Jump to content

Thomas W. Laqueur

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Thomas Laqueur)
Thomas W. Laqueur
Laqueur at the Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest, May 2016.
Born
Thomas Walter Laqueur

(1945-09-06) September 6, 1945 (age 79)
Alma materNuffield College, Oxford, Princeton University, Swarthmore College
Known forOne-sex and two-sex theories
AwardsRockefeller Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship,[1] Cundill Prize in Historical Literature
Scientific career
FieldsHistory, Sexology
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley

Thomas Walter Laqueur (born September 6, 1945) is an American historian, sexologist and writer. He is the author of Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation and Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud as well as many articles and reviews. He is the winner of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award,[2] and is currently the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, located in Berkeley, California.[1] Laqueur was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2015.[3]

Thought

[edit]

One-sex model

[edit]

Laqueur wrote that there was an ancient "one-sex model", in which the woman was only described as imperfect man / human and he postulates that definitions of sex/gender were historically different and changeable.[4]

This argument has been challenged by some historians of science, notably Katharine Park and Robert A. Nye;[5] Monica Green,[6] Heinz-Jürgen Voss,[7] and Helen King,[8] who reject the suggestion that ancient descriptions show a homogenous model, the one-sex model which then mutated in the 18th century to a two-sex model. They encourage a more differentiated perception that makes clear that gender theories of natural philosophy as well as biology and medicine, are embedded and constructed in certain social contexts.

Bibliography

[edit]

Books

[edit]
  • Laqueur, Thomas (2015). The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691157-78-8.
  • Laqueur, Thomas (2004). Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Brooklyn: Zone Books. ISBN 1-890951-32-3.
  • Laqueur, Thomas (1990). Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54349-1.
  • Gallagher, Catherine; Laqueur, Thomas (1987). The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05960-3.
  • Laqueur, Thomas (1976). Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780–1850. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01859-2.

Selected articles

[edit]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b "Thomas W. Laqueur Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  2. ^ Database (n.d.). "Thomas W. Laqueur". MIT Press. Archived from the original on February 11, 2009. Retrieved February 16, 2012.
  3. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
  4. ^ Laqueur, Thomas (1990). Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54349-1. 25-63.
  5. ^ Park, Katharine; Nye, Robert A. (1991). "Destiny Is Anatomy, Review of Laqueurs Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud". The New Republic. 18. S. 53-57.
  6. ^ Green, Monica (2010). "Bodily Essences: Bodies as Categories of Difference" in Linda Kalof, ed., A Cultural History of the Human Body, Vol. 2: In the Medieval Age. New York City: Berg Publishers.
  7. ^ Voss, Heinz-Jürgen (2010): Making Sex Revisited: Dekonstruktion des Geschlechts aus biologisch-medizinischer Perspektive. Transcript, Bielefeld.
  8. ^ King, Helen (2013). The one-sex body on trial: the classical and early modern evidence. London: Ashgate. ISBN 978-1138247628. OCLC 957681362.
[edit]