 |
PLEASURE READING: Some of the
course texts.
Glenn Matsumura |
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.”
|
