John Nicholas Brown Center - Brown University

Monday – Friday from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.
John Nicholas Brown Center (JNBC) for the Study of American Civilization
Carriage House Gallery, 357 Benefit Street
Providence, RI
Free and open to the public.

The exhibit explores how Americans have learned about sex over the last 100 years. It examines five places teenagers learn about sex: in the military and schools, from parents and friends, and through popular culture.

Upcoming Exhibit Programs:

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Panel Discussion: The Politics of Sex Education in Rhode Island
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: John Nicholas Brown Center, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
Free and open to the public
Moderator: Leah Nahmias, master’s student in the public humanities program, Brown University

Panelists:

Steven Cohen, executive director, Rhode Island Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, and a teacher at Classical High School
Dr. Patricia Flanagan, Rhode IslandTeen Pregnancy Coalition
Kristina Diamond, director of Public Relations and Community Affairs for Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island

This panel will discuss the current battles, in Rhode Island and nationally, over what students should learn about sex, and what sexual education materials are appropriate and responsible. Panelists will explore how national debates about the use of abstinence-only sexual education materials have played out in Rhode Island, and will delve into the future of sexual education in Rhode Island.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Speaker: “Confessions of a Sex Educator," featuring sex educator Megan Andelloux from Miko Exotic Wear
Time: 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Location: John Nicholas Brown Center, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
Free and open to the public

Andelloux acts out, explains, and demystifies what preteens and teenagers really ask, really know, and really do in a sex ed classroom. A veteran sex educator, Andelloux worked for nine years teaching sex in classrooms in New Jersey and Connecticut, moving on to Planned Parenthood and finally, Providence’s “Friendly Neighborhood Sex Shop,” Miko.

Thursday, May 1, 2008
Keynote Speaker: Norma Swenson, co-founder of Boston Women’s Health Book Collective; faculty, Harvard School of Public Health; and co-author, Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Smith-Buonanno Hall, Room 106, on the Pembroke Campus of Brown University
Free and open to the public

Keynote address: Norma Swenson, adjunct lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, will speak about her experience as co-founder of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and co-author of the book, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Swenson has four decades of experience teaching about sexuality.

The Exhibit Features:

a military barracks during World War I, when the army worried mostly about avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases
a bedroom from the 1960s, where learning might have involved parents, books, magazines, or friends
a basement hangout from the 1990s, where kids learned about sex from TV, popular music, and magazines, and
a classroom from the early 21st century, a place to examine current debates about controversial topics including abstinence-only education and whether sex education should even be taught outside the home.

Download a PDF of the press release on "Beyond the Birds and the Bees" and a full program schedule.

Related Talks Around Campus

Burgess Thesis Presentation Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Thesis Presentation by Fokion Burgess: Calculus of the Flesh: Eugenics and the Sexual Pedagogy of American Empire
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: MacMillan Hall, Room 115
Free and open to the public

Following the Spanish-American war, as the United States came to be a world empire, imperialists were faced with tremendous difficulties in attempting to articulate a national identity. Various disciplines and disciplinary practices were constructed in order to police the body politic. One of these was the eugenics movement.

Through the lives of different progressive-era reformers such as Winfield Scott Hall, David Starr Jordan, G. Stanley Hall, Booker T. Washington, and Jacob Riis, to name a few, this project investigates various social and academic movements, particularly the progressive education movement, the push for sex education, the emergence of American medicine and epidemiology, and the "development" of developmental psychology, and their connection with the eugenics movement, within the framework of the racial, gender, and sexual politics of American imperialism and the project of constructing a nation-state. The project takes as a broad theme the use of both space and time as biopolitical markers.

Masters students in Brown University’s public humanities program unveil a new exhibit:

Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Sexual Education in the 20th Century April 9 through May 23, 2008

Masters students in Brown University’s
public humanities program unveil a new exhibit:

Beyond the Birds and the Bees:
Sexual Education in the 20th Century
April 9 through May 23, 2008