Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-18T16:24:12.303Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

18 - Sexuality and Emotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

Histories of both emotion and sexuality explore the ways that bodies and embodied practices are shaped by time, culture, and location. This chapter uses the theoretical and methodological insights from the History of Emotions to consider the emotions associated with sexuality and how these have taken cultural form at different moments. It first considers the emotions related to sexual function and desire, noting how different biological models informed what emotions were expected and experienced. It then turns to love as the predominant emotion connected with sexual practices, considering the boundaries of who and what should be incorporated within such feeling. The chapter then turns to an exploration of the emotions, particularly intimacy, of reproductive labour, acknowledging sexual practices, including those are contractual and exploitative, that sometimes sit uneasily within a framework of love. Finally, the chapter highlights some of the emotions produced by the management and policing of sexuality, such as shame and loneliness, recognising that sexuality has been a contested moral domain for many groups. Using diverse examples across time and space, this chapter seeks to denaturalise the emotions of sexuality and to provide a framework upon which further research can build.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Aderinto, Saheed. ‘Modernizing Love: Gender, Romantic Passion and Youth Literary Culture in Colonial Nigeria’. Africa 85, no. 3 (2015): 478500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Natsuko, Akagawa. ‘Lust, Love and Curiosity: The Emotional Threads in the Dutch Encounter with an Exotic East’. In Matters of Engagement: Emotions, Identity and Cultural Contact in the Premodern World, ed. Jarzebowski, Claudia, Hacke, Daniela, and Ziegler, Hannes, 7394. London: Routledge, 2020.Google Scholar
Barbezat, Michael. ‘Love in Communities’. In A Cultural History of Love. Vol. 2: The Middle Ages, ed. Rosenwein, Barbara H and Cristiani, Riccardo. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Barclay, Katie. Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barclay, Katie. ‘Intimacy, Community and Power: Bedding Rituals in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’. In Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe, 1200–1920: Family, Church and State, ed. Bailey, Merridee and Barclay, Katie, 4362. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barclay, Katie, and Reddan, Bronwyn, eds. The Feeling Heart in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Meaning, Embodiment and Making. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browne, Kath. ‘A Party with Politics? (Re)making LGBTQ Pride Spaces in Dublin and Brighton’. Social & Cultural Geography 8, no. 1 (2007): 6387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Hera. ‘Emotion, Bodies, Sexuality and Sex Education in Edwardian England’. Historical Journal 55, no. 2 (2012): 475–95.Google Scholar
Eyre, Angharad, Mackelworth, Jane, and Richardson, Elsa, eds. Love, Desire and Melancholy: Inspired by Constance Maynard (1849–1935). London: Routledge, 2017.Google Scholar
Gammerl, Benno. ‘Affecting Legal Change: How Laws Impacted Same-Sex Feelings and Relationships in West Germany since the 1950s’. In From Sodomy Laws to Same-Sex Marriage: Historical Perspectives on a Global Revolution, ed. Brady, Sean and Seymour, Mark, 109–21. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.Google Scholar
Grassi, Umberto. ‘Emotions and Sexuality’. In The Routledge History of Emotions in Europe, 1100–1800, ed. Lynch, Andrew and Broomhall, Susan, 133–50. London: Routledge, 2019.Google Scholar
Halperin, David M., and Traub, Valerie, eds. Gay Shame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Lambert-Hurley, Siobhan. ‘To Write of the Conjugal Act: Intimacy and Sexuality in Muslim Women’s Autobiographical Writing in South Asia’. Journal of the History of Sexuality 23, no. 2 (2014): 155–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langhamer, Clare. ‘Love, Selfhood and Authenticity in Post-War Britain’. Cultural and Social History 9, no. 2 (2012): 277–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meeks, Jeffrey. ‘“A Purer Form of Loneliness”: Loneliness and the Search for Community amongst Gay and Bisexual Men in Scotland, 1940 to 1980’. In The Routledge History of Loneliness, ed. Barclay, Katie, Chalus, Elaine, and Deborah, Simonton, 295–310. London: Routledge, 2023.Google Scholar
Premo, Bianco. ‘As if She Were My Own: Love and Law in the Slave Society of Eighteenth-Century Peru’. In Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas, ed. Berry, Daina Ramey and Harris, Leslie M., 7187. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Premo, Bianco. ‘“Misunderstood Love”: Children and Wet Nurses, Creoles and Kings in Lima’s Enlightenment’. Colonial Latin American Review 14, no. 2 (2005): 231–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reddy, William. The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia and Japan, 900–1200 ce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tait, Clodagh. ‘“Kindred Without End”: Wet-Nursing, Fosterage, and Emotion in Ireland, c. 1550–1720’. Irish Economic and Social History 47, no. 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/0332489320916020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanita, Ruth, and Kidwai, Saleem, eds. Same Sex Love in India. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×