This thesis examines the causes and consequences of the most commonly-taught federally-funded sexual health curriculum in Connecticut since 2014, Be Proud! Be Responsible!. Taking up Michel Foucault's concept of biopower, I situate this curriculum in an ongoing history of sex education as population regulation, a project which has often looked to science to permit –– yet conceal –– its stratifying effects. Be Proud! Be Responsible! is a quintessential model of \"evidence-based\" sex education, one that carries this chronology of scientific-sexual intervention to advance neoliberal governmentality and form responsibilized subjects. This thesis also argues that the implementation of this curriculum –– in Connecticut and beyond –– reinvigorates the exaggerated anxieties, racialized blame, and behaviorist punishment of a youth HIV sex panic, originally incited during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The pedagogical elements of Be Proud! Be Responsible! that revive these panic logics are analyzed in depth. The thesis concludes with an exploration of the possibilities for alternative sex education in Connecticut, using the critiques of sex panic, as well as personal experience and anecdotes from consultative conversations, as a guide.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["HIV education","Sex panic","Responsibilization"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 24327