Visions of mortality. Citizenship. The Literature of Crisis. Sex: Its Pleasures and Cultures.
Sex?
Yes, indeed, it’s now a part of the curriculum, one of 10 autumn-quarter Introduction to the Humanities courses freshmen can select.
“You get a pamphlet in the summer and when you look through it, the IHUMs are about, like, nature and mortality,” says freshman Jennifer Phillips. “Then you see this one that says ‘Sex,’ and that’s really interesting.”
Interesting? “Yeah,” Phillips continues. “Sex is more about the mentality that college students have, especially here, because most of us were studying so hard in high school that we didn’t have time to party. So I think it’s intriguing to come to Stanford and study it.”
And you thought the unclad Greek statues of Western Civ textbooks were racy stuff. “My dad went here, and he was, like, ‘What? What’s going on?’” says freshman Amanda Mendoza. “And I was, like, ‘How do you explain this course?’”
Point to the reading list, naturally. Intellectually rigorous texts by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are the cornerstone of the IHUM track that was launched this year by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, professor of comparative literature and French and Italian, and Charlotte Fonrobert, assistant professor of religious studies. Their lectures explore topics from existentialism, American puritanism, metaphysics and cultural constructions to sex reassignment surgery and intersexuality.
“I tried to think what Stanford freshmen might really need,” says the German-born Gumbrecht. “Intellectually, I find them brilliant, but was there anyplace where they were weak compared to European kids their age? And I had always sensed a kind of helplessness when sex is the topic.”
“The reading’s been pretty cool,” says freshman Xuan Smith. “There was the obvious name of the class, but my decision had nothing to do with that. Of course not.”
