How an Enlightenment philosopher understood the love between his mistress and her sister
Early Modern
‘She rose in the Morning of a contrary Sex’: Stories from Early Modern Wonder Books
Early modern wonder books included stories of people who changed sex as a surprising natural phenomenon.
Homosensuality and the early modern Anglo-Ottoman encounter
Sensationalised sexual depravity of the Ottomans was a popular trope in early modern European discourses on the Turks.
Itch, Clap, Pox: Venereal Disease in the Eighteenth-Century Imagination
How venereal disease was represented in eighteenth-century British literature and art.
Some Like It Hot: Sex and the Sauna in Early Modern Sweden
Early modern travellers found Sweden’s saunas both exotic and erotic, but local attitudes were more complicated.
Teaching the Early Modern “Penis-Vagina”
Presenting Vesalius’ “penis-vagina” (as many students took to calling it) on the first day of class immediately primed students to dissect early modern social constructions of gender and sexuality.
Carnal Knowledge: Regulating Sex in England, 1470-1600
Sexual behaviour was strictly regulated in late medieval and Tudor England.
Recent Posts
Working Out: Reflections of gay trade union activism in the 1970s UK
Men of Superior IQ: Connecting Homosexuality to Intelligence in Cold War-Era Canada
Toward an Anti-racist History of Sexuality
Out and about with GLF in London, September 1971
‘Behaviour Which Merits a Horrible and Wretched Death’: Sex, Sin and the Black Death in Medieval England