Reuters 
       
TORONTO, Oct 22: An undergraduate program at Canada's august University of Toronto offers discussions on flogging, restraint, and role-play, as well as an arts course called 'Queerly Canadian'.

But teachers and students insist it's a serious academic program that isn't simply about sex.

"It's not sexy sex, where we're talking about whips and chains, but we will talk about whips and chains," said graduating student Robbie Morgan, 33, who left her job teaching sex education in Chicago to attend the Sexual Diversity Studies program, one of the largest of its kind in North America.

"We will talk about whips and chains in a political, social, cultural, religious context of sexuality and how that sexuality affects those institutions."

The Sexual Diversity program appears one of the edgier ones on offer at the university, which was founded in 1827 and is best known for its science and medical research. Alumni include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lester B Pearson, insulin inventors Frederick Banting and Charles Best, author Margaret Atwood and film director David Cronenberg.

The program promises an academic approach to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual issues -- from history and law to the performance of sadomasochism.

"It's a very serious analytical exercise and it isn't what a lot of people think it is," director David Rayside said during a visit to the school, which is located in the original Romanesque-style University College building at U of T's leafy downtown campus.

The program, established eight years ago, got a C$1 million ($900,000) boost this week with a donation from Canadian winemaker Mark Bonham to expand the curriculum.

There are plans for Canada's first undergraduate major in sexual diversity studies, and for master's and doctorate programs from 2008.

"This is a long-neglected area and Canada provides an ideal environment to take up these questions creatively," said Bonham in a statement.

The program includes a drama course called "Sexual Performance: Case Studies in SM (sadomasochism)" and the arts and literature course 'Queerly Canadian' for which one student wrote an in-depth review of a male strip show.

But it also focuses on traditional academic discussion -- from Plato to same-sex marriage, with courses like "Theories of Sexuality" and "Sexual Diversity Politics."

Canadian provinces were the first jurisdictions in North America to legalize gay marriage -- and Toronto, with one of the largest gay and lesbian communities in the world, is a perfect backdrop for such a program, said Rayside.

"This is a city that has diversified a lot, and is muddling through how to recognize that diversity in ways that are quite interesting," he said.

"We're located in the heart of a tremendous laboratory where cultural and international differences actually play a role, and that's part of what we do."

Students were keen to dispel the perception that the program caters only to activists and gays.