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The archive has assumed a new significance in the history of sex, and this book visits a series of such archives, including the Kinsey Institute's erotic art; gay masturbatory journals in the New York Public Library; the private archive of an amateur pornographer; and one man's lifetime photographic dossier on Baltimore hustlers. Shedding new light on American sexual history, the topics covered are both fascinating and wide-ranging: the art history of homoeroticism; casual sex before hooking-up; transgender; New York queer sex; masturbation; pornography; sex in the city. This book will appeal to a wide readership: those interested in American studies, sexuality studies, contemporary history, the history of sex, psychology, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, queer studies, trans studies, pornography studies, visual studies, museum studies, and media studies. --

Arthur Munby (1828-1910) was a Victorian gentleman from a respected family of Yorkshire lawyers. He left behind diaries that record his life-long obsession with working-class Victorian women, whom he interviewed, photographed and wrote about. This obsession led to his relationship with, and eventual secret marriage to, his maidservant Hannah Cullwick.Working women fascinated Munby because they disrupted his Victorian ideal of femininity: their bodies were altered by physical exertion and dirt, and they were also often deformed by disease. Drawing not only on the diaries but also on a vast, unt

AbstractCasual sex has become a cultural commonplace since it was named in the 1960s and later became associated with the US college sex phenomenon of "hooking up". However, contemporary accounts of this sexual practice are curiously lacking in historical perspective. This article explores this modern history, both before and after uncommitted, non‐romantic, sexual encounters – sex for sex's sake – were named as casual sex. It agues that studies that contrast the increased "sexual possibilities" of hookup sex to the assumed restrictive practices of an earlier era distort both the restrictions of the earlier period and the freedoms of the latter.

There is an influential strand in the history of the Englishfamily, casting its shadow over interpretations of the nineteenth century and rapidly becoming sociological orthodoxy, which stresses the centrality of what has been termed the autonomous nuclear family. In this interpretation, the nuclear family dominates household structures, kinship is weak, and the community rather than family or kin is the main source of support for the needy sections of society. This article, which employs the technique of total reconstitution, examines the role of kinship in three adjoining rural communities in nineteenth-century Kent to question some of these orthodoxies. It shows that as many households in the area went through an extended phase as experienced only the simple family structure, and that kinship links in the immediate area were strong. Any separation between kin and commu nity would have been meaningless in these rural parishes where kinship was part of neighborhood.

II est admis que l'un des grands bouleversements advenus dans les sociétés du passé est la baisse de la fécondité à la fin du XIXe siècle et au début du XXe siècle, et pourtant nous ignorons presque tout des antécédents immédiats de la transition de la fécondité pour l'Angleterre. Cet article, qui emploie la reconstitution des families, examine les structures de la fécondité légitime dans trois paroisses rurales contiguës du comté de Kent, pour la période 1800–1880, a travers une analyse graphique des âges au mariage, des taux de fécondité légitime, des niveaux de fécondité naturelle et des indices visibles de limitation des naissances. Ces résultats contestent dans bien des cas les connaissances démographiques courantes. Ils suggèrent que, pour la campagne anglaise, le régime de fécondité naturelle n'était pas aussi homogène que Ton croyait et que le déclenchement de la transition démographique doit être avancé des années 1870 aux années 1830. Ce travail ne conteste pas la réalite d'un changement démographique rapide à partir des années 1880, mais il suggère que l'idée commune d'un changement de mentalité et de comportement brutal dans les années 1880 doit être repensée.