Contraception: A Concise History traces the history of contraceptive methods from the opening of the first public women’s contraceptive clinic in 1882 to the present.
Author Interviews
The Shapes of Fancy: Reading for Queer Desire in Early Modern Literature
Christine Varnado The Shapes of Fancy offers a powerful new method of accounting for ineffable and diffuse forms of desire, mining early modern drama and prose literature to describe new patterns of affective resonance. It stages an impassioned defense of the inherently desirous nature of reading, making a case for readerly […]
Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia, and Post-Human Love
How have commentators talked about sex with animals and what meanings have been attached to ‘bestiality’ or ‘zoophilia’?
Trans America: A Counter-History
Despite the prominence of what is now called trans in contemporary culture, there is a shortage of comprehensive trans histories.
The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal and the Medieval Clergy
Dyan Elliott In the fourth century, clerics began to distinguish themselves from members of the laity by virtue of their augmented claims to holiness. Because clerical celibacy was key to this distinction, religious authorities of all stripes—patristic authors, popes, theologians, canonists, monastic founders, and commentators—became progressively sensitive to sexual scandals […]
The Rape of Rufus? Sexual Violence against Enslaved Men
Rethinking Rufus argues that enslaved black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women.
The Reputation of Edward II
Kit Heyam During his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male favourites, and having been murdered by penetration with a red-hot spit. The Reputation of Edward II, 1305-1697: A Literary Transformation of […]
Recent Posts
Queer as Cop: Gay Patrol Units and the White Fantasy of Safety
Campaigning for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ireland, 1981-1993
Lady Chatterley’s Lover: A Queer Case
‘An Equality of Injustice’: The Sex Buyers’ Bill and Lessons from History
In the Service of White Supremacy: Immigration and Reproductive Violence