Books in the Chicago Series on Sexuality, History & Society series

In this text Bernadette Brooten examines female homoeroticism and the role of women in the ancient Roman world. She establishes the fact that condemnations of female homoerotic practices were based on widespread awareness of sexual love between women.

Explores the invention of sodomy in medieval Christendom, examining its conceptual foundations in theology and gauging its impact on Christian sexual ethics both then and now. The text traces the genealogy of this cultural construct through many of the idiosyncratic worldviews of the Middle Ages.

Between 1877 and 1892, Dr Thomas Neill Cream murdered seven women, all prostitutes or patients seeking abortions, in England and North America. Using press reports and police dossiers, this work presents an account of the killings, providing an insight into Victorian sexual tensions and fears.

The history of American gender and sexuality is examined here through a case study of the YMCA, the organization devoted to young men. After 1900 the YMCA seemed to grow hostile towards masculine love, reflecting the struggle and shifting societal mores about masculine friendship and intimacy.

In this history of manhood and masculinity, the author argues that modern formulations of masculinity, despite any sense of naturalness and constancy, are in fact, idealized cultural products of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Examining erotic encounters between European, Asian and Pacific people, these essays explore how sexual practice and sexual meanings have been constructed across cultural borders in Thailand, the Philippines, Burma/Myanmar, Japan, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Polynesian islands.