Availability: Available to external students only in second semester.

Residential School: None

Online level: 1

Coordinator: Dr Stephen Collier

Objectives: Develop an understanding that sexuality is a product of evolution, physiological development, social learning and cultural context, and through that understanding to enhance tolerance of the diversity of human sexuality and its expressions.

Content: This unit examines the evolution of human sexuality in the contexts of primate reproductive strategies and the social learning environments that are unique to Homo sapiens. Various primate social and reproductive strategies will be studied, and aspects of human sexuality (such as mate choice and bonding, reproductive competition and divergent male and female strategies, loss of estrus, homosexuality, divergent male and female development trajectories) will be considered as phenomena exhibiting continuity or discontinuity with the primate behavioural range. Human behaviour will be examined from a Darwinian perspective, while social learning, the range of societies, and the concept of innateness will contribute to the overall analysis.

Assessment: Essay, 2500 words (50%), examination (50%).

Prescribed Books:
Mealey, L.R., 2000, Sex Differences: Developmental & Evolutionary strategies, Academic Press.

Reference Books:
Small, M., 1995, What's love got to do with it? The evolution of human mating, Anchor Books.
Symons, D., 1979, The evolution of human sexuality, O.U.P.
Ridley, Matt, The red queen: Sex and the evolution of human nature. Penguin, 1995 (Paperback).