Palgrave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality

Palgrave Advances

by Matt Houlbrook (Editor), Harry Cocks (Editor)

This book offers an overview of approaches, methods, recent work and major debates in the history of sexuality. The two decades since the publication of Michel Foucault's seminal History of Sexuality have witnessed both a proliferation of empirical and theoretical historical studies and an increasing divergence in approaches to the writing of histories of sexuality in Europe and North America. Yet while these centrifugal trajectories have been identified in many edited collections, there has been no coherent attempt to address, or draw together, this diversity of practice and methodology. This collection aims to do just this, drawing on contributions from a range of scholars, each examining the past, present and future of the exploration of sex, as a social, cultural and historical phenomenon.

Genres: History, Sexuality

305 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of essays building on Foucault’s The History of Sexuality and the conception of sexuality as a social construct. Good overview of the numerous approaches one can take with such a broad topic. Highlights for me was the essay on urban space and the essay on childhood and youth.

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an essential book for historians of sexuality (and gender). These articles present balanced, stimulating accounts of various key themes, such as cities, marriage, childhood, etc. While most simply do their job, some are absolutely pivotal. Chris Waters’ article on sexology made me realise, for the first time, how deeply intermingled the origins of the historiography of sexuality are with sexology — and especially with the reformist strain of early sexology. In which ever ways we might protest, the history of sexuality is always perceived to have some say in contemporary arguments about the legitimacy of particular identities and practices. This leads to Alison Oram’s article on cross-dressing in history. Her careful summary of discussions about lesbianism and sexual inversion at the turn of the twentieth century display all the complexities of gender’s relationship to sexuality; her careful interweaving of transgender perspectives suggests the nascent and blooming areas of research which are now coming to prominence.