Sexology, "Race" and the work of Magnus Hirschfeld: Rethinking the Making of a Modern History of Sexuality

Dr Heike Bauer

This seminar will explore issues of “race” in the formation of sexology and sexual theory. In so doing it will reconsider some broader questions about the entangled discourses of "race" and sexuality in the modern history of sexuality, and their gendering. The focus will be on the writings of Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish German sexologist and reformer whose work– such as the publication of the first journal dedicated to same-sex sexuality and the establishment of the first Institute of Sexual Sciences – was instrumental in establishing sexology as a recognized field of investigation. The investigation concentrates on the period from the establishment of an independent sexological discipline in Germany around 1900 to the destruction of Hirschfeld’s institute during the Nazi book burnings in 1933. However, this discussion's conceptual reach will deliberately go beyond national and historical boundaries: by examining Hirschfeld’s hitherto little studied writings on “race” and their English reception, Dr Bauer develops the theoretical imperative of recent queer postcolonial scholarship to expose the racialized logic which continues to underpin modern genealogies and chronologies of sex.

Bio

Heike Bauer is a Senior Lecturer in English and Gender Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and Director of the Birkbeck Institute of Gender and Sexuality. Her work to date focuses on the histories and theories of sexuality and gender, 1800-1930. Her main publications include a monograph, English Literary Sexology: Translations of Inversion 1860-1930 (Palgrave, 2009) and a 3-volume anthology of texts on Women and Cross-Dressing 1800-1930 (Routledge, 2006), as well as articles in edited collections and journals including the Journal of the History of Sexuality, the Yale Journal of Criticism and Critical Survey. Her main current projects are a study of “race” and the history of sexuality, and an collection of essays on the Queer 50s edited with Matt Cook.

Organiser: Bloomsbury Gender Network and the Centre for Gender Studies (SOAS)

Contact email: N.S.Al-Ali@soas.ac.uk