Lascivious Bodies

The eighteenth century saw a revolution in ordinary British people's sex lives. In a time of social flux, the sheer array of sexual experimentation during this period led to the birth of sexuality as we know it today. From Florentine lesbian nuns to French cattle buggers Lascivious Bodies examines all sorts of sex, in all sorts of places, with all sorts of people. Drawing upon vivid firsthand material and private letters, Julie Peakman depicts the libertine men and flighty courtesans of the era, including such personalities as James Boswell, Casanova, Peg Plunkett, Harriette Wilson and Julia Johnstone. She also explores heterosexual behaviour in courtship, marriage, adultery, divorce and prostitution; more curious or abnormal activities, such as footfetishism, flagellation, and necrophilia; as well as male and female homosexuality and cross-dressing. Lascivious Bodies looks set to become the standard account of a period of multifarious sexual pleasures, and the extraordinary attitudes they engendered - a time that has shaped how we think about sex today.

"This is a wonderful book, well-conceptualized, written with style and wit, and impressive for its ambition, reach and achievement. R. Marie Griffith brings to the scene learning, theoretical subtlety, critical acumen, historical skill, and humane sensibility. She has emerged as one of the most sophisticated and insightful scholars of the Christian body in any period of Christian history."—Robert Orsi, Harvard University "Born Again Bodies is extraordinary. It uncovers an arena of knowledge never before looked at with this level of critical attention when examining American religious culture; Griffith's strength is that she looks across the 'evangelical' denominations. Her work is elegant and truly original."—Sander L. Gilman, author of Difference and Pathology and Jewish Frontiers

Recovering the Black Female Body recognizes the pressing need to highlight through scholarship the vibrant energy of African American women's attempts to wrest control of the physical and symbolic construction of their bodies away from the distortions of others.

Exploring the ways in which women have formed and defined expressions of culture in a range of geographical, political, and historical settings, this collection of essays examines women's figurative and literal roles as "sites" of culture from the 16th century to the present day. The diversity of chronological, geographical and cultural subjects investigated by the contributors-from the 16th century to the 20th, from Renaissance Italy to Puritan Boston to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to post-war Japan, from parliamentary politics to the politics of representation-provides a range of historical outlooks. The collection brings an unusual variety of methodological approaches to the project of discovering intersections among women's studies, literary studies, cultural studies, history, and art history, and expands beyond the Anglo- and Eurocentric focus often found in other works in the field. The volume presents an in-depth, investigative study of a tightly-constructed set of crucial themes, including that of the female body as a governing trope in political and cultural discourses; the roles played by women and notions of womanhood in redefining traditions of ceremony, theatricality and spectacle; women's iconographies and personal spaces as resources that have shaped cultural transactions and evolutions; and finally, women's voices-speaking and writing, both-as authors of cultural record and destiny. Throughout the volume the themes are refracted chronologically, geographically, and disciplinarily as a means to deeper understanding of their content and contexts. Women as Sites of Culture represents a productive collaboration of historians from various disciplines in coherently addressing issues revolving around the roles of gender, text, and image in a range of cultures and periods.

For the Puritan separatists of seventeenth-century New England, "godliness," as manifested by the body, was the sign of election, and the body, with its material demands and metaphorical significance, became the axis upon which all colonial activity and religious meaning turned. Drawing on literature, documents, and critical studies of embodiment as practiced in the New England colonies, Martha L. Finch launches a fascinating investigation into the scientific, theological, and cultural conceptions of corporeality at a pivotal moment in Anglo-Protestant history. Not only were settlers forced to interact bodily with native populations and other "new world" communities, they also fought starvation and illness; were whipped, branded, hanged, and murdered; sang, prayed, and preached; engaged in sexual relations; and were baptized according to their faith. All these activities shaped the colonists' understanding of their existence and the godly principles of their young society. Finch focuses specifically on Plymouth Colony and those who endeavored to make visible what they believed to be God's divine will. Quakers, Indians, and others challenged these beliefs, and the constant struggle to survive, build cohesive communities, and regulate behavior forced further adjustments. Merging theological, medical, and other positions on corporeality with testimonies on colonial life, Finch brilliantly complicates our encounter with early Puritan New England.

A fascinating glimpse into the history of sexual perversions and diversions including fetishism, cross-dressing, 'effeminate' men and 'masculinized' women, sodomy, tribadism, masturbation, necrophilia, rape, paedophilia, flagellation, and sado-masochism, asking how these sexual inclinations were viewed at a particular time in history.