The Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe investigates early modern scientific accounts of same-sex desires and the shapes they assumed in everyday life. It explores the significance of those representations and interpretations from around 1450 to 1750, long before the term homosexuality was coined and accrued its current range of cultural meanings. This collection establishes that efforts to produce scientific explanations for same-sex desires and sexual behaviours are not a modern invention, but have long been characteristic of European thought. The sciences of antiquity had posited various types of same-sexual affinities rooted in singular natures. These concepts were renewed, elaborated, and reassessed from the late medieval scientific revival to the early Enlightenment. The deviance of such persons seemed outwardly inscribed upon their bodies, documented in treatises and case studies. It was attributed to diverse inborn causes such as distinctive anatomies or physiologies, and embryological, astrological, or temperamental factors. This original book freshly illuminates many of the questions that are current today about the nature of homosexual activity and reveals how the early modern period and its scientific interpretations of same-sex relationships are fundamental to understanding the conceptual development of contemporary sexuality.

This collection establishes that efforts to produce scientific explanations for same-sex desires and sexual behaviours are not a modern invention, but have long been characteristic of European thought. The sciences of antiquity had posited various types of same-sexual affinities rooted in singular natures. These concepts were renewed, elaborated, and reassessed from the late medieval scientific revival to the early Enlightenment. The deviance of such persons seemed outwardly inscribed upon their bodies, documented in treatises and case studies. It was attributed to diverse inborn causes such as distinctive anatomies or physiologies, and embryological, astrological, or temperamental factors.

First published in 1982 by Gay Men's Press. Reissued in 1995 with a new afterword and updated bibliography.

This book re-prints various essays on gay history from around Europe and America. Includes one essay in German and one in Italian.

Winner of two Lambda Rising Awards This richly revealing anthology brings together for the first time the vital new scholarly studies now lifting the veil from the gay and lesbian past. Such notable researchers as John Boswell, Shari Benstock, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Jeffrey Weeks and John D’Emilio illuminate gay and lesbian life as it evolved in places as diverse as the Athens of Plato, Renaissance Italy, Victorian London, jazz Age Harlem, Revolutionary Russia, Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba, post-World War II San Francisco—and peoples as varied as South African black miners, American Indians, Chinese courtiers, Japanese samurai, English schoolboys and girls, and urban working women. Gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community—all are given a context in this fascinating work. "A landmark of a book and a landmark of ideas that will shatter ignorance and delusion."—Catharine Stimpson, University Professor and Dean Emerita of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University “Ground-breaking.”—Publishers Weekly “The juxtaposition of diverse perspectives and research crossing boundaries of race, gender, culture, and time encourages a lively dialogue. Highly recommended for history collections, and especially gay studies.”—Library Journal

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy—involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives—whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers—from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini—were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.

This collection of essays looks at sexuality and reproduction from an evolutionary perspective. Covering experimental discoveries as well as theoretical investigations, the volume explores the relationship between evolution and other areas of human behaviour.

Andrew Marvell, Sexual Orientation, and Seventeenth-Century Poetry examines the important Interregnum/Restoration poet Andrew Marvell against a background of his contemporary lyric poets. His major works from the early elegies to the later political pieces are discussed with a view to unmasking the poet’s own sexuality and his reflection of prevailing sexual attitudes. Popular poems like the Mower poems and “The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn” are explicated in depth as well as lesser known poems like “The Unfortunate Lover” and “The Gallery.” Marvell, often described as a “chameleon” has teased readers for hundreds of years. This new book will help both new readers as well as established Marvellians to understand cryptic sexual meanings and references in the verses. Poems are explicated against current heteronormative theory as well as recent work on homoeroticism, autoeroticism, and celibacy. George Klawitter has devoted much of his recent scholarly life to a study of Marvell’s lyric pieces and brings to this new book fresh insights into the suggestive intent of the poet’s works.

An examination of how female same-sex desires were represented in a wide range of Italian and British medical writings, 1870-1920. It shows how the psychiatric category of sexual inversion was positioned alongside other medical ideas of same-sex desires, such as the virago, tribade-prostitute, fiamma and gynaecological explanations.

Introduction: "He is still out there"--What came before zero? -- The cluster study -- "Humanizing this disease" -- Giving a face to the epidemic -- Ghosts and blood -- Locating Gaétan Dugas's views -- Epilogue: zero hour-making histories of the North American AIDS epidemic