Yale University Library Research Guides: Early Modern Christian History: Sexuality

Sexuality in Early Modern Era

Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks Surveys the ways in which people from the time of Luther and Columbus to that of Thomas Jefferson used Christian ideas and institutions to regulate and shape sexual norms and conduct, and examines the impact of their efforts.
The History of Sexuality in Europe: A Sourcebook and Reader by Anna Clark (Editor) An introduction to the latest debates in the history of Sexuality in Europe. Includes three chapters on the ancient and medieval world to demonstrate their very different cultures of sexuality.
The Routledge History of Sex and the Body: 1500 to the Present by Sarah Toulalan (Editor); Kate Fisher (Editor) Provides an overview of the main themes surrounding the history of sexuality from 1500 to the present day.
Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns by Valerie Traub What do we know about early modern sex, and how do we know it? How, when, and why does sex become history? In Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns, Valerie Traub addresses these questions and, in doing so, reorients the ways in which historians and literary critics, feminists and queer theorists approach sexuality and its history.

Debating Sex and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Spain by Martha V. Vicente An innovative study of the creation of a two-sex model of human sexuality within Spain, reflecting the enlightened quest to promote social reproduction and stability.
Embodiment, Identity, and Gender in the Early Modern Age by Amy E. Leonard (Editor); David M. Whitford (Editor) Embracing a multiconfessional and transnational approach that stretches from central Europe, to Scotland and England, from Iberia to Africa and Asia, this volume explores the lives, work, and experiences of women and men during the tumultuous fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.
Friendship and Queer Theory in the Renaissance: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern England by John S. Garrison In this volume, the author offers a substantial reconsideration of same-sex relations in the early modern period, and argues that early modern writers - rather than simply celebrating a classical friendship model based in dyadic exclusivity and a rejection of self-interest - sought to innovate on classical models for idealized friendship.
Same-Sex Desire in Early Modern England, 1550-1735 (Online) by Marie Loughlin (Editor) A collection of English texts about homoerotic love, relationships, desires, and sexual acts. The anthology's core texts are selections from works of drama, fiction, romance, poetry, essays and translation.