Author Archives: Jennifer Ellen Grove

Sexual Science, Global Histories and Anthropology

Our project directors Professor Kate Fisher and Dr Jana Funke were invited to give the keynote presentation at Towards a Global History of Sexual Science, 1880-1950, The Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College , July 2013.

Their paper was titled ‘Let Us Leave the Medical Consulting Room: Let Us Make a Journey Round the World: Sexual Science, Global Histories and Anthropology’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANjo8hvDhbw

‘We Cannot Be Greek Now’: Age Difference, Corruption and the Making of Sexual Inversion (Funke, 2013)

Supported by Wellcome

Abstract:

A Problem in Greek Ethics, A Problem in Modern Ethics and “Soldier Love” indicate that John Addington Symonds responded carefully to social anxieties regarding the influence and corruption of youth and placed increasing emphasis on presenting male same-sex desire as consensual and age-consistent. Situating Symonds’s work in the social and political context of the 1880s and 1890s, the article opens up a more complex understanding of Symonds’s reception of Greece. It also offers a new reading of his collaboration with Havelock Ellis by arguing that Symonds’s insistence on age-equal and reciprocal relationships between men strongly shaped Sexual Inversion. This shows that concerns about age difference and ideals of equality and reciprocity began to impact debates about male same-sex desire in the late nineteenth century – earlier than is generally assumed.

Full citation:

Funke, J (2013) ”We Cannot Be Greek Now’: Age Difference, Corruption and the Making of Sexual Inversion’, English Studies: a journal of English language and literature, 139-153

Open Access article available here.

Material Passion and Noble Spirit: Sexological Uses of Rome

Our project director Dr Jane Funke and our collaborator professor Rebecca Langlands (University of Exeter) presented at The Reception of Rome and the Construction of Western Homosexual Identities conference, University of Durham, April 2012). Their paper was “Material Passion and Noble Spirit: Sexological Uses of Rome.”