A Look Into Princeton’s Body Positive, BDSM and Decolonization Courses
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Princeton University faced recent scrutiny after announcing three controversial elective courses. Taught by arts and dance scholars, these courses explore the material culture of Black and queer BDSM communities, body positivity, and decolonization.
Critics of the so-called notoriously woke
university have compared these electives to forcing undergraduates to smoke cigarettes to study the impacts of smoking.
These courses are electives, however. So, while students can choose to take them, enrollment is voluntary. Elective courses teach students how to navigate society and explore their interests, supporting a well-rounded education.
Supporting Inclusive Learning Environments
Driven by a commitment to address its history of racial segregation and limited diversity, Princeton University has introduced various programs and initiatives that promote diversity, inclusivity, and social change.
These initiatives include elective courses that explore historically excluded perspectives and challenge social norms. Class titles include:
- Black + Queer in Leather: Black Leather/BDSM Material Culture
- Anthropology of Religion: Fetishism and Decolonization
- FAT: The F-Word and the Public Body
Princeton also hosts diversity centers and student organizations that work to create safe spaces for underrepresented communities to express themselves through meaningful discussions. The initiatives and programs cultivate a future generation that values and embraces diversity and inclusivity.
Benefits of College Electives
Princeton’s newsworthy electives cultivate academic and intellectual freedom, enabling exploration beyond traditional curricula.
Exposure to historically excluded perspectives enhances empathy, problem-solving skills, and cultural competence.
Students who enroll in these types of elective courses benefit from learning how to navigate society beyond simply finding a career.
Princeton's Newsworthy Electives
We wanted to take a deeper look at what these courses offer students. Let’s explore these historically excluded course topics and see how they foster critical thinking and intellectual exploration.
Black + Queer in Leather: Black Leather / BDSM material culture
Students in the Black + Queer: Black Leather/BDSM material culture course will examine the world of Black queer BDSM communities and their relationship with leather culture and BDSM practices. This class explores three perspectives:
- Visual Artists and Exhibitions
- Black queer BDSM communities
- Architecture & location
By studying this community, students learn how societal views on sexuality, sensation, and culture have evolved in recent decades.
Course material includes six books, including a Black gay anthology and critical response and research papers. Students will also survey BDSM archives in research libraries, community groups, and individual members of this community.
FAT: The F word and the Public Body
FAT: The F Word and the Public Body examines the concept of “fatness” in society.
Through performance, memoirs, and media texts that serve as case studies, students will explore the changes in the construct of fatness — its history, aesthetics, and politics — and the different meanings and ways fatness appears and is accepted/rejected over time.
The course fosters critical thinking on body positivity and self-acceptance while critiquing societal norms by exploring and discussing society's relationship with the term “fat” and its impact on individual people.
These explorations allow students to challenge fatphobia and body shaming to create a compassionate, empathetic understanding of the diversity of body types.
Anthropology in Religion: Fetishism and Decolonization
In Anthropology of Religion: Fetishism and Decolonization, students delve into the anthropology of religion with a specific focus on the concept of fetishism and its relation to decolonization.
Students engage in critical debates on race, sexuality, and cultural differences by studying the colonial history of the study of religion as well as religion’s role in the fetishization of cultural practices.
Ultimately, this course encourages students to explore how colonialism continues to impact society, particularly historically excluded communities, who are now reclaiming their cultural heritages.
This class prepares students to advocate for more inclusive and fair societies that value the full diversity of cultural beliefs and practices.
Perspectives From an Author of the Required Readings
Amber Jamilla Musser is an influential professor of English at CUNY/The Graduate Center. She’s the thought leader behind “Sensational Flesh,” required reading for the Princeton course Black + Queer in Leather: Black Leather/BSDM Material.
“It's really an honor knowing that my book is being taught in Black + Queer in Leather: Black Leather/BDSM Material Culture. A lot of what 'Sensational Flesh' aims to do is to look at different ways that race and masochism (not just BDSM) intersect in order to see how people have used its vocabulary and material culture to enact their own forms of freedom.
“Within the histories and theories I trace, there are, of course, contradictions in these enactments, but I think having students exposed to these arguments is helpful for seeing how sensation is encoded culturally — this makes it easier to see tensions underlying what might appear to be a liberatory discourse and unexpected ways to enact freedom.
“Often, the history of Blackness and BDSM (Blackness and sexuality or pleasure more broadly) is tightly connected to histories of enslavement, and this course is a way for students to think about Black pleasure in other ways.
“It also allows students to move away from a discourse on Black woundedness toward thinking about possibilities for Black agency. These are especially important aims in our cultural and political landscape; thus, making this a really fantastic course to have.”
Expanding Diversity in the Course Catalog
Princeton University’s elective courses may face criticism, but each one offers benefits to students who choose them.
By exploring underrepresented perspectives and challenging social norms, these classes foster critical thinking, cultural competence, and empathy.
These courses also promote a more inclusive campus, setting a new and necessary standard for diversity, inclusivity, and belonging in higher education.
