The module introduces students to attitudes and ideas surrounding sexuality, love, courtship, marriage and the family, and examines the lived experiences of men and women across the social classes. The Enlightenment shifted notions about behaviour, transforming what had been most private into something that was disseminated and discussed far more openly than before. The module identifies the factors that helped transform views of sex and sexuality including religion, economy, urbanisation and a growing literate society. The module will examine a number of key themes: (a) the attitudes of clerics, the state, moralists, parents and the individual; (b) the arranged marriage, the companionate marriage, seduction, abduction, romance, love, repression and celibacy; (c) the means through which deviants, including adulterers, polygamists, homosexuals, prostitutes and others, were punished or reprimanded; and (d) the expanding literary world of pornography, sensuality, sexuality celebrity and exploitation. The module provides the basis for an examination of both secondary and primary sources, allowing students to test current interpretations by reference to original material

Changing attitudes towards sex, love, morality, virtue, chastity and infidelity; the experience of courtship, marriage, and divorce; crime and punishment; deviants - homosexuals, prostitutes, polygamists, adulaters, and abductors; the explosion of print - the novel, cartoons, pornography and sexual celebrity - rakes and mistresses; prostitution and philanthropy; private and public, male and females experiences - disease, taboos and behaviours; the rise of libertinism; the celebration and vilification of 'rakes', 'harlots' and 'mistresses'; class and double standards; the 'first sexual revolution'? On successful completion of this module, students should be able to: •Assess the key assumptions that underpinned attitudes towards sex and sexuality in the public and private worlds of the individual and families in eighteenth-century Ireland and Britain. •Determine the characteristics that shaped the experience of men and women towards sex and sexuality. •Identify the factors that led to changing attitudes towards sex and sexuality •Evaluate evidence that argues for the emergence of new or 'modern' concepts surrounding the family, sex and morality.

Students, who have successfully completed the module, will have the ability to: •Assess the historiography specific to this module. •elucidate key concepts such as morality, chastity, deviance and lived experience •understand how experiences and attitudes were both similar and different in Britain and Ireland •understand how concepts and assumptions changed over time •to research and produce a coherent written analysis of selected topics based on accurate use of secondary and primary material

On completion of this module students will demonstrate an appreciation of the history of ideas and attitudes the complexity the lived experience of men and women across the social classes in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland

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This module will be taught as a seminar, with all students expected to engage actively in every meeting, whether the discussion is a debate of theoretical issues, a collaborative close reading of a text or primary source, or a combination of both of these activities. Students will participate in rigorous discussion of ideas in the field. The written requirements will include diary entries, book reviews, a research paper, which will enable students to compose extended arguments on complex topics, managing the needs of documented, evidence-based research and writing.