Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History:

by Ph. D. Jeana Jorgensen

Overview

Do you look back at your sex ed classes and wonder WTF?! Are you a parent looking at your kid's curriculum and asking the same question?

Sex Education 101 is less of a how-to of sex education and more of a why. Why does abstinence-only sex ed receive so much federal funding? Why do instructors show gross images of STIs to scare students? The answers, believe it or not, have a lot to do with folklore.

Folklore-informally transmitted traditional culture-has a lot to say about sex. And it is often people's first point of contact with information and messages about sex. Folklore encompasses urban legends, moral panics, and rumors, which influenced early U.S. policies around sex, and also includes jokes, raunchy folk songs, and beliefs and slang about menstruation or STIs. And thus, folklore shapes sex ed classrooms and school sex ed policies.

This book offers a series of engaging and thought-provoking essays for anyone interested in folklore about sex, the history of sex education, and how we keep repeating history from 100 years ago in our approaches today.

Whether you are a scholar of books or a scholar of life (or both), you'll find something satisfying between the sheets of Sex Education 101.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798855679014
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	12/07/2023
Pages:	418
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Jeana Jorgensen studied folklore at UC Berkeley with Alan Dundes, and went on to earn her MA and PhD in folklore at Indiana University. She has since taught at UC Berkeley, Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis, and Butler University, as well as delivering guest lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Tartu (Estonia), the Central University of Jharkhand (India), and multiple other universities (as well as virtual guest lectures at the University of Tampa, Bowling Green State University, and more). Her research and teaching center on general folklore history and theory, gender and sexuality in folklore, and folk narrative genres such as fairy tales and fairy-tale retellings. She also specializes in the history of sex education, feminist and queer theory, body art, and the digital humanities.

With nearly 30 academic articles and book chapters to her name, she is now focusing on bringing more scholarly writing to the general public, firmly believing that scholarship can and should be both accessible and fun.

Editorial Reviews

Dr. Jorgensen's work is a breath of fresh air in the fight for sexual equality and our right to be educated about our own bodies. Drawing from a huge number of informational sources she manages to create an in-depth study that is contemporary, inclusive and comprehensive in its breadth. Approaching her work through the folkloric lens...this work [is] incredibly accessible to readers at all levels, especially when tempered with her natural wit and charm.

Mythcrafts - Emma Woods