Article
ID: CBB925786493

Out of the closet? Reconstructing the personal life of pioneering sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis (2022)

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Sexuality Biographies Penology Sexology 20th century, early United States Davis, Katharine Bement

Katharine B. Davis was an important progressive-era figure, a pioneering professional, an innovative penologist, and an iconoclastic sexologist. Although scholars have long been aware of Davis's tolerant attitude toward same-sex relationships at the New York State Female Reformatory at Bedford Hills, where she was Superintendent from 1901 to 1913, and her open discussion of same-sex attraction in her study of “normal” women's sexuality, published in 1929, little has been known about Davis's personal life. Thus, it was a feminist biographer's dream come true to gain access to what Davis called her “autobiographical biography,” the never-finished, never-published, story of her life. Or so I thought. As it turns out, my quest to understand Davis's personal life and how it informed her professional trajectory has been a bit more complicated.

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Authors & Contributors
Hegarty, Peter
Leng, Kirsten
Alain Giami
Sharman Levinson
Bauer, Heike
Brennan, Toni
Journals
History of the Human Sciences
Arbor: Ciencia, Pensamiento y Cultura
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Gender and History
History of Psychology
Publishers
University of Chicago Press
Springer International Publishing
University of Pennsylvania
New York University
Cornell University Press
Harvard University Press
Concepts
Sexology
Sexuality
Feminism
Eugenics
Science and gender
Sex
People
Davis, Katharine Bement
Kinsey, Alfred C.
Ellis, Havelock
Hirschfeld, Magnus
Lamb, Arthur Becket
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
20th century, late
Progressive Era (1890s-1920s)
Places
Germany
United States
Brazil
Great Britain
India
Asia
Institutions
Rockefeller Foundation
United States. Department of Defense
American Social Hygiene Association
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