Love is an experience that is intensely personal and individual, yet is shaped, governed, and judged by society as a whole. Forbidden love, in particular, demonstrates this apparent contradiction through its capacity to simultaneously reveal and challenge the taboos, transgressions, and/or subversions of a culture. This course will examine examples of forbidden love from different times and places, using texts from the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences to understand how larger social, cultural, and legal frameworks have an impact on the lives of individuals, and how forbidden love enables those individuals to reshape their environments in turn.