norms with regard to sexuality and moral responsibility. After a review of the Comstock laws in the 1870s and censorship of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in the early 1880s, the course will focus on key developments in 20th-century challenges to the Victorian Age.