Understandings of sexuality and sex education have changed dramatically, and in this collection, the authors explore the various texts that were used to teach, to entertain, to sanction and to form a sexual standard for a nation. According to Nelson and Martin, these include a puberty education, sermons on abstinence, medical writings promoting sexual fulfillment, Hollywood comedies about sexual coming of age and picture books validating homosexuality. The essays included here are designed to illustrate the many responses that Anglophone culture has had to such texts for over a century.
"Why do some sexual pedagogies succeed and some, perhaps most, fail? Sex education - the whole question of who should be entrusted to persuade whom to do what - has never been so hotly contested as it is today. Yet in many ways the relationship between what is taught and what is practised is as little understood as ever. This thought-provoking volume looks unblinkingly at over a century of efforts, in Britain, the United States and Australia, to intervene in citizens' understandings of their own desires. The contributors take to task purveyors of pornography, children's books, films, sex manuals and tampons, and illuminate some surprising conjunctions between gender, sex and the marketplace." - Trev Lynn Broughton, Center for Women's Studies, University of York
"Nelson and Martin are among the brightest of the younger scholars in the field of children's studies...Sexual Pedagogies reflects a high standard of scholarship, comprehension of a very controversial topic, and original thinking...This is a book that will make students, scholars, librarians, and the general reader think carefully about the problematic nature of sex education." - Jack Zipes, Department of German, University of Minnesota and author of The Brothers Grimm (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
