The Shapes of Fancy stages an impassioned defense of the inherently desirous nature of reading.
Tag: early modern
The Beauty and the Terror
The Italian Renaissance was far stranger and darker than many of us realise, and that sex and sexuality played an important role in this unsavoury side of the sixteenth century.
Reporting Abortions in Post-Conquest New Spain
A sixteenth-century scribe recorded the sexual and reproductive behaviour of indigenous women in colonial Mexico.
Alternative Histories of the Self: a Cultural History of Sexualities and Secrets
Five unique historical figures who developed a sense of self that reconciled their sexual nonconformity with their ethical standards.
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.
CFP: Histories of Magic and Sexuality
How have perceptions of magic shaped sexuality, love, and reproduction?
Recent Posts
Of Polymaths and Pederasts: Reflections on Rachel Hope Cleves’s <i>Unspeakable</i>
Raúl Luis Suarez’s Smile and The Ruthless Archive
The Shapes of Fancy: Reading for Queer Desire in Early Modern Literature
Queer as Cop: Gay Patrol Units and the White Fantasy of Safety
Campaigning for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ireland, 1981-1993