UCPH – Gender & Sexuality: Pasts, Presents, and Futures

04 - 13 August 2025

University of Copenhagen

This course explores issues of gender and sexuality in the contemporary world with a special emphasis on LGBTQ+ issues, and asks: How has history formed the present that we find ourselves in, and how do we form the present that will become a future? We will explore this through reading, discussing, exploring the city, and visiting activist organizations in Copenhagen, as well as have international experts teaching us and discussing with us.

Denmark was the first country in the world to legalize the distribution of pornography (1969), to legalize same-sex civil unions (1989), to allow two persons of the same sex as legal parents of a child (1999), and to allow trans*persons to legally change their gender based solely on request (2014). In many ways, Denmark has thus been a front-runner for sexual and LGBTQ+ rights. How has Danish history paved the way for these transformations, and how does history continually shape the way we think about gender equality, sexual rights, and LGBTQ+ liberation?

We will both study Denmark as a case, but also broaden our perspective and discuss how the worldwide debate on these issues is shaped by different historical trajectories. International experts from Asia and Europe will join us in person and via Zoom, and help us understand how the framing of the past is forming the present situation and the futures we can imagine for sexual and gender minorities.

We will be using the university as our classroom, but also explore the city, and look for traces of its sexual and minority history. We will visit activist organizations and learn about the frontline of the struggle for sexual and minority rights and we will watch historical movies together to understand how fiction forms reality.

Target Audience

Bachelor's students

Course Method

In-person 

Application Deadline

01 April 2025 

Course Details

https://humanities.ku.dk/education/summer/gender-and-sexuality/

Contact

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