Introduction

For sexologists seeking to understand human sexuality and its variations (frequently from a medical perspective) at the beginning of the twentieth century, history was important. As German sex reformer Iwan Bloch argued (see quotation above) the history of civilization, and the progress of man towards higher forms of existence were fundamentally affected by changing sexual practices. Sexologists sought to demonstrate the importance of studying the history of sexuality, both because it was essential to contextualizing contemporary problems of human sexuality, but also because it was key to understanding the nature of European history (framed in terms of civilization and progress) itself. Among historians, however, the serious and scholarly investigation of sex and the body is relatively new, and its integration into mainstream historical practice even more recent.2 A specialist journal devoted to the ‘history of sexuality’ has only been in existence for a little over 20 years. In establishing this journal, published by the University of Texas Press, the editorial board sought to shift the tradition for work on the history of sexuality to be undertaken by sexologists whose focus was predominantly medical. In 1990 this new journal, recognizing that a new approach to the study of sexuality was evolving, invited scholars from the humanities (rather than from the sciences) to come together. The journal made an explicit call in its opening edition for ‘social historians, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists, literary scholars, classicists, art and film historians (and others)’ to put historically variable, social and cultural frameworks at the forefront of the analysis of sexuality.3 The response was impressive, and since then the history of sexuality has developed rapidly and is now a vibrant field of scholarly activity, raising few eyebrows or concerns about its scholarly legitimacy.4 This book surveys (indeed, it celebrates) the emergence of the histories of sex, sexuality and the body. Within the book the particular subjects are contextualized in the key areas of debate that have structured the field. Employing a range of theoretical and empirical approaches and perspectives, paired chapters dealing with different time periods (the first part pre-1750, the second post-1750) both assess current understanding of each topic and point to areas of neglect or questions for future research. It is the interdisciplinary, theoretically rigorous and conceptually challenging nature of

much of this work in the history of bodies and sex that makes it such a vibrant and exciting field to work in, but it also highlights the importance of accessible collections such as this one. The field is broad and covers a large variety of themes and areas. As Jeffrey Weeks has pointed out, over the past 30 years, we have seen the focus of scholarly attention

spread, to a point at which it is increasingly difficult to contain its remit within identifiable key themes.5 Similarly, Kim Phillips and Barry Reay have observed, ‘the history of sexuality is at once a history of a “category of thought”, and a history of “changing erotic practices, subjective meanings, social definitions, and patterns of regulation whose only unity lies in their common descriptor”’.6 Harry Cocks and Matt Houlbrook concur: the history of sex ‘is about far more than sex itself ’; indeed, they argue that ‘rather than being content to occupy a narrow and marginal sub-discipline, historians of sexuality have had greater aspirations – aspirations to write a total history of modern Western culture’.7