This course examines abstract and figurative representations of the human body in contemporary art. It will explore works across a range of media which challenge and redefine the ways we consider gender and sexuality. The course will introduce a set of tools to analyse multiple art forms which artists have used to reconfigure questions of sexuality, gender, queerness, and the performance of ‘self’, and will look into the wider art historical, socio-political and cultural conditions that shaped their creation and interpretation. The course will conclude by investigating how the artistic exploration of gender and sexuality has been increasingly intertwined with issues of class, race, and ethnicity, especially in the face of the unprecedented transnational and transregional flows of human bodies within the contemporary world. We will discuss works by artists engaging with female and male, trans, straight and LGBTQ identities, who may include but are not limited to: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Catherine Opie, Vito Acconci, Glenn Ligon, David Wojnarowicz, Vaginal Davis and Shigeyuki Kihara.