Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights
This seminar uses the new scholarship on sexuality to engage with ongoing theoretical conversations and activism in gender, health, and human rights. Pressed by the increasing recognition of the importance of sexuality in a wide range of advocacy and rights work (for example, HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual violence), theorists and advocates alike have struggled with the complex, sometimes fluid and elusive nature of sexuality. What is this “sexuality” in need of rights and health? How does it manifest itself across a range of persons and cultures? And how can the body of culturally and historically situated work about sexuality be helpful to advocacy interventions? The seminar also turns a critical lens on recent scholarship in light of current issues raised by policy interventions and grass roots organizing in many countries and cultures. The seminar aims to promote dialogue and exchange between academic, activist, and advocacy work and is sponsored by the Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health, and Human Rights.
Seminar: #673
Founded: 1999
Visit seminar website:
Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights
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Seminar Administration
Chair:
Carole S. Vance
Director, Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health, and Human Rights, Mailman School of Public Health, and the Department of Anthropology
Columbia University
212.305.1535
csv1@columbia.edu
Rapporteur:
Alicia Peters
Doctoral Candidate, Sociomedical Sciences & Anthropology
Columbia University
awp33@columbia.edu
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Meetings
 Tuesday, December 11, 2007, 7:15-9:00 p.m., Faculty House, Morningside Campus, Deevia Bhana, PhD, Faculty of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal
“Emma and Dave sitting on a tree, KISSING”:The scandal of childhood sexuality in the context of South African HIV/AIDS. This talk explores the sexual cultures of young children (under ten years old) in diverse South African social settings. Despite the adult wish for sexual innocence and the construction of childhood sexuality as scandalous, young children have sophisticated understandings of their sexual and social circumstances, shaping meanings of sex, gender and HIV/AIDS. The discussion draws upon empirical research with children to examine heterosexuality, the construction of young masculinities and femininities, and the ways in which children make meaning of HIV/AIDS. Social processes shape the extent to which young children experience sexuality within discourses of fear and pleasure, as well as adult discourses of innocence and the regulation of childhood sexuality. Lastly some theoretical and practical/political questions about the implications of childhood sexuality are raised, in the context of HIV/AIDS education and prevention in South Africa. RSVP:awp33@columbia.edu or 917 498 2335
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