Gender and sexuality in history: did the eighteenth century change everything?

Provost's Distinguished Women's Lecturer
HPS Colloquium 

Thu Oct 27, 2016, 4:15PM - 5:30PM

Location: 318 DeBartolo Hall

Professor Helen King
Open University, England

"Gender and sexuality in history: did the eighteenth century change everything?"

Thomas Laqueur’s 1990 book, Making Sex, argued for an eighteenth-century watershed in changing our understandings of the body, gender, and sexuality. Looking at classical, medieval and early modern materials, this lecture will both challenge that view and explore why it has been so powerful. We will think about what happens when we consider more than just the sexual organs in defining sex, and why it is so important to take genre into account when studying the history of the body.

Everyone is welcome. 

Co-sponsored by ISLA, Department of Classics, History and Philosophy of Science Program, Philip S. and Joan C. Coogan Endowment for Excellence in the History of Medicine, Department of History, Program for Liberal Studies, and Gender Studies Program.