The Shapes of Fancy: Reading for Queer Desire in Early Modern Literature

By Christine Varnado Author Interviews, Early Modern, LGBTQ

The Shapes of Fancy stages an impassioned defense of the inherently desirous nature of reading.

‘She rose in the Morning of a contrary Sex’: Stories from Early Modern Wonder Books

By Lee Raye Early Modern

Early modern wonder books included stories of people who changed sex as a surprising natural phenomenon.

Homosensuality and the early modern Anglo-Ottoman encounter

By Nailya Shamgunova Early Modern

Sensationalised sexual depravity of the Ottomans was a popular trope in early modern European discourses on the Turks.

Some Like It Hot: Sex and the Sauna in Early Modern Sweden

By Charlotta Forss Early Modern

Early modern travellers found Sweden’s saunas both exotic and erotic, but local attitudes were more complicated.

Teaching the Early Modern “Penis-Vagina”

By Julia Gossard Early Modern, Medicine and the Body, Pedagogy

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.

Rethinking Early Modern Women’s Masturbation

By Paige Donaghy Early Modern

Why is women’s masturbation absent from most studies examining sexual practices of early modern people?

Sores, Scorn and Stigma? Suffering Syphilis in Early Modern Germany

By Mona OBrien Early Modern, Medicine and the Body

The ‘French disease’ erupted in Europe in 1495.