Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Considers how sexuality and gender are articulated, understood, explored, and negotiated through literature and language. May be further organized by historical period, genre, or critical approach. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Sex is a Funny Word: Sex and Gender Education Materials for Young Readers

How did you find out about human genders and sexualities? From your peers? parents? teachers? books? (social) media? or some combination of these? This course examines the texts that adults write for young readers to educate them about gender and/or sexuality. We will read and analyse works from several decades, for a variety of ages, and in a number of formats, focusing on both their content and their didactic approaches. Students will create a written/visual presentation on a text of their choice outside the assigned reading list, plan a text intended as a Sex and Gender Education resource, and undertake personal reflection on both the course texts and their own ideologies of gender and sexuality.

The written/visual presentation could be in print form, video/pecha kucha, or a poster. The plan for a student-authored work of non-fiction could be a picture book, graphic text, app, or print text, and it will include an explanatory essay that shows how this work will fit into the current curriculum of a specific school system and/or appeal to an audience currently under-represented in the field. These two assignments will be self-assessed (students give themselves their grades, using a rubric and giving evidence to justify their grades). All students are encouraged to hand in rough drafts at least once for feedback; students who do not submit work in draft form for feedback will not be able to assign themselves a mark higher than B. Students are permitted to use AI tools for assistance and support provided that 1) they acknowledge what AI(s) they used and how, and 2) their own contributions to the work are more significant than those of the AI.

Strong content warnings: as you would expect, a course about Sex/Gender Ed materials is going to discuss sexual attraction, desire, arousal, and activity; we’ll also likely be discussing assault, verbal/physical/sexual abuse, bullying, body shaming, and infection, as well as pregnancy, abortion, and miscarriage. Students can opt out of attending classes in which we’re likely to be discussing triggering topics, but discussions on any day may go in unexpected directions. As a group, we will try to create spaces where we listen respectfully, share politely, and treat everyone as worthwhile.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

1. become aware of our own beliefs and attitudes and how we come to have them
2. critique, analyse, and create texts that teach young readers about gender and sexuality

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Excerpts from other Sex and Gender Education texts will be available in Canvas, online, and/or from the SFU library. Note for CAL students who rely on audio books and descriptions of graphic texts, some of the course texts have significant visual components.

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: