Sexuality, Society and Pedagogy problematises some of the prevailing assumptions that frame this area of study. In doing so, it aims to make visible the challenges of teaching sexuality education in South African schools, while demonstrating its potential for reshaping our conceptions of the social and cultural representations thereof. Although the book is largely situated in experiences and perspectives within the South African context, it is hoped that the questions raised, reflections, analyses and arguments will contribute to thinking about sexuality education in diverse contexts, in particular more developing contexts.

List of Figures - Acknowledgments - Fida Sanjakdar/Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip: Critical Pedagogy and the Re-imaginings of Sexuality Education: An Introduction - Part 1: Sexuality Education, Ideologies and Socio-cultural Politics - Heather Shipley: Religion, Secularism and Sexuality Education: LGBTQI Identities in Education and the Politics of Ideology in Canada - Eduardo Mattio/Juan Marco Vaggione: Sex Education in Argentina: Ideological Tensions and Critical Challenges - Elsie Whittington/Rachel Thomson: Educating for Consent: Beyond the Binary - Ekua Yankah/Peter Aggleton: Reconceptualising Sexuality Education in the Wake of the HIV, Ebola and Zika Epidemics - Part 2: Sexuality Education and Institutional Settings - Pam Alldred: Sites of Good Practice: How Do Education, Health and Youth Work Spaces Shape Sex Education? - Lisa W. Loutzenheiser/LJ Slovin: Sexuality Education in Action: The Pedagogical Possibilities at a Youth Camp - Fida Sanjakdar/Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip: (Re)presenting Religion in Sexuality Education for a Democratic Society: An Interdisciplinary and Critical Discussion - Kyra Clarke: Nudity, Sexting, and Consent: Finding Opportunities for Critical Pedagogy in Tagged and Caitlin Stasey - Part 3: Sexuality Education, Identities and Practice - Pamela Dickey Young: Informal Sex Education: Forces That Shape Youth Identities and Practices - Mark Vicars: It's a Family Affair-Queering Relations: Closets, Communities and 'I' - Julia Hirst/Rachel Wood/Daisy Marshall: 'Boys Think It's Just a Hairless Hole': Young People's Reflections on Binary and Heteronormative Pedagogies in School Based Sexualities Education - Veronika Honkasalo: 'Waiting for the Big Talk': The Role of Sexuality Education from the View of Parents Living in Multicultural Surroundings - Contributors - Index

In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent. Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman's songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, and The Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. Harris's own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.

This volume combines insights from secular sexuality education, trauma studies, and embodiment to explore effective strategies for teaching sexuality and religion in colleges, universities, and seminaries. Contributors to this volume address a variety of sexuality-related issues including reproductive rights, military prostitution, gender, fidelity, queerness, sexual trauma, and veiling from the perspective of multiple religious faiths. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars present pedagogy and classroom strategies appropriate for secular and religious institutional contexts. By foregrounding a combination of 'perspective transformation' and 'embodied learning' as a means of increasing students' appreciation for the varied social, psychological, theological and cultural contexts in which attitudes to sexuality develop, the volume posits sexuality as a critical element of teaching about religion in higher education. This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, and libraries in the fields of Religious Studies, Religious Education, Gender & Sexuality, Religion & Education and Sociology of Religion.

Despite its centrality to much of contemporary personal and public discourse, sexuality remains infrequently discussed in most composition courses, and in our discipline at large. Moreover, its complicated relationship to discourse, to the very languages we use to describe and define our worlds, is woefully understudied in our discipline. Discourse about sexuality, and the discourse of sexuality, surround us—circulating in the news media, on the Web, in conversations, and in the very languages we use to articulate our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves. It forms a core set of complex discourses through which we approach, make sense of, and construct a variety of meanings, politics, and identities. In Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy, Jonathan Alexander argues for the development of students' "sexual literacy." Such a literacy is not just concerned with developing fluency with sexuality as a "hot" topic, but with understanding the intimate interconnectedness of sexuality and literacy in Western culture. Using the work of scholars in queer theory, sexuality studies, and the New Literacy Studies, Alexander unpacks what he sees as a crucial--if often overlooked--dimension of literacy: the fundamental ways in which sexuality has become a key component of contemporary literate practice, of the stories we tell about ourselves, our communities, and our political investments. Alexander then demonstrates through a series of composition exercises and writing assignments how we might develop students' understanding of sexual literacy. Examining discourses of gender, heterosexuality, and marriage allows students (and instructors) a critical opportunity to see how the languages we use to describe ourselves and our communities are saturated with ideologies of sexuality. Understanding how sexuality is constructed and deployed as a way to "make meaning" in our culture gives us a critical tool both to understand some of the fundamental ways in which we know ourselves and to challenge some of the norms that govern our lives. In the process, we become more fluent with the stories that we tell about ourselves and discover how normative notions of sexuality enable (and constrain) narrations of identity, culture, and politics. Such develops not only our understanding of sexuality, but of literacy, as we explore how sexuality is a vital, if vexing, part of the story of who we are.

A healthy relationship to gender and sexuality supports our well-being, both as individuals and as a community. The form of sex education that we bring to children and adolescents not only needs to combat the inner disturbances and imbalances created by social media and exposure to pornography--as the most prevalent sources of implicit sex-education in our time--but it also needs to serve them in cultivating useful capacities with which to meet the growing societal changes around this fundamental aspect of being human. Providing a healthy and socially constructive sex education is the responsibility not only of the primary caregivers, parents, and teachers, but also of the individuals in the wider community, who likewise contribute to the collective consciousness. Working to overcome our own biases and imbalances will prepare us to more readily awaken to the spiritual wisdom that can bring health and harmony into the evolving reality of gender and sexuality. "Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners." --Shakespeare, Othello The insights shared in this book are important for everyone who is interested in understanding the various forms of human relationship, and how we might work together to bring about a healthier community life.