Did you ever think that you might see pornography in a class? At Boston University and many other institutions across the country, it is becoming increasingly apparent that you just might see something slip in–to the curriculum.

Some in the academic community are reconsidering the role of sexual material in the classroom. According to a recent TIME Magazine article, the University of California at Berkeley is offering a course entitled “Cinema and the Sex Act,” in which students view Hollywood NC-17-rated films.

And some BU professors and students say they believe there is a real value to examining pornography in cultural contexts in various fields of study.

BU spokesman Colin Riley said the university does not have any official policy on pornography in the classroom.

“Anything with regard to the curriculum is the purview of the school, the dean, the department chair and the faculty member,” he said. “The university is a place of academic freedom … These are academic issues and they are best directed to the [Office of] the Provost.”

The Office of the Provost declined an opportunity to comment.

Riley said “characterizing things as pornography because there’s nude scenes in it is probably not appropriate.” He add that how pornography is characterized is vitally important.

Metropolitan College women’s history professor Gillian Mason taught a class last semester on censorship where materials of a sexually explicit nature were discussed in the context of the history of banned material.

Mason, a Ph.D. candidate who is writing her dissertation on pornography and obscenity law, said she thinks the historical and cultural context of pornography is significant, as well as the way it is used in various curricula. But, according to Mason, professors should have the discretion to introduce material to the classroom.

“I think that the professor has a certain responsibility to keep up the academic standards of the university in the way that the material is presented,” Mason said

College of Arts and Sciences freshman Lauren Stong said she watched a fellatio scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula in her Decadence and Desire writing seminar. She said the film was used as a comparison to the classic book.

“I was shocked when I did see the film,” Stong said, “but at the same time, I could understand why [the film was shown, based on material from the book].”

Mason said students watching porn in the classroom has benefits that are not purely academic, offering students a new way to look at an undeniable part of modern culture.

“Even though pornography might not be common in the classroom, it’s something that students commonly interact with in their own lives,” she said. “I think that students recognize, ‘this is what’s going on in the culture, and here in the classroom I have a kind of new way of looking at what’s going on in my own life.'”