Teaching Sex at Stanford

RSVP requested at http://histsoc.stanford.edu/

Speaker: Herant Katchadourian, Professor of Human Biology, Emeritus

The teaching of human sexuality at Stanford is usually associated with Herant Katchadourian's course Human Sexuality (Human Biology 10) which was initiated in 1968 and enrolled over 20,000 students over the next several decades. While that course was the first to explicitly focus on sex, there have been earlier courses about topics that most probably touched on the subject in one way or another. Some of these courses go back all the way to the founding of Stanford.  Between 1891 and the post-World War II period, they were typically listed under physical education and hygiene, as part of the more general concern with infectious illnesses, including venereal diseases. In the 1950s, there was s shift to courses on marriage and the family with references to physical intimacy and sex.

In his talk, Katchadourian will review this historical background, then focus on how his course was established and what it entailed, as well as how the topic of sex is currently addressed in the context of various courses.