This collection explores how situations of authority, governance, and influence were practised through both gender ideologies and affective performances in medieval and early modern England. Authority is inherently relational it must be asserted over someone who allows or is forced to accept this dominance. The capacity to exercise authority is therefore a social and cultural act, one that is shaped by social identities such as gender and by social practices that include emotions. The contributions in this volume, exploring case studies of women and men's letter-writing, political and...

Men at Work explores the cultural portrayal of four essential wartime occupations: agriculture, industry, firefighting and the mercantile marine. In analysing a broad spectrum of wartime media (most notably film, radio and visual culture) it establishes a clear hierarchy of masculine roles in British culture during the Second World War.

The Gentleman's Magazine was the leading eighteenth-century periodical. By integrating the magazine's history, readers and contents this study shows how 'gentlemanliness' was reshaped to accommodate their social and political ambitions.

Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895-1957 is the first book to explore the experiences of men who desired other men outside of the capital. In doing so, it offers a unique intervention into the history of sexuality but it also offers new ways to understand masculinity, working-class culture, regionality and work in the period. The experiences of these men show that same-sex desire could be a part of everyday life and this in itself challenges the way in which sexuality as a concept has been understood. This study draws on a wide range of sources that allow the...

In the 1990s, survivor-victims of the 'comfort women' system - sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the Second World War - started to testify to their ordeal. Their testimonies attracted huge attention and have raised fundamental and complicated questions about history and women's voices. By challenging cultural and gender essentialist analyses, this study aims to examine the 'comfort women' system through the lens of modernity, where the intersectional oppression of gender, race, class and colonialism was formed. The testimonies of victim-survivors are the key to the discussion of...

Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England brings together the rich histories of childhood, crime, forensic medicine and sexuality. It puts the body at the centre of the modern history of sexual offences and shows that medical testimony in such cases was grounded in ideas about sexual maturity, which was a more ambiguous and flexible concept than the legal age of sexual consent. Sexual forensics opened up space for moral questions in the courtroom, particularly around the difficult question of when a 'child' became an 'adult'. It both responded to and reinforced age-based...

Raffalovich's 1896 magnum opus of sexology, Uranism and Unisexuality (never before translated into English until now), provides an ethical justification for same-sex desire. Drawing on cross-cultural and transhistorical narratives, the gentleman scholar argues for the rights of the homosexual in society and its responsibility to him.

The Wolfenden Report of 1957 has long been recognized as a landmark in moves towards gay law reform. What is less well known is that the testimonials and written statements of the witnesses before the Wolfenden Committee provide by far the most complete and extensive array of perspectives we have on how homosexuality was understood in mid-twentieth century Britain. Those giving evidence, individually or through their professional associations, included a broad cross-section of official, professional and bureaucratic Britain: police chiefs, policemen, magistrates, judges, lawyers and Home...

The Wolfenden Report of 1957 has long been recognized as a landmark in moves towards gay law reform. What is less well known is that the testimonials and written statements of the witnesses before the Wolfenden Committee provide by far the most complete and extensive array of perspectives we have on how homosexuality was understood in mid-twentieth century Britain. Those giving evidence, individually or through their professional associations, included a broad cross-section of official, professional and bureaucratic Britain: police chiefs, policemen, magistrates, judges, lawyers and Home...

This multi-disciplinary collection brings together work by scholars from Britain, America and Canada on the popular, personal and institutional histories of pregnancy. The contributors explore several key themes: narratives of pregnancy and birth, the patient-consumer, and literary representations of childbearing.