Word: porn
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...some scholars disagree about the need to present porn in class. In Sex and the Law, a senior seminar given by Paul Abramson, a psychology professor at UCLA, the screening of Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the making of the notorious '70s porno film, is optional. Porn is "so pervasive in our culture, most students have already seen it," Abramson explains. Showing it "seems unnecessary." Likewise, Catherine Sherwood-Puzello, who covers pornography in her human-sexuality class at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, the home of sex pioneer Alfred Kinsey's institute, displays Michelangelo's David and Playboy...
Advocates of bringing porn into the classroom insist that studying porn without watching it misses the point. Kipnis screens Saló or 120 Days of Sodom, by the Italian avant-garde filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, in her obscenity class. The film, updated from the novel by the Marquis de Sade, is set in fascist Italy and depicts a tribunal of powerful men and their sexual torture of teenagers. She says students who had previously espoused staunchly liberal views about freedom of expression often find themselves disgusted and horrified by what they see. "University students are often too cool...
...classroom--as opposed to, say, a dorm room--can offer new perspectives. Lindsey Reich, 21, a senior majoring in anthropology at N.Y.U., thought herself fairly progressive when she signed up for Professor Don Kulick's sexuality-and-gender course last year. Then he screened a film featuring the porn star Annie Sprinkle having sex with a transgendered man and another showing female ejaculation. To her surprise, Reich was shocked. "I realized I do have my biases about what is a man and what is a woman--I mean, I grew up in the Midwest--and it made me want...
Administrators at schools that offer porn studies find themselves caught between their desire for cutting-edge scholarship and their reluctance to stir up controversy. "I wish I had more faculty doing this kind of exciting work," says David Penniman, a dean at Buffalo who oversees Halavais' cyberporn course. Penniman acknowledges that the graphic images used in the class may upset some people, but, he adds, "it's tricky for a dean or university president to try to dictate what should or shouldn't be in the syllabus." It's especially tricky at state schools where legislators help determine school funding...
Schools are seeking ways to sidestep such concerns. Iowa and Buffalo bar students under 18 from porn classes. At the University of California at Santa Barbara, Constance Penley, a film professor and porn-studies pioneer, says she tells her students that "I don't want to squelch their financial possibilities or creativity, but as a favor to me, could they not make a porn film until after they graduate?" Teaching them about porn is one thing. Training them for a career in the adult arts is another...