Catherine Fletcher The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Bodley Head, 2020) is a new history of a familiar era. Focusing on the years 1492-1571, it covers topics including developments in art and literature, the early years of European colonialism, the Italian Wars of 1494-1559, and the […]
Tag: early modern
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?
“She was both Poxt and Clapt together”: Confessions of Sexual Secrets in Eighteenth-Century Venereal Cases
Sexual secrets were nothing new in the 1700s, but confessing them to a doctor became surprisingly common.
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