Pleasure and Distance: Exploring Sexual Cultures in the Classroom

Abstract

Teaching sexually explicit materials to undergraduate students is fraught with questions of what ought to be taught when we introduce sessions on pornography, cybersex, explicit representations of gay and lesbian sexuality and the politics of representation more generally. This article will address some of those concerns through a meditation on some of my own teaching experiences offered, not as an example of best practice, but as a further contribution to the provocative discussions elsewhere in this issue. I argue that teaching about sexually explicit representations has the potential for reaching beyond the examination of hegemonic meanings or the exposition of generic repetitions to more innovative exploration of the cultural discourses of sexuality.