You got all A's? That's terrific!

Prequil: None of this - NONE OF THIS - is exaggerated or made-up. It is fact, followed by fact. I'm not kidding.

The Young America's Foundation - a 40 year old conservative non-profit organization - among other things does research on the most bizarre college and university offerings every calendar year. The listings are at once hysterically funny, while simultaneously frighteningly stupid. Los Angeles area institutes of higher learning have walked away with no less than 25% of the awards in the 6 years these listings have come out, and this year is no different.

2007's overall winner was Occidental College in L.A., with 2 entries in total, to include the number 1 winner: "The Phallus."

The Phallus is a survey, offered by Occidental's department of critical theory and social justice, focused on - and I quote directly - "Feminist and queer takings-on of the phallus." Topics include "the relation between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism." Before I go any further, I believe two things need to be noted:

1) I'm no prude, but I do believe the sexual habits, customs, and thoughts of individuals belong in non-public settings, and ....
2) In the not-so-distant past, Professor Jeffrey Tobin, who wrote and teaches the course, might be required to seek psychiatric help before he was allowed back into the classroom. These days, he's considered "innovative" and "refreshing." I still think he's a perv, but that's just me.

Also this semester, Occidental will offer the course that the Young America's Foundation rated No. 5 in bizarreness: "Blackness." This class will explore "new blackness," "critical blackness," "post-blackness," "unforgivable blackness" and "queer blackness." They also offer a companion course, "Whiteness", which discusses the obvious right to privilege that all white males are entitled to. Their words...not mine.

Annual tuition at Occidental, a private college, is $32,800. That means if you take "The Phallus" and "Blackness" (plus its prerequisite "Whiteness") this year on a four-course-per-semester schedule, you will have set your parents back $12,300. That's just terrific, isn't it?

UCLA won the coveted No. 2 slot on the list, with "Queer Musicology." Queer musicology is a new field dating from the 1990s based in part on the idea that if you're gay, then music by gay composers such as Benjamin Britten will sound different to you than it would if you were straight.

Nipping at UCLA's heels was Amherst College in Massachusetts, with "Taking Marx Seriously." The first sentence of the course description is: "Should Marx be given another chance?" 100,000,000 people died in gulag's while Marx was in charge, evidently a minor inconvenience to be overcome by the Amherst prof's teaching this lovely course.

There is more...and here it is, in order:

1. "The Phallus"Occidental College. A seminar in critical theory and social justice, this class examines Sigmund Freud, phallologocentrism and the lesbian phallus.

2. "Queer Musicology"UCLA. This course welcomes students from all disciplines to study what it calls an "unruly discourse" on the subject, understood through the works of Cole Porter, Pussy Tourette and John Cage.

3. "Taking Marx Seriously"Amherst College. This advanced seminar for 15 students examines whether Karl Marx still matters despite the countless interpretations and applications of his ideas, or whether the world has entered a post-Marxist era.

4. "Adultery Novel"University of Pennsylvania. Falling in the newly named "gender, culture and society" major, this course examines novels and films of adultery such as "Madame Bovary" and "The Graduate" through Marxist, Freudian and feminist lenses.

5. "Blackness"Occidental College. Critical race theory and the idea of "post-blackness" are among the topics covered in this seminar course examining racial identity. A course on whiteness is a prerequisite.

6. "Border Crossings, Borderlands: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Immigration"University of Washington. This women studies department offering takes a new look at recent immigration debates in the U.S., integrating questions of race and gender while also looking at the role of the war on terror.

7. "Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism"Mount Holyoke College. The educational studies department offers this first-year, writing-intensive seminar asking whether whiteness is "an identity, an ideology, a racialized social system," and how it relates to racism.

8. "Native American Feminisms"University of Michigan. The women's studies and American culture departments offer this course on contemporary Native American feminism, including its development and its relation to struggles for land.

9. "'Mail Order Brides?' Understanding the Philippines in Southeast Asian Context"Johns Hopkins University. This history course cross-listed with anthropology, political science and studies of women, gender and sexuality is limited to 35 students and asks for an anthropology course as a prerequisite.

10. "Cyberfeminism"Cornell University. Cornell's art history department offers this seminar looking at art produced under the influence of feminism, post-feminism and the Internet.

11. "American Dreams/American Realities"Duke University. Part of Duke's Hart Leadership Program that prepares students for public service, this history course looks at American myths, from "city on the hill" to "foreign devil," in shaping American history.

12. "Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism"Swarthmore College. Swarthmore's "peace and conflict studies" program offers this course that "will deconstruct 'terrorism' " and "study the dynamics of cultural marginalization" while seeking alternatives to violence.