Sexuality has always been an obsessive human concern;
it has often been the real subject of cultural,
religious, and political discourses that did not dare to
mention it or did not have the language for addressing
it directly. We now possess both the language and the
cultural temerity to discuss sexuality as
straightforwardly as we like, and with a frankness that
would have shocked people a few decades ago. It now
seems impossible to contemplate human happiness without
some measure of sexual fulfilment, although that remains
a notoriously elusive and negotiable ideal. Nor is it
possible now to think about our identities or the
identities of others without factoring in sexual tastes
and orientation. The central message of this book is
that we are unlikely to understand the promise or the
limits of our contemporary sexualities unless we
understand those of the past. Robert A.Nye's Oxford
Reader is intended to be used on the wide ranges of
undergraduate courses which address issues of human
sexuality: courses taught in departments of history,
women's studies, medical history, sociology, gay and
lesbian studies, anthropology, religion, and literary
studies, as well as in professional programmes such as
medicine, public health, clinical psychology, social
work, and law. Part I of the Reader forms a
chronological narrative of the development of thinking
about sexuality from the ancient Greeks to the present.
Part II discusses nineteenth-century investigation of
phenomena such as hysteria, prostitution, fetishism, and
exhibitionism. Part III brings together contemporary
conceptions of the sexual body, and Part IV addresses
the issue of whether the sexual revolution of the late
sixties and seventies has brought about a profound and
permanent change in the sexual landscape of western
civilization. |
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