Notes on a course that discusses gender and sexuality in Higher Education

Abstract

This article has the objective of analyzing the enunciations of academic students that have taken the “Gêneros e sexualidades nos espaços educativos” course (Genders and sexualities on educational spaces), offered by a public university in southern Brazil, which aimed to problematize if students have noticed changes in their understandings related to the topics of body, genders, and sexualities. Therefore, we applied an online questionnaire composed of open and closed questions to students. In the analyzes, the course’s space was pointed as: a possibility to rethink students’ understandings about the topics of body, genders, and sexualities; a space that promotes acknowledgements of the differences, aiding in the comprehension of biases and discriminations, and a relevant course for professional qualification of students. However, some of them reported not noticing any changes in understandings regarding those topics after attending the course, but pointed some deepening on the themes studied in class. Thus, through this study, it was evident that students acknowledged the course’s space as a possibility to rethink their understandings about the topics of body, genders, and sexualities.