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This seminar course will investigate three interconnected areas which shaped public understandings of sexuality in the 20th century: the scientific discipline of sexology and its popular publications; legal debates around obscenity and public morality; and the production of pornographic and erotic aesthetic material, including literature, photography, and film. How did these domains produce a shifting sense of sexual knowledge across the 20th century, and how was popular knowledge regulated, challenged, resisted, and subverted? Students will be introduced to historical and critical perspectives on these areas, and will cover areas of debate influenced by queer, feminist, trans, and labour oriented methods. We will study material related to the production of normative sexualities and their relationship to radicalization and class, the historical restriction of access to sexual knowledge, and the appropriation of pornographic aesthetics by experimental artists and writers, among other subjects. Sexological readings may include selections from Freud, the Kinsey Report, Masters & Johnson, John Money, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Gayle Rubin, and time will be spent discussing research emerging from Johns Hopkins' Gender Identity Clinic (1965-1979). We will read several works which were subject to legal proceedings seeking to restrict their publication, including Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and selections from James Joyces ‘Ulysses’. A variety of feminist and queer perspectives on erotic representation will be discussed in class, but students should be prepared to engage with materials which feature explicit scenes.