For many undergrads, college is a time to expand both your sexual and educational horizons. And understandably so. I mean, when else in life do you have rare book collections and free condoms at your fingertips? Not often enough, that's for sure. If you're wondering how to combine these pursuits and mix sexuality with academia, I've got just the thing for you. Because yes, college classes about sex are a thing (and they sound fascinating).
Regardless of your major, interests, or academic skill sets, I can almost guarantee there's a sex-related college course for you! Curious about the biology of sex? Brush up on The Birds and The Bees in a course by the same name at Skidmore College. History buff? Dive into Transgender History at Northwestern. Wondering how robots and sexuality intersect? Same. Take Queer Robotics to find out (also taught at Northwestern, because wow, does that university have some interesting course material around sex!).
Oh, and if you're one of those people who excels in the arts as well as the sciences, go ahead and dabble in all of the above. (And please know that I nearly failed my only science credit in college and envy you deeply.)
Basically, if you're looking to examine sex and sexuality through an academic lens, there are tons of opportunities to do exactly that. Here's a look at six of the most interesting college courses on this very topic...
Taught at the Australian College of Applied Psychology (also available online, in case you're not heading Down Under to study going down under), Psychology of Sex and Intimate Relationships focuses on exactly what you'd imagine: The ways in which we approach sex and intimacy from all angles, be they biological, cognitive, emotional, or socio-historical.
As the course description notes, unit content includes "'Doing' sex" and "Communication and conflict in relationships," so I feel like it should really be required coursework for everyone with a pulse. Don't you think?
As it turns out, you can spend your entire college career studying Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. The Chicago-based school offers more than 60 courses on and related to the subject, and I'm dying to take them all! For the sake of brevity, I've chosen a few that sound particularly out-of-the-ordinary or interesting to highlight here, starting with Female Pleasure: Feminism and the Sexological Tradition 1910-2010.
This course explores texts by Sigmund Freud, Helen Singer Kaplan (who founded one of the first clinics dedicated to sex disorder!), and Masters and Johnson (the duo who inspired Showtime's Masters of Sex) to better understand female and male sexuality, and all of the assumptions we've made about "female pleasure" over time.
Offered at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N Roll: Teen Health and the Media is an examination of the media's portrayal of, well, sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, both to and by adolescents.
While the class doesn't focus exclusively on sex, it still sounds like a crazy interesting way to learn more about how sexuality has been showcased over the years, and how that's all impacted teens' health and development. Sign me up.
Personally, I've got a few (very close-minded) family members who claim that being transgender is a "new." And though the term may not have been coined until the 20th century, gender-variance has existed since the beginning of time. Which Northwestern's Transgender History class covers in detail. To borrow phrasing from the course description, "[In] this course, we will investigate the broadly understood transgender past, asking questions about how people understood gender in the past and how the contemporary category of 'transgender' emerged out of medical discourses, political activism, and broad cultural change."
If you're interested in the science behind sex and reproduction, definitely check out The Birds and the Bees: The Biology of Sex, taught at Skidmore College. The class covers the anatomy and physiology of both male and female development and reproduction. It also includes a lab, in case you're looking for an opportunity to don a white lab coat (and really, who isn't?).
I've saved what may be the best for last — Queer Robotics: Cyborgs in Science Fiction and Anthropology at Northwestern. The course explores what human sexuality really means, while simultaneously "engaging" with content across literature, film, and even military research to understand how bodies are created and represented in various ways.
And, like all of the aforementioned classes, it sounds incredibly interesting.
Any scholarships available for broke dating writers? Let me know.
