April 6, 2006 | Sex & Society

Porn 101

Reading, writing, arithmetic ... and porn? That's right. While the three Rs may still rule supreme up to high school, porn is catching on throughout the United States as a subject for legitimate study within college classrooms, according to YNOT.com.

Schools with porn on the brain include the University of Iowa, which offers a Pornography in Popular Culture class; the State University of New York at Buffalo, which offers Cyberporn and Society; and the University of California, Berkeley, which offers Cinema and the Sex Act.

Behind the penetration of porn in today's college classrooms is a desire by students and professors alike to not just watch erotic videos, but also to think about them. Investigating the philosophical and artistic elements of porn, and exploring their social and political implications, pushes students in programs as diverse as women's studies, law, technology, literature, film and anthropology to evaluate and explain their beliefs, according to professors who teach the subject.

“I’m not trying to teach people to accept the existence of it,” professor Linda Williams of Berkeley told YNOT's Darklady. “As with any tradition in moving-image culture, we need to take it seriously. We need to try and come at it with some theoretical tools.”

Williams and her colleagues around the country are using those theoretical tools to examine everything from the societal impact of Hustler magazine to transgender issues.

This is one field of study where the homework wouldn't be half bad!

• Porn becomes truly academic for some colleges [YNOT Masters]
• Porn studies on the rise [The Daily Colonial]