Thursday, May 19, 2005

Building enrollments 

Jay Clarkson has had no trouble getting students at the University of Iowa to sign up for his fall class examining pornography in popular culture.
One person who isn't a fan, however, is Iowa House Speaker Chris Rants, who is questioning whether tax dollars should be spent on the elective class.
'Do they know that we're not done with their budget yet?'' Rants, R-Sioux City, said. 'I'm pretty sure we don't need to increase state funding by $40 million to teach critical pornography studies.''
Source. As you might expect, there's a waiting list to get into this class, in which Clarkson wants to get students to "think about how pornography has moved from the adult bookstore to everyday advertising."

You see this sort of thing on campus frequently. Professor X has a class that, if advertised as "Sexual Images in American Advertising", might not grab student attention. "Feminist Critique of Advertising" wouldn't either. "Pr0n in American Culture"? Dingdingdingding! Winner! So in a sense, Clarkson is using porn in his own advertising. This happens more often than you may realize.

(Another jw H/T!)

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