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Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History. Dagmar Herzog. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. viii + 230. $88.00 (cloth); $28.99 (paper).
This new volume on the history of sexuality in Europe is ideal for the undergraduate who is beginning to explore the subject and for researchers who are keen to find material to buttress international and transnational connections between discourses and practices around sexuality in the twentieth century. Dagmar Herzog has made a concerted and wide-ranging attempt to produce an account of sexuality that provides interconnections between her multiple chosen subject areas and between the different regions within the geographical remit of this book series, which focuses on new approaches to European history. As such, the book should satisfy its intended audience and, what is more, should be of interest to readers of Modernism/Modernity.
Any trepidation that may seize the reader upon picking up a book with such a broad remit is dispelled by the ease with which the author interweaves the relevant issues with the diverse range of countries covered. The substantive chapters of the book follow a strict chronological order, progressing from 1900 through to the present; the account is not, however, naively progressive. In line with Foucault's and others' suggestions on historical method and interpretation, Herzog's story is one of tensions over sexual issues, revisions, reversions, some advances towards liberalization, and some returns to oppressive restrictions on the exercise of sexuality.
The first chapter focuses on the cultural and scientific contexts in which sexuality was inserted from 1900 to 1914, presented by Herzog as a period of reconceptualization. New attitudes towards prostitution...