Histories of Sexology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxx

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2. History of Sexology and Theories of Sexuality: An Introduction

   • Alain Giami

   Pages 1-22

3. Political and Ideological Translations and Appropriations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 23-23

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   2. Sexology’s Unexpected Progressiveness in the Cold War East: Shaping People’s Sexual Selves, Creating Socialist Societies

      • Kateřina Lišková

      Pages 25-39

   3. “Humanitarian Hedonists” as Sex Educators: The Medical and Political Work of Fritz Brupbacher (1874–1945) and Paulette Brupbacher (1880–1967)

      • Christian Kaiser

      Pages 41-59

   4. ‘Healthy’ Relationships: Feminism and the Psy Disciplines in the Political History of Sexual Violence in Contemporary America

      • Stéphanie Pache

      Pages 61-79

   5. Saving Sexual Science: Kinsey and American Religious-Conservative Politics

      • Alexandre Paturel, Véronique Mottier, Cynthia Kraus

      Pages 81-102

   6. Medicine and the Paradox of the Decriminalization of Homosexuality in Switzerland: Toward a New System of Coercion (1940–1960)

      • Taline Garibian

      Pages 103-117

   7. Politics, Religion, and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the Brazilian Publishing Market in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century

      • Jane Russo, Sérgio Carrara

      Pages 119-135

4. Circulation, Hybridization and Bodies of Knowledge

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 137-137

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   2. Shaping the Erotic Body: Technology and Women’s Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century American Medicine

      • Donna J. Drucker

      Pages 139-152

   3. “Lack of Clarity” and “False Premises”: Partnership and Translations in Impotence-Related Petitions for Marriage Annulment in Nineteenth-Century Spain

      • Marie Walin

      Pages 153-168

   4. Popular Medical Books and Defloration: Shaping Femininity and Masculinity in the Nineteenth Century

      • Pauline Mortas

      Pages 169-183

   5. Girl or Boy? The French Birth of the Word Sexologie (1901–1912)

      • Gonzague de Larocque-Latour

      Pages 185-206

   6. Marie Bonaparte and Female Frigidity: From Physiology to Psychology

      • Sylvie Chaperon, Camille Noûs

      Pages 207-224

   7. Hernani de Irajá and the Early Years of Brazilian Sexology

      • Alessandro Ezabella

      Pages 225-243

   8. The Pornographic Object of Knowledge: Pornography as Epistemology

      • Jeffrey Escoffier

      Pages 245-259

5. Inventions of Deviant “Others”

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 261-261

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   2. African Hypersexuality: A Threat to White Settlers? The Stigmatization of “Black Sexuality” as a Means of Regulating “White Sexuality”

      • Delphine Peiretti-Courtis

      Pages 263-276

   3. Sexological Discourses and the Self in Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus (1884) and Radclyffe Hall’s the Well of Loneliness (1928)

      • Ash Kayte Stokoe

      Pages 277-293

​Histories of Sexology: Between Science and Politics takes an interdisciplinary and reflexive approach to the historiography of sexology. Drawing on an intellectual history perspective informed by recent developments in science and technology studies and political history of science, this book examines specific social, cultural, intellectual, scientific and political contexts that have given shape to theories of sexuality, but also to practices in medicine, psychology, education and sexology. Furthermore, it explores various ways that theories of sexuality have both informed and been produced by sexologies—as scientific and clinical discourses about sex—in Western countries since the 19th century. 

• History of sexuality
• History of sexology
• LGBT history
• gay history
• gender studies
• sexuality studies
• Science and Technology Studies
• sex research
• sexual medicine
• activists
• theories of sexuality
• human rights
• sexual minorities
• cultural politics
• sexological
• sexual violence
• Protosexological
• femininity
• masculinity
• bio-power

• Inserm, Paris, France

  Alain Giami

• Université d’Angers, Angers, France

  Sharman Levinson

Alain Giami is Emeritus Research Professor at Inserm (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in Paris, France. He is currently the Chair of the World Association for Sexual Health Scientific Committee (2017-2021). Among other books, he has co-edited Sexual Revolutions, (2015).

Sharman Levinson is Associate Professor at the University of Angers, France, where she specializes in history of French physiology and psychology. Affiliated with the Gender, Sexuality, and Society Program at the American University of Paris, she is also President of the Association pour la Recherche et l’Intervention Muséale en Psychologie.

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