Going Gaga Over Fifty Shades: Academic Freedom, Censorship and “Genderfuckery” in Erotic Fiction

• In Event: 512 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 14. Considerations in Research and Practice

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss how to productively embrace failure and how we might begin to critically interrogate success (Halberstam 2012). We do this by examining two central processes at work in sexuality and gender classrooms: 1) discussing “difficult,” “uncomfortable,” or simply “new” material that most students have not critically examined or thought about in other settings or classrooms; and 2) navigating the current academic climate and university classrooms in light of the recent events at Appalachian State University, CU Boulder, and Kansas, in particular. In order to highlight useful teaching methods in gender and sexuality classrooms, we begin by offering a discussion of how we teach sex, sexuality and gender. Next, we conduct a close analysis of the wildly popular Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and then cover related classroom exercises and teaching methods that would critically address and elucidate how sexuality and gender plays out in the Fifty Shades trilogy. In the final section of the paper, we interrogate the parameters of academic success and failure by addressing questions such as: In the current academic climate, what constitutes a successful academic experience for students and professors? What is problematic about this particular definition of success? Why might embracing failure and discomfort be a better route than simply folding into the status quo? What does embracing failure or taking the difficult path entail? We end with some thoughts and recommendations for the future of academia, in general, and the future of teaching in sexuality and gender classrooms, in particular.

Authors

• Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Dana M. Greene, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill