Heike Bauer A new collection of essays I edited, Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World (Temple UP, 2015) shows that the emergence of modern sexuality was a global phenomenon. The book examines the contemporaneous emergence of sexual science in Europe, Asia, Peru, and the Middle […]
Tag: Sexology
The Sex Institute on Euston Road
Rebecca Saunders At the Wellcome Collection’s new exhibition ‘The Institute of Sexology’, visitors must surreptitiously part a curtain to peer at a rosy clay vagina set inside a bifurcated case. Made in the early twentieth century as a teaching aid for health professionals, the Gynaeplaque sits behind a glass pane covered in fingerprints […]
Gender Matters at The Institute of Sexology
Heike Bauer The Institute of Sexology at the Wellcome Trust is the first major exhibition in the UK dedicated to the history of sexology. Billed as a ‘candid exploration of the most publicly discussed of private acts’, it seeks to capture the imagination of prospective audiences with the deliberately provocative invitation […]
A Sexologist and his two Archives: Erwin J. Haeberle
Interviewed by Heike Bauer and Jana Funke Erwin J. Haeberle is the founder of two archives – the “Haeberle-Hirschfeld-Archive” and the “Archive for Sexology” – which between them constitute one of the most significant collections of sexological work and related materials available. Initially a literary scholar in the 1960s, Haeberle’s discovery of the […]
Globalizing the History of Sexology
Chris Waters It is no exaggeration to say that this year one could attend the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), held in early January in New York City, and experience a queer conference within a conference. The US Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History brought […]
Masters of Sex: Race, Racism and Responses to Masters and Johnson
Note: Spoilers for seasons one and two of Masters of Sex are below. Donna J. Drucker The Showtime television program Masters of Sex focuses on the real-life American sex researchers William H. Masters (1915–2001) and Virginia E. Johnson (1925–2013). Masters and Johnson are best known for their first two book-length sex research […]
Born This Way? Sexual Science and the Invention of a Political Strategy
Jana Funke Gay politics today tend to be premised on the ‘born this way’ argument, the idea that being gay is not a matter of choice or preference, but rather an innate, natural and biologically conditioned fact of life. If homosexuality is something we are born with and therefore not something we choose […]