Sexual Revolutions explores the sexual revolution of the late twentieth century in several European countries and the USA by engaging with themes from sexual freedom and abortion to pornography and sexual variation. This work discusses the involvement of youth, feminism, left, liberalism, arts, science and religion in the process of sexual change.

In Victorian times, when the existence of a 'family enterprise' was still prominent, a father's occupation had an immense impact on the lives of middle-class women. It shaped their lives and affected the construction of their identity, especially as they had few qualifications of their own. As the Church of England steered its way through the expansion of Nonconformist sects, the threat of disestablishment, the spread of 'intellectual doubt', and the agricultural depression, the lives of the inhabitants of individual parsonages were influenced by the Church's reactions to these crises. The...

Three people in a marriage: a woman and two men. This was the eighteenth-century Italian aristocratic model of marriage, characterised by the presence of the cicisbeo, the official escort of another man's wife. Did this delineate a clear and brazen sexual depravity or rather a complex and refined social institution, revealing many aspects of Italian civilization in the Age of the Enlightenment? Not only was the presence of a cicisbeo part of a matrimonial, family model; it was also an important factor socially and politically. In a period in which the presence of women at parties was sought -...

Masculinity and Nationhood, 1830-1910 looks at 'masculine' patriotic behaviour in schools, army and parliament in nineteenth century Belgium. Schoolboys singing on excursion, soldiers acting out a shot wound on the maneuvering field and politicians raising their voices against effeminacy: all articulated their manly love of the nation in their own way. In recent years, much has been written about masculinity and citizenship in modern Europe. However, little is yet available about the learning process in which children and young men engaged in order to look, walk and talk like mature men and...

Italian Sexualities Uncovered, 1789-1914 breaks new ground in the history of nineteenth-century Italy. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore nineteenth-century Italian sexualities from a variety of viewpoints, illuminating the relationships between the personal and political; the presence of male, female and same-sex desires that defied norms of respectability and acceptable gender roles; the sexual behaviour of different classes and subcultures; and transnational sexual encounters. This volume sheds light on the sex lives of...

In the late nineteenth century, the extent of unemployment in Britain challenged prevailing ideologies that insisted on men's economic independence and blamed the poor for their poverty. With increasing numbers of newly-enfranchised men who had been regular workers applying for humiliating poor relief, policymakers produced structural explanations for unemployment that recognized men could not always find work even when they wanted it. In the face of these new economic and political realities, a remarkably broad consensus developed around a model of working-class masculinity that incorporated...

The new histories of love and romance within this edited collection illustrate changes (and indeed continuities) in understandings of affection, intimacy and sex from the First World War until the beginning of the Women's Liberation movement. Both established and emerging scholars contribute to understandings about the power, knowledge and pleasure of love and romance within twentieth century Britain.

Together, the essays in Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970 problematize notions of a 'golden age' of romance in the 1950s, and received periodisations that plot a rapid 'rise' and...

Scotland decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting male adults in private in 1980, 13 years after similar legislation in England and Wales. This begs the question: why was Scotland different? Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland charts the experiences of gay and bisexual men in Scotland who from within the shadows of criminality forged identities and relationships despite the apparent opprobrium of the state, religious institutions and wider society. Through the use of extensive archival research and oral histories contributed by gay and bisexual men this book charts the history of male...

Jean Gerson and Gender reconciles the somewhat enigmatic legacy of one of the most influential late medieval intellectuals: the theologian, court preacher, university chancellor, and church reformer, Jean Gerson (d. 1429). Gerson provided foundational contributions to two historical developments: the promotion of rational and just government, and the development of the European concept of the witch. This book argues that Gerson's association of royal and ascetic women with sin and diabolical influences allowed him to maintain - against overwhelming evidence to the contrary - the appearance of...

Military and civilian worlds have an uneasy relationship. They inform and intersect with one another in complex and competing ways. Sex, Soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45 explores how life in and out of uniform shaped Australia's queer identities in the 1940s. Queensland - with its massive throngs of local and foreign servicemen - provides an unusually detailed tapestry that weaves together the complexities of homoerotic inclination and self-expression in Australia and the South Pacific. Gender would prove to be the central thread colouring dominant forms of identity for men, youths,...