About the Center

Founded in 2001, the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture fosters an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the institutions, practices, norms, and modes of representation that orchestrate and establish meanings for sexuality. We consider sexuality a phenomenon that essentially informs diverse fields of social life, such as the state, the economy, civil society, family forms, and the cultural modes of representation.


The CSSC brings together UC Berkeley faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates with a common interest in the ways sexuality takes on different meanings in different cultural contexts. The Center encourages research from two perspectives:

  • Research examining the implication of sexuality in cultural formations of various kinds, for example: legal and legislative practices; the production and consumption of literary genres; popular culture; visual culture; the history of the body; and psychological and sociological theory
  • Research examining the working of specific sexual cultures: the precise ways in which sexuality is organized discursively and institutionally at given places and given times.

Each year, CSSC awards a dissertation fellowship, and periodically holds a dissertation workshop retreat for doctoral students whose work focuses on sexual culture. CSSC also sponsors a graduate student working group, bringing together students from various fields to discuss works on a particular theme. The Center also sponsors lectures and conferences by faculty and graduate students, as well as well as bringing writers and creative artists to UCB. And in the community, CSSC collaborates with other Bay Area organizations to present public events on various aspects of sexual culture.

 

 

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