The Queer Bible, Fat Studies and LGBTQ Reproduction: America’s universities are peddling corrosive ideologies, says report

America’s institutions of higher education have bought into progressive ideology hook, line and sinker.

That’s according to Young America’s Foundation (YAF), which compiled dozens of course listings from the nation’s most prestigious universities – each more shocking than the last.

“Many of the courses and descriptions listed in the following pages may seem comical at first reading, but the reality that these are the courses shaping the minds and worldview of the rising generation is hardly a laughing matter,” the report reads.

What’s even more shocking is that public universities, such as the University of Michigan and Ohio State University, are receiving tax dollars, and the Ivy League institutions listed here receive billions in federal contracts, grants and tax breaks on their endowments.

The classes – which range from literary to political to medical – include:

Queer Nightlife

“What do we want from a night out? What is possible in this ‘queer’ time?” this course asks. It also explores “the connections between and among nightlife, queer worldmaking, and other unruly subcultural practices” (Modern Culture & Media 1205I, Brown University).

Black Queer Writing and Media

“Since these materials decenter whiteness and patriarchal heterosexism, they often seem illegible to those approaching them from the perspective of the dominant culture.” The class discusses “Black Queer contemporary novels, films, essays, and visual art in order to understand the ways that these works move past the limitations of those parameters” (English 2560, Cornell University).

The Queer Bible

“This course surveys queer and trans readings of biblical texts [. . .] By reading the Bible with the methods of queer and trans theoretical approaches, this class destabilizes long held assumptions about what the bible–and religion–says about gender and sexuality” (Religion 033. Swarthmore College).

Sex Wars

“The aim is to shed light on contemporary discourses on sexual representation and sexual conduct as commonly framed under controversial rubrics such as “OnlyFans,” film ratings, “no kink at Pride,” sexting, “revenge porn,” sex-trafficking, and more [. . .] students are invited to consider lesbian-socialist, working-class butch/femme, black feminist, youth-liberationist, sex-radical, and transfeminist permutations of the politics of ‘pleasure and danger’.” The class asks questions like, “What is violent pornography? How (if at all) should it be produced, regulated, distributed, discussed, and consumed? Whom do antiprostitution laws keep safe? What furthers the conditions of possibility for black feminist porn to flourish?” (Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies 2650. University of Pennsylvania).

Critical Fat Studies

“This course explores fat studies as a corpus of theory and research that critically examines the medical, social, and cultural pathologization of weight and size [. . .] we will consider multiple responses to anti-fatness [including] the queer fat liberation movement, the ‘body positivity’ movement and the ‘Health at Every Size’ paradigm. We ask, what logics do these paradigms mobilize to fight against fatness, or against anti-fat bias? We emphasize gender, ability, class, race and whiteness throughout this course” (Gender 231-0-21. Northwestern University).

Street Dance Activism: Co-choreographic Praxis as Activism

“We explore the creation and implementation of Street Dance Activism as a Co-choreographic somatic healing modality, and form of spiritual transcendence, through participating in the Global Dance Meditation for Black Liberation and deeply engaging with The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist [. . .] Liberation not only as a single entity, but as a global, collective consciousness. Black liberation is your liberation, and your liberation is Black liberation” (Theater, Dance & Media 181B, Harvard University).

LGBTQ Reproduction

“This class surveys LGBTQ+ reproduction through several theoretical lenses. We explore definitions of ‘family’ and ‘parenting’ across time and cultures. How are LGBTQ families specifically represented? Do these depictions challenge or reinforce cultural beliefs about family? We explore the biological, social, cultural, and legal experiences of LGBTQ+ family-making” (Women & Gender Studies 415. University of Michigan).

The Space Crone and Her Children: Queer Reproductions in Science Fiction

“Sexuality, gender, and birth are of great interest to speculative writers; the future is an exciting place to live erotic lives. This is a course about possible genders, possible sexualities, possible ecologies. Reading queer feminist science fiction [. . .] we will consider how cycles of life might (already) be otherwise and interrogate current events re: reproductive and LGBTQIA+ rights” (Literature 1152V, Brown University).

Introduction to the Occult Sciences

“From healing crystals to the personalized astrology of Co-Star, tarot cards to New-Age inflected conspiracy theories, fortune tellers to countless films, we are surrounded by appeals to occult powers. Building on case studies from classical antiquity and Jewish, Christian, and Islamic letters, this course traces the development of the occult sciences through an array of historical periods, social contexts, and discursive materials” (History of Science, Medicine & Public Health 451. Yale University).

