Sexualities in History - A Reader

Routledge, 2002

Over the past twenty years, historians have overturned nearly everything we once took for granted about human sexuality. Gender, sexual orientation, deviance, and even the biology of sex have been unmasked for what they are-historically specific, culturally contested, and above all, unstable constructions. Sexualities in History unites a sprawling body of scholarship into the first multidisciplinary collection of key readings on the history of western sexuality. Bringing together landmark work by Robert Darnton, George Chauncey, John D'Emilio, Estelle Freedman and others, this anthology offers a wide breadth of topics like ancient sexualities, sex and Christianity, the construction of the body, reproduction and marriage, sex in colonial contexts, the impact of AIDS, postmodern sexual transgressions, and the discourse of pornography. A sustained, insightful exploration of sex as a social, cultural, and historical construct, this is an indispensable resource for students going beyond the surface of human sexuality....