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Issues in American Medicine:
History of Sexology, Medicine, and Sex Education
HSSC 541
Tuesdays, 1:30-4:30
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Professor Beth Linker
Cohen Hall, Rm. 365
Office Hours: W noon-2
Email: linker@sas.upenn.edu
Course Description:
This course will focus on the history of sexuality, with an emphasis on how the
subject relates to the history of science, medicine, technology, and health education.
We will begin with the proliferation of scientific discourses about sex in the last
third of the nineteenth century, primarily among medical practitioners and
psychologists. Readings on the twentieth century of sexuality will focus on U.S.
history and explore themes such as sex-science research, endocrinology, and the
pathologization of homosexuality, hysteria, and hemaphrodites. We will pay
particular attention to sex education throughout the twentieth century to see how
sex norms become popularized and codified through the public school system.
Week 1: Jan. 17
 David M. Halperin, “Is there a History of Sexuality?’ History and Theory, 28,
1989.
 Robert A. Nye, “The History of Sexuality in Context: National Sexological
Traditions” Science in Context, 4, 1991.
Week 2: Jan 24
 Thomas Laqueur. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud,
(Cambridge: Harvard, 1990).
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Additional Readings:
Porter, ed. Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to
Sexuality, Part I, “Sexuality Before the Era of Freud”
Week 3: Jan 31
 Nicole Beisel, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family
Reproduction in Victorian America
Additional Readings:
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Cynthia Russet, Sexual Science: Victorian Constructions of Womanhood
Mumford, Kevin. “‘Lost Manhood’ Found. Male Sexual Impotence and
Victorian Culture in the United States.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 3
(1992): 33-57.
Week 4: Feb. 7
 Nelly Oudshoorn. Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones.
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Additional Readings:
Porter, ed. Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to
Sexuality, Part II, “Sexology Since Freud”
Sulloway, Frank. "Freud and the Sexologists." In Freud: Biologist of the Mind.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. Ch. 8 (pp. 277-319).
Martin, Emily. "The Egg and the Sperm," In Gender and Scientific Authority, pp.
323-339.
Oudshoorn, Nellie. “Endocrinologists and the Conceptualization of Sex,
1920-1940.” Journal of the History of Biology, 23 (1990), 163-186.
Week 5: Feb. 14
 Jennifer Terry, American Obsession: Science, Medicine and Homosexuality in
Modern Society
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Additional Readings:
George Chauncey, Gay New York
C. Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology, (NY: Quartet
Books, 1986).
Paul Robinson, The Modernization of Sex, (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989) Ch.1
“Havelock Ellis,” 1-41.
Week 6: Feb. 21
 Miriam Reumann, American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National
Identity in the Kinsey Reports
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Additional Readings
Janice Irvine. Disorders of Desire: Sexuality and Gender in Modern American
Sexology, 1991.
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Alfred C. Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things,
(London: Chatto & Windus).
Week 7: Feb. 28
 Julia Erickson, Kiss and Tell: Surveying Sex in the Twentieth Century
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Additional Readings
Sarah Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass
Public, 2006.
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Week 8: March 13
 Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the
United States
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Additional readings:
David Serlin, Replaceable You:
____, “Crippling Masculinity: Queerness and Disability in U.S. Military Culture,
1800-1945,” GLQ (2003)
Week 9: March 20
 Elizabeth Reis, Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)
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Additional readings:
Alice Domurat Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex
Bernice L. Hausman, “Demanding Subjectivity: Transsexualism, Medicine,
and the Technologies of Gender,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol.3,
No.2, (Oct., 1992): 270-302.
Week 10: March 27
 Susan K. Freeman, Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education before the 1960s
Additional readings:
 Kristin Luker, When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex—And
Sex Education—Since the Sixties
Week 11: April 3
 Jeffrey Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescents in the 20th century
Additional readings:
 Patrick White, "Sex Education: Or, How the Blind Became Heterosexual," GLQ
9 (2003): 133-147.
Week 12: April 10
 Rebecca Davis, More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss
Additional readings:
 Christine Simmons, Making Marriage Modern
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Week 13: April 24
 Rachel Maines, Technology of the Orgasm
Additional Readings:
 Jessamyn Neuhaus, "The Importance of Being Orgasmic," Journal of the
History of Sexuality (2000)
 H-Sexuality thread about Maines’ book:
http://www.lesleyahall.net/factoids.htm#hysteria
In-Semester assignments
Assignment #1
How Historians Read and Interpret Primary Sources:
Each student will chose one primary source, read it, and then see how historians
and other social scientists have used and interpreted this source material in their
own work. Approx. 4,500 words in length.
List of Primary Sources:
Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex
Sigmund Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
Magnus Hirschfield, Homosexuality of Men and Women
____, Sex in Human Relationships
____, Sexual Pathology
____, Men and Women: The World Journey of a Sexologist
Alfred C. Kinsey, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male
____, Sexual Behavior of the Human Female
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis
Margaret Mead, Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World
Assignment #2
Two book reviews for in-class reading and “additional reading” (assigned
throughout the semester). Approx. 2,500 words
End of semester assignment:
Assignment #3
End of semester:
Either (1) Develop a syllabus for a course in history of sexuality that incorporates
history of sci-tech-med
Or (2) write a 50-min lecture for a history of sexuality undergraduate course
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