This article uses a semi-anecdotal approach to discuss the institutionalization of Cultural Studies in the classroom. I look at the ways in which there is a dynamic conversation between theory and practice in the classroom, drawing on the everyday experience of teaching. The article does not give an exhaustive account of the current debates and concepts of theory/practice, but rather explores how the daily discourses of life for students fit into institutional and structural discourses of power. I read the classroom as a cultural text of the relations of power from a feminist perspective in which I sketch some of the pedagogical consequences of teaching a theory that deconstructs the basic categories of identity. My narrative is a sort of auto, ethno and pedagogical experience as a US identified and trained scholar teaching ‘Sex, Culture, and Society’ in a university setting in Latin America.