Dr Julie Peakman

Post-Doctoral Honorary Fellow and Tutor

Research interests

• Gender, sexuality, eighteenth century, medicine, the body, social history in Britain.
• My recent work is examining perceived  'abnormal' sexualities in medicine in eighteenth century Britain and the emergence of female sexual pathologies. My earlier work at the Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine was on the influence of religion and science on the development of erotic material in the eighteenth century. From there, I developed an interest in the treatment of 'different' sexualities in history. I have worked on prostitution and eighteenth-century libertine culture.

Teaching interests

• In 2008-9, I will be offering an MA module option on Sex, Medicine & the Body in the Eighteenth Century. This course introduces students to the study of early modern sexuality, including themes of heterosexual sexual life and its alternatives (lesbian and homosexual type behaviour); childbirth and the rise of the man mid-wife, the emergence of the new sciences, and sexual illnesses. The course will examine current debates in the history of sexuality, as well as theories and beliefs circulating in the C18th.

Publications

• Julie Peakman & Tom Laqueur (eds.) A History of Sexuality (Berg, due 2009) 6 volumes: General Editor;  also editor for Enlightenment volume.
• (Editor), Sexual Perversions 1650-1890 (Palgrave, due 2009)
• Civilising Sex. A World History (Atlantic, due 2009).
• (Editor) Whores' Biographies in the Long C18th (London, Pickering & Chatto, 2007) Eight Volumes with full annotations
• Emma Hamilton (London, Haus, 2005)
• Lascivious Bodies. A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (London, Atlantic, 2004)
• Mighty Lewd Books, The Development of Pornography in C18th England (Basingstoke, Palgrave Press, 2003 )
• (Editor) Special Issue, 'Sex, Gender & The Body' of Women's Writing Journal (Triangle Press,  Vol 2,  No 2, 2004).
• Emma Hamilton and the Queen of Naples in 'Quakers and Queens; Prostitutes, Playwrights and Poets: Collaborating Women in the Long Eighteenth Century.' (University of Delaware Press Pending 2009)
• 'The C18th Erotic Garden' in Eva-Maria-Stolberg, Auf der Suche Nach Eden. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Gartens  (Peter Lang, 2008)
• Three articles: on Flagellation, Pornography and Chevalier D’Eon in Merril D. Smith, The Greenwood Encyclopaedia of Love Courtship and Culture (Westport, Greenwood, 2008)
• Nine articles:  on virginity, gender, sex manuals & various erotic books in The Encyclopaedia of Erotic Literature (Routledge, 2006)
• 'Gender & Power in the Early Modern Period' and 'The Legal Status of Women' in  Readers Guide to British History (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003).
• 'Initiation, Defloration and Flagellation: Sexual Propensities in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure' in Patsy Fowler and Alan Jackson (ed.), This Launch into the Wide World: Essays on Fanny Hill, (N.Y. AMS Press, 2003)
• 'Medicine, the Body and the Botanical Metaphor in  Erotica' in Kurt Bayertz &  Roy Porter (eds.), From Physico-Theology to Bio-Technology (editions Rodopi B. V., Amsterdam – Atlanta, 1998).
• 'Bodily Anxieties in Enlightenment Sex Literature', Studies on Voltaire & C18th 2005:1
• 'Memoirs of Women of Pleasure: The Whore Biography' in Women's Writing. (Triangle Press,  Vol 11,  No 2).