“So Complicated”: The Sexual Politics of U.S. Health Care Reform

By Beatrix Hoffman 20th and 21st Century United States

An examination of the historic beliefs and current thinking underpinning the Republican desire to repeal Obamacare.

Discovering Sex in the Civil War

By Judith Giesberg Early America

Surrounded by death, Civil War soldiers found pleasure and fraternity in sharing erotic pictures and prints.

Child Sexual Abuse? A View from England in the Later Middle Ages

By Alan Kissane Childhood and Youth, Medieval, Sexual Violence

Bringing sex offenders to justice was as challenging in the Middle Ages as it is today.

Beyond the Culture Wars: Homosexual Histories 2016

By Simon Copland LGBTQ

Simon Copland highlights the big questions and controversies addressed at the 2016 Homosexual Histories Conference

Sexual Deviance and “Mental Defectiveness” in Eugenics Era California

By Jess Whatcott 20th and 21st Century United States, Sexual Violence

The diagnosis of mental defectiveness legitimated the state’s reproductive control of sexually promiscuous and sexually violated girls and women.

Johanna Elberskirchen: Sexual Radical and Woman of Her Time

By Edward Ross Dickinson Modern Europe

Elberskirchen sounds to us today like an extraordinary voice. Yet what is striking is that she was rather ordinary.

Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: A Roundtable on the Politics of Sexual Representations in the 1970s – Part 1

By Gillian Frank 20th and 21st Century United States

“Porno chic” culture of the 1970s provided an opportunity to embrace—or challenge—the sexual revolution.