Witchcraft

From the Witch of Endor to Harry Potter, the witch has become a lodestone for debates surrounding fantasy, gender, race, religion, and sexuality [. . .] This course argues that the witch is a revelatory figure. If we pay close attention to her, we can see vast terrains of human interaction that might otherwise go unnoticed in historical analysis. (Gender & Women’s Studies 166 PO. Pomona College).

Cannibalism, Shamanism, Alterity

Students “will read and discuss contemporary theories on alterity (otherness), focusing on indigenous forms of producing otherness involving humans, non-humans, and non-material subjects. Alterity and subjectivity in Amerindian [Native American] societies are produced through the manipulations of bodies; cannibalism and shamanism are particular forms of creating the social body and different types of subjects” (Anthropology 100 PZ. Pomona College).

Christian Nationalism, White Supremacy, and Antisemitism

“This course works its way backward in time to situate Christian Nationalism in the U.S. as an outgrowth of historical and political manifestations of Christian hegemony and conquest in other parts of the modern and premodern world.” It discusses topics like “Christianity, Whiteness, patriarchy, anti-Blackness, anti-Islam, and anti-Jewness” (Religion 027. Swarthmore College).

Rage: Women, Activism, and Performance in the Americas

This class teaches that “rage is a political act. Feminists have turned to rage politics to fight against gender violence, misogyny, and institutionalized patriarchy for decades” (Gender & Women’s Studies 2372. Bowdoin College).

Woke Nature: Towards an Anthropology of Non-Human Beings

“The core of anthropological thought has been organized around the assumption that the production of complex cultural systems is reserved to the domain of the human experience [but] an emerging body of scholarship that proposes expanding our understandings of culture, and the ability to produce meaning in the world, to include non-human beings (e.g. plants, wildlife, micro-organisms, mountains)” (Sociology & Anthropology 313. Carleton College).

Queer Ecologies: Gender, Sexuality, & the Environment

“Queer ecologies seek to disrupt the gendered and heterosexual assumptions embedded in how we understand the environment, nature, and bodies (human and animal). From animal studies, queer and feminist social movements for environmental justice, trans*natures, and sexual politics, Queer Ecologies will articulate a commitment to new thinking about the challenges of planetary and climate change” (Women & Gender Studies 2260. Ohio State University).

Gender in Gaming

This class “examines the history of gender in video games, focusing on how movements like #GamerGate, #RaceFail09, internet bullying, doxing and trolling emerged as the coordinated effort to consolidate and maintain videogames and geek culture as the domain of masculinity and whiteness” (Gender & Women’s Studies 204. University of Illinois).

Considerations in the Care of Transgender and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents

This course will review considerations for the care of transgender and gender-diverse children and adolescents [and] will cover the historical context and evolution of gender-affirming care” (Human Sexuality 6314. University of Minnesota).

Sex and Gender in US Medicine: Queering the Medical Model

“Queering the Medical Model addresses homosexual, transgender, and intersex history of medicine in the United States from 1800 to the present [. . .] it explores how sex and gender became entangled with the so-called medical model, from the role of medical jurisprudence in leveraging a two-sex system for legal claims, sex and sexual disorder research in the early 20th century, the development of hormonal and surgical technologies to manipulate gender morphology in the later 20th century, and the impact of the medical model on medical access” (Health Medicine 3035. University of Minnesota).

Bi/Pan/Asexuality

This class explores “the experiences, needs, and goals of bisexual/biromantic, pansexual/panromantic, and asexual/aromantic (BPA) people, as well as their interactions with the mainstream lesbian & gay community” (Gender & Women’s Studies 344. University of Wisconsin).

Gender and Food

A service-learning course exploring the intersections between social inequalities, food, and culture, with an emphasis on communities” (Sociology 4543. Mississippi State University).

Reading Bodies

This course discusses “gender and sexuality as a matter of nationality, race and class in nineteenth century French literature, art and popular culture. [Topics include] Marie Antoinette and patriotic masculinity, fashion plates and cross-dressers, manual laborers, dandies, prostitutes and sexual hermaphrodites among others” (French 173 PO. Pomona College).

Swiftian Shakespeare

This course examines “the connections between the most famous playwright in history and the self-proclaimed, ‘mastermind’ lyricist, Taylor Swift” (English 2148. Louisiana State University).

“[The report highlights] the complete erosion of intellectual diversity and seriousness in American higher education,” said YAF spokesman Nick Baker. “[It] illustrate[s] the extent to which the values of leftism – particularly those focused on intersectionality, identity politics, and divisiveness – have infiltrated academia.”