News

Grad school just got a little bit sexier.

The University of Toronto will launch Canada's first graduate program in sexual diversity studies this fall, allowing students to pursue master's and PhD programs focused on the sexual aspect of everything from pulp fiction to public health.

"It's really an emergent field and the university has been quick to recognize that," said Scott Rayter, acting director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.

Several Canadian universities, including Queen's, McGill, Université du Québec à Montréal, York and UBC, already offer undergraduate degrees in sexuality studies, most of which allow students to explore academic issues of sexual orientation.

But U of T is the first Canadian institution to recognize the advanced study of sexuality, following the lead of U.S. schools such as University of Chicago, Yale, Cornell, New York University and the City University of New York.

There are 165 registered students in the University of Toronto's undergrad program, which started 10 years ago.

"Grad programs seemed like the next logical step, and the big reason is that the students want to do it," Dr. Rayter said. "Every day I'm getting e-mails from India, from Brazil, from all these people who want to come and do our program."

The inaugural crop of grad students - nine men and three women - come from across Canada and around the world.

One student hails from China and is focusing his senior PhD research on how the gay community in a media-oppressed state has come of age in the Internet era.

The graduate degrees will be collaborative programs with other faculties, meaning that students apply through departments such as history or law, but their thesis topics are approved through the Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.

The research interests of this year's grad students range from queer theatre in Canada to the homoerotics of militarism and peace activism.

Paul Halferty, 34, is in the fifth year of his PhD at U of T's drama centre, but will enter the collaborative program this year to continue his research in queer theatre.

"Being in the kind of environment where I'm being exposed to a lot of different people who are all looking at issues of sexuality from different vantage points is valuable to me because it enriches and augments my own scholarship," he said.

Mr. Halferty believes his focus on sexuality will help him find a teaching job at a university.

"I think there'll be an English department or a drama department that doesn't have anyone with an expertise in sexual diversity or the important contribution gay men and women have made to the theatre," he said. "I definitely think it will make me stand out."

Twenty-four-year-old Andrea Polonijo also hopes to teach when she is finished her graduate work in health promotion and sexual diversity studies.

A former high-school sexual health educator, Ms. Polonijo noticed a dearth of information for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth, and decided to make correcting that dearth the focus of her academic studies.

"There's definitely a gap in the education and what can be said in the classroom," she said.

She will enter the second year of her master's studies at the centre this year, and is planning to do her PhD and become a professor of health communications, where she hopes to broaden curriculums to make them more sexually inclusive.

Ms. Polonijo, who was accepted to seven other Canadian graduate programs, said she was one of the "first people in the door" when she heard about the new graduate program.

"There's a lot of emphasis on race and health and gender and health, but not so much on sexual diversity and health," she said.

For now, the research of those enrolled in the new graduate program seems to be skewed heavily toward the humanities, law and public health, but the program has not yet partnered with the sciences, where research into the physiological or neurological connections to sexual development, orientation and other sexual issues is also an emergent field of study.

Dr. Rayter said research into so-called "gay genes," sex law and pornography, sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS, health care and parenting would be a natural fit for the sexual diversity degree.

"I think some students would think that it's too gay," he said of the centre's current focus.

Mr. Halferty believes the centre will evolve with time, as new students introduce the faculty to their own research interests. The very name of the centre, he said, unlike programs that declare themselves centres for gay and lesbian studies, shows that research will not be narrowly defined.

"I think many of the people who got [the centre] started were queer themselves and very active in gay and lesbian liberation," he said. "But I think the centre reflects a desire to look at sexuality broadly. It's not something that's just about queers, it's about everybody."