The school celebrated the recent opening of the archive, in the Wolfgram Memorial Library, by hosting a series of provocative speakers under the heading "Sex in the Library." (Tagline: "We're doing it all week long.") Topics ranged from teen sexting to "gender outlaws" for whom male-or-female is an insufficient choice.
The rectangular fourth-floor repository is tucked between a quiet study area and the dense racks of children's books used by students studying to become teachers.
What's in it? Posters from 1970s porn films. X-rated movies. Doctors' waiting-room pamphlets from the 1940s, in which sex occurred only between white, married, heterosexual couples. A signed galley proof of The Human Pony, which, trust us, you really don't want to know about.
"Students can look at these things and see a history of sexuality, of sex education - the culture, the prejudices, how our attitudes have changed, how have they not changed," said Molly Wolf, the archive founder and curator, and a graduate of the sexuality master's program.
A particular prize is an original, stapled-together copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, which before its huge popularity in the 1970s was called Women and Their Bodies and sold for 75 cents.
"It's a seminal text," Wolf said. "No pun intended."
Awkward jokes and double entendres seem almost mandatory in any discussion of sex - and that's fine, she said. It helps lower the tension around the subject.
Widener arranged its sexuality program to encourage immersion, citing studies that show longer exposure makes students more comfortable and open to learning.
