Sexualities in History is a multidisciplinary collection of key articles by prominent scholars that looks at the constantly shifting meanings, languages, and practices of western sexualities. Offering a sustained exploration of sex as a social, cultural, and historical construct, this reader covers diverse topics like the construction of the body; reproduction and marriage; the impact of AIDs; sex in colonial contexts; postmodern sexual transgressions, and the discourse of pornography.

This volume is a multidisciplinary collection of key articles by prominent scholars that looks at the constantly shifting meanings, languages, and practices of western sexualities. It offers a sustained exploration of sex as a social, cultural, and historical construction.

Over the past twenty years, historians have overturned nearly everything we once took for granted about human sexuality. Gender, sexual orientation, "deviance," and even the biology of sex have been unmasked for what they are-historically specific, culturally contested, and above all, unstable constructions.


Sexualitiesin History unites a sprawling body of scholarship into the first multidisciplinary collection of key readings on the history of western sexuality. Bringing together landmark work by Robert Darnton, George Chauncey, John D'Emilio, Estelle Freedman and others, this anthology offers a wide breadth of topics like ancient sexualities, sex and Christianity, the construction of the body, reproduction and marriage, sex in colonial contexts, the impact of AIDS, postmodern sexual transgressions, and the discourse of pornography.


A sustained, insightful exploration of sex as a social, cultural, and historical construct, this is an indispensable resource for students going beyond the surface of human sexuality.

Peter Bailey, Magdalena Barrera, David Lorenzo Boyd, Peter Brown, George Chauncey, Anna Clark, Robert Darnton, John D'Emilio, Mary Fissell, Estelle B. Freedman, C. Jacob Hale, David M. Halperin, Tim Hitchcock, Albert Hurtado, Janice M. Irvine, Ruth Mazo Karras, Harry Oosterhuis, Kay Schaffer, James A. Schultz, Steven Seidman, Carole S. Vance and Jeffrey Weeks