Thomas W. Laqueur
American sexologist and historian
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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 Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, located in Berkeley, California.[1] Laqueur was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2015.[3]
Thomas W. Laqueur | |
|---|---|
Laqueur at the Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest, May 2016. | |
| Born | Thomas Walter Laqueur September 6, 1945 |
| Education | Nuffield College, Oxford, Princeton University, Swarthmore College |
| Known for | One-sex and two-sex theories |
| Awards | Rockefeller Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship,[1] Cundill Prize in Historical Literature |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | History, Sexology |
| Workplaces | University of California, Berkeley |
One-sex model
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 and experts in Early Modernity, notably Katharine Park and Robert A. Nye;[5] Monica Green,[6] Heinz-Jürgen Voss,[7] Helen King,[8] and Paola Uparela, 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
Books
- Laqueur, Thomas (2026). The Dog's Gaze: A Visual History. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0-593652-79-4.
- 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
- "The Queen Caroline Affair: Politics as Art in the Reign of George IV," The Journal of Modern History Vol. 54, No. 3, September 1982
- Laqueur, Thomas W. (November 15, 2004). "Come Again? – A History of the Orgasm Completely Misses the Point". Slate. Retrieved February 16, 2012.
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