HIST 399, WINTER 2010
SAMPLE PAPER TOPICS

This list is meant simply to get you thinking about a range of possibilities. It is not an exhaustive list and is not meant to discourage you from writing about other topics.

Group 1: History of Sexology: Founding Figures and Fantastic Findings

Harry Benjamin
Mary Calderone
Edward Carpenter
Katharine Bement Davis
Robert Latou Dickinson
Havelock Ellis
Sigmund Freud on femininity
Sigmund Freud's seduction theory
Sigmund Freud on homosexuality
Sigmund Freud's visit to the U.S. in 1909
Magnus Hirschfeld
Alfred Kinsey
Kinsey Institute
Kinsey Reports, public reaction
Kinsey scale
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
William Masters and Virginia Johnson
Celia Mosher
sexological organizations and publications
sexological research methodologies (e.g. surveys, laboratory studies, sexual histories, diaries, photography and film, case studies, surrogates)

Group 2: History of Sexual Subjectivities: Inversions, Perversions, Orientations, Bodies, Brains, and Behaviors

abstinence
adolescent sexuality
aging and sexuality
asexuality
autoerotism
bisexuality
DSM categorization of sexual deviations and pathologies
fetishism
heterosexuality
homosexuality
hetero/homo binary
intersexuality
pedophilia and the sexual abuse of children
prison sexuality
reparative therapy
sadism and masochism
sex addiction
sex education and sexual science
sexual radicalism and sexual science
sexual reassignment
sexual technologies and aids
transsexuality
working-class sexuality

Group 3: Ethics and Politics: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture in Sexual Science

AIDS education in minority communities
anti-miscegenation laws
Charles Davenport
better baby and fitter family contests
Buck v. Bell
degeneration theory
Eugenics Record Office
eugenic sterilization
eugenics and birth control
eugenics and immigration restriction
eugenics and genetic counselling
feeble-mindedness and sexuality
heredity and genetics, theories and scientific practices
sex therapy and minority communities

Group 4: Ethics and Politics: Gender in Sexual Science

clitoral v. vaginal orgasms
contraceptive technologies (male and female)
feminist sexology
frigidity
gender identity disorder
gender inversion
Shere Hite
marriage counseling
John Money
nymphomaia
penis envy
prostitution
reproductive medicine and sexuality
sexual delinquency
sexual dysfunction
sex therapy
sterility and infertility