scholarly journals Histories of ‘Sex’, Histories of ‘Sexuality’

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
VICTORIA HARRIS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Cyclical Change ◽  
History Of

For Dagmar Herzog, writing the history of sexuality is an act of rebalancing. Sexuality becomes neither positive nor negative, but ambivalent. Herzog destabilises a dominant ‘narrative of gradual progress’, which misunderstands ‘how profoundly complicated the sexual politics of the twentieth century in Europe actually were’ (p. 2). Instead of a linear chronology, Herzog reveals a twentieth century of cyclical change – revolutionary liberalisations and conservative backlashes occur in quick succession, or even concomitantly. Repression appears even within developments considered liberalising by contemporaries. The ambivalences within ‘progress’ and ‘change’ shape sexuality and its history. A third ambivalence is no less important – happiness. Despite being an act inextricably connected with pleasure, sex does not consistently give rise to happiness.

Forum: Dagmar Herzog's Sexuality in Europe

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-275
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
University Of Vienna ◽  
History Of ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
East And West ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

This discussion of Dagmar Herzog's Sexuality in Europe (2011) continues our new series of book fora. Herzog's new overview of changing European sexual mores and behaviour offers a jumping-off point for our panellists to discuss recent trends and future directions in the history of sexuality in twentieth-century Europe, East and West. Jeffrey Weeks (London South Bank University), Franz Eder (University of Vienna), Daniel Healey (University of Reading) and Victoria Harris (University of Birmingham) give their responses, and Herzog replies.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Melissa J. Homestead
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
History Of

Using Cather and Lewis’s shared gravesite in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, as a touchstone, the introduction describes how biographers have approached the question of Willa Cather’s sexuality, how critics have applied queer theory to readings of her work, and how Lewis’s place in Cather’s life and creative process has been repeatedly ignored or misrepresented. The introduction lays out the terms on which this volume defines Lewis’s relationship with Cather and makes her visible again: it introduces Lewis’s role as Cather’s editor and suggests how models of the history of sexuality have failed to capture the persistence of the so-called Boston marriage into the twentieth century.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 190-210
Author(s):  
Y. Yvon Wang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dialectical Process ◽  
Semantic Evolution ◽  
Mao Era

This chapter presents a history of sexual representations in China, from classical “bedchamber arts” to Ming–Qing fiction and the pictorial magazines, translated books, and nude images at the turn of the twentieth century. The chapter shows that neither the early modern challenge to yin nor the global modern pornographic turn entirely overwrote older regimes of sexual politics and older forms of commodified sexual representations. The evolution of pornography has been a dialectical process. The chapter then presents further evidence that the global modern pornographic paradigm begun at the turn of the twentieth century continues to shape desires and discourse a century later. It traces the semantic evolution of the term huangse, “yellow,” and explores how pornography's global turn affected the legacies of some of the sexual representations discussed in previous chapters. Following a survey of these legacies in the Mao era and in contemporary China, the chapter ends on a speculative note, returning to the ethical questions raised in the introduction: Should we see pornography as a means of liberation that transcended yin ideology's fundamentally elitist model of legitimacy and power?

scholarly journals “Disgusting Details Which Are Best Forgotten”: Disclosures of Child Sexual Abuse in Twentieth-Century Britain

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Delap
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Sexual Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Twenty First Century

AbstractFor those who by the end of the twentieth century came to be termed “survivors” of child sexual abuse, different genres and forms have been available to narrate and evaluate that abuse. This article explores the reception and practical results of such disclosures: the unpredictable effects of telling, and the strategies of containment, silencing, or disbelief that greeted disclosures. I make note of the ethical challenges of writing the history of child sexual abuse and conclude that twenty-first-century observers have been too ready to perceive much of the previous century as a period of profound silence in relation to child sexual abuse. At the same time, historical and sociological accounts have also been too ready to claim the final third of the twentieth century as a period of compulsive disclosure and fluency in constructing sexual selves. The history of child sexual abuse reveals significant barriers to disclosure in the 1970s and 1980s, despite new visibility of child sexual abuse in the media and through feminist sexual politics. Attention to such obstacles suggests the need to rethink narratives of “permissive” sexual change to acknowledge more fully the ongoing inequities and hierarchies in sexual candor and voice.

scholarly journals THE RECENT HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SEXUALITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY GERMANY

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 763-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK FENEMORE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Advice Literature ◽  
The Third ◽  
Youth Cultures ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Definition Of

ABSTRACTThis article sets out to explore the extent and to test the limits of the history of sexuality in twentieth-century Germany. It examines the ways in which sexuality can be explored from above and below. Drawing on medical-legal definitions of sexuality, feminist debates about sexuality, the science of sexology, and advice literature, the article sets out the state of debate together with ways that it might develop in the future. Arguing in favour of a milieu-specific history of sexuality, it suggests ways that the study of youth cultures and teenage magazines together with everyday, oral history and biographical approaches might help to arrive at this. It then goes on to chart new approaches, particularly with regard to sexuality in the Third Reich, and suggests ways that these reshape our understanding of sexuality in post-war Germany, East and West. Arguing against a reductive emphasis on a society being either ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-sex’ and calling for a clearer definition of what is meant by ‘sexual liberalization’, the article points to a more multi-layered and contradictory understanding of sexuality, which is still in the process of being written.

Sexuality and German Fascism. Edited by Dagmar Herzog. New York: Berghahn Books. 2005. Pp. 352. $25.00 (paper), $75.00 (cloth). ISBN 1-57181-652-6. Sex After Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany. By Dagmar Herzog. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2005. Pp. 361. $29.95. ISBN 0-691-11702-0.

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-333
Author(s):  
Edward Ross Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Dagmar Herzog opens her introduction to Sexuality and German Fascism with a simple question: “What is the relationship between sexual and other kinds of politics?” The essays printed here offer a thought-provoking and sometimes surprising set of approaches to that question. Like most recent research in the history of sexuality, they focus on “deviant” sexualities—homosexual, commercial, interracial, public—and its policing. They are, however, informed also by an awareness of the productive and positive, as well as the prohibitive and repressive functions of the societal regulation of sex.

The Politics of Discourse

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANZ X. EDER
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Global Context ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sexual Cultures ◽  
Insight Into

What can we expect from Dagmar Herzog's book on Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History, published in a series on ‘new approaches to European history’? First, the series title suggests new approaches to this booming historical subdiscipline. There are plenty of burning questions about the history of sexuality waiting to be answered: the specificity of European sexuality or, perhaps better, sexualities, during the twentieth century, in comparison to the US, in a global context, and even the differences between the twentieth century and earlier periods. On our wish list we also have a comparative view of regional and national sexual cultures during the ‘century of sex’. A range of studies has been published on the history of sexuality in Europe during the last two decades, which could be used for reference and as templates. According to the mission statement of the Cambridge book series Herzog has to write about all these complex questions at the level of undergraduates. Therefore the bar is set really high for a historian of sexuality. To get straight to the point, Herzog has managed most of these requirements well over most passages of her book. It presents a successful combination of general introduction and historical explanation richly illustrated with numerous examples and historical images. The volume therefore offers an easy entrance into this up till now fairly confusing topic. But, as will be shown, she gives only a rather one-sided insight into the state of the art of recent historical research on European sexuality in the twentieth century.

Hard Objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Discrete Series ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
The World ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.

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