In spite of the fact that the term ‘sexology’ was popularized in the United States by Elizabeth Osgood Goodrich Willard and that the term ‘sexual science’—which is usually attributed to Iwan Bloch as ‘Sexualwissenschaft’—was actually coined by the American phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler in 1852, the archives of American sexology have received scant attention in the period prior to Alfred Kinsey. In my article, I explore the role of Transcendentalism and phrenology in the production and development of American sexology and sexual science. In particular, I argue that shifting the origins of sexology and sexual science away from Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Karl-Maria Kertbeny and the more familiar narratives of the German invention of sexuality furnishes a radically different account of early sexology and sexual science. Rather than the unevenly homophilic sympathies of early German activists, their American counterparts promote marital, reproductive, loving sex and vilify prostitution, polygamy, masturbation, contraception, sex for pleasure, and, if they think to mention it, sodomy. In addition to this less progressive story, however, I argue that early American sexologists provide the first theories of gender and help to provide a fuller description of the politics of sexology and sexual science.
...MoreArticle Kirsten Leng; Katie Sutton (2021) Histories of Sexology Today: Reimagining the Boundaries of Scientia Sexualis. History of the Human Sciences (pp. 3-9).
Article
Trevino, Kelly M.;
Konrad, Krista K.;
(2008)
Replication and Pedagogy in the History of Psychology II: Fowler & Wells's Phrenology
(/isis/citation/CBB001032871/)
Book
Rachel E. Walker;
(2022)
Beauty and the Brain: The Science of Human Nature in Early America
(/isis/citation/CBB487226567/)
Article
Peter Cryle;
Elizabeth Stephens;
(2021)
Normality: A Collection of Essays
(/isis/citation/CBB959369497/)
Chapter
Shelden, Mary Lamb;
(2010)
Health and the Body
(/isis/citation/CBB001035363/)
Chapter
Rossi, William;
(2010)
Evolutionary Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB001035368/)
Chapter
Gura, Philip F.;
(2010)
Nature Writing
(/isis/citation/CBB001035365/)
Article
Ellen Packham;
(2019)
The Limits of Chemistry: How William Gregory Contested the Boundaries of ‘Established Science’, 1820–1850
(/isis/citation/CBB531010025/)
Article
Bartolucci, Chiara;
Lombardo, Giovanni Pietro;
(2012)
The Origins of Psychology in Italy: Themes and Authors That Emerge through a Content Analysis of the Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica
(/isis/citation/CBB001251154/)
Article
Sarah Bull;
(2021)
More Than a Case of Mistaken Identity: Adult Entertainment and the Making of Early Sexology
(/isis/citation/CBB616546207/)
Book
Wilson, Eric;
(2000)
Romantic Turbulence: Chaos, Ecology, and American Space
(/isis/citation/CBB000110482/)
Chapter
Burkholder, Robert E.;
(2010)
Nature Writing and Environmental Activism
(/isis/citation/CBB001035369/)
Chapter
Newman, Lance;
(2010)
Environmentalist Thought and Action
(/isis/citation/CBB001035362/)
Chapter
Walls, Laura Dassow;
(2010)
Science and Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB001035367/)
Book
Myerson, Joel;
Petrulionis, Sandra Harbert;
Walls, Laura Dassow;
(2010)
The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001035361/)
Thesis
Courtney Elizabeth Thompson;
(2015)
Criminal Minds: Medicine, Law, and the Phrenological Impulse in America, 1830-1890
(/isis/citation/CBB595020617/)
Article
Bauer, Heike;
(2009)
Theorizing Female Inversion: Sexology, Discipline, and Gender at the Fin de Siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001030578/)
Article
Kirsten Leng;
Katie Sutton;
(2021)
Histories of Sexology Today: Reimagining the Boundaries of Scientia Sexualis
(/isis/citation/CBB870816587/)
Book
Courtney E. Thompson;
(2021)
An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB576199907/)
Chapter
Fabian, Ann;
(2008)
A Native among the Headhunters
(/isis/citation/CBB001035381/)
Article
White, Christopher G.;
(2006)
Minds Intensely Unsettled: Phrenology, Experience, and the American Pursuit of Spiritual Assurance, 1830--1880
(/isis/citation/CBB000760007/)
Be the first to comment!