College Classes Today: Sex, Gender, Social Justice, and Zombies

Young America’s Foundation (YAF) has produced a report, Comedy & Tragedy, to “document the intellectual abuse and flat-out indoctrination happening by way of the appalling curriculum at our country’s most (so-called) prestigious institutions of higher education.”

I have selected a few of the courses being offered to our children to illustrate the trouble we are in for.

Ohio State University:
ANTHROP 3334—Zombies: The Anthropology of the Undead
Students will understand how culture and social organization help us define the living, the dead and the undead in the contemporary and archaeological record... 

University of Wisconsin:
GENWS 536—Queering Sexuality Education
Situates sexual health education in historical and contemporary context by tracing its
discursive production and envisioning a queering of both content and practice. An examination of what might it mean to queer sex education and what would a queer sex education look like. Utilizing theoretical interventions from critical education studies, queer theory, and trans/gender studies, this course... 

Swarthmore College:
RELG 032—Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology
The God of the Bible and later Jewish and Christian literature is distinctively masculine,
definitely male. Or is He? If we can point out places in traditional writings where God is
nurturing, forgiving, and loving, does that mean that God is feminine, or female? This course examines feminist and queer writings about God, explores the tensions between feminist and queer theology, and seeks to stretch the limits of gendering-and sexing-the divine. Key themes include: gender; embodiment; masculinity; liberation; sexuality; feminist and queer theory.
RELG 033—Queering the Bible
This course surveys the queer and trans readings of biblical texts. It introduces students to the complexity of constructions of sex, gender, and identity in one of the most influential literary works produced in ancient times. By reading the Bible with the methods of queer and trans theoretical approaches, this class destabilizes the long held assumptions about the Bible—and religion—says about gender and sexuality. 

Middlebury College
AMST 0269—Beyond Intersectionality: Developing Anti-Racist and Anti-Capitalist
Feminisms
Nearly thirty years ago, Kimberlé Crenshaw published the theory of “intersectionality,” in which she argued that racism and sexism collide to make black women’s marginalization distinct from those of both white women and black men (1989). Today, the terms “intersectionality” and “intersectional feminism” are ubiquitous, utilized by scholars, activists, artists, and our students. In this course, we will consider how discourse of and ideas about intersectionality move between and among spaces of dissent. Starting from the position that it is more epistemologically and politically powerful to state that our feminist is anti-racist and anticapitalist than to say say “intersectional,” we will address the following questions: What are the benefits and limits of the original theory of intersectionality? How are academic and activist
approaches alike both emboldened and limited by intersectionality? What does it mean to be socially and politically conscious, and how do we move from consciousness to action in ways that are not siloed? Texts may include Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women” (1989) and Ange-Marie Hancocks’s “Intersectionality: An Intellectual History” (2016).
AMST 0325—American Misogyny
In this course we will explore the place of misogyny in U.S. media and politics. Early topics will include film noir, Cold War gender scapegoating, and lesbian pulp fiction. Subsequent topics will include the backlash against second-wave feminism, the rise of “post-feminism,” and the impact of reality TV and social media on feminist and anti-feminist expression. We will conclude by examining how misogyny informs U.S. culture and politics in the Trump era. Throughout the course, we will consider how discourses of misogyny are inflected by white, cisgender, ableist, agist, and class privilege.  

Villanova University:
PHI 2430—Eco-Feminism
Basic positions in eco-feminism as they relate to the philosophical and religious traditions of the West. 

Cornell University:
ENGL 3725—Femininity as Masquerade
“One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one” wrote Simone de Beauvoir. How does such an odd becoming happen? What can literature teach us about it? Does anyone ever achieve “being a women” and how do we (“we”??) survive always falling short of the implicit ideal? We will think about the power afforded by receptivity, passivity, bottoming, emotionality and openness, whether or not these are enacted by people born, designated or living as female. What are some of the dimensions of femininity’s diversity, even in the United States, today? This course is intimately informed by intersectional queer, women of color and trans* perspectives, which will be at the center of our inquiry. It will cover film, literature, personal essays and gender theory.
GOVT 2817—America Confronts the World
Donald Trump and Barack Obama give us two visions of America and of the world: xenophobic nationalism and pragmatic cosmopolitanism. America and the world are thus constituted by great diversity. The first half of the course seeks to understand that diversity in American politics and foreign policy viewed through the prisms of region, ideology, region, race, class and religion. The second half inquires into the U.S. and American engagement of different world regions and civilizations: Europe, Russia, North America, Latin America, China, Japan, India and the Middle East. U.S. hard power and American soft power finds expression in farreaching processes of American-infused globalization and U.S.-centered anti-Americanism reverberating around the world. Advocates of one-size-fits-all solutions to America’s and the world’s variegated politics are in for great disappointments.
FRIT 37.05—Black Queer & Trans Futures: An Experiment
Engaging with the histories and present realities of colonial dispossession, racial violence and cisheteropatriarchy on campus and beyond, we will collaboratively craft visions of alternative futures. Drawing on critical theory and speculative fiction from Haiti, Martinique, Cameroon, US and beyond, our goal will be to challenge our current order, chart how we move past it, and imagine what liberatory futures lie beyond. This experience will culminate in a staged reading directed and performed by professionals.

I could fisk each and every one of these courses, but the overall picture is so depressingly laughable that I think you will find that fisking is not necessary.

And to think that rich celebrities are paying out huge bribes to send their kids to some of these schools.

I think I will develop a course for our University entitled, "Finding the depressingly laughable in your university course catalog".

I bet that class would have to be held in a large auditorium.

Just call me Professor Pewster from now on (a wonderfully gender neutral moniker don't you think?).