Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle

Following the successful 2005 conference, the centre is pleased to announce the release of its latest publication:
 
Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle: The making of a “Central” Problem (University of Delaware Press: 2008).
 
It has come to be widely accepted that “sexuality” as we know it took shape at the end of the nineteenth century. This is when Krafft-Ebing asserted that “sexual feeling is really the root of all ethics, and no doubt aestheticism and religion,” and Havelock Ellis declared sexuality to be the “central problem of life.” The volume examines how the work of making sex the “central” problem was carried out and what resulted from such efforts. It seeks to understand how these habits of thinking about the centrality of sex were articulated, how they engaged with pre-existing approaches to personal identity, and what competing discourses had to be displaced in order for sexuality to become what as central as sexologists claimed it was.
 
The text, edited by Peter Cryle and Christopher Forth, includes papers from the centre's research staff Elizabeth Stephens, Alison Moore and Peter Cryle. It also has papers by Christopher Forth, Jonathan Marshall, Heike Bauer, Carolyn Dean and Vernon Rosario.

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