Abstract
This text is a draft introduction for a proposed special journal issue on the history of sex, science, and censorship in the twentieth century. The authors aim to situate the proposed contributions within the historiography, and make the case for thinking more broadly and synthetically about the role that censorship has played in shaping the practices of sexual science, and its establishment as a field of enquiry. The introduction shows that censorship has repeatedly been cited as a major issue in the production and distribution of scientific knowledge about sex around the world; examines the surprisingly modest role that considerations of sexual science have played in the broader historiography of censorship; demonstrates continuities between conceptions of censorship in the histories of art and entertainment and conceptions of scientific censorship; points to ways in which the case of sexual science is different; and describes how the proposed articles contribute to the literature. It is anticipated that work will be done to revise this draft and complete its final reflections once the peer review process is complete and the authors know which contributions will be included in the special issue.
Author Biographies
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Sarah Bull, Ryerson University
Sarah Bull is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Ryerson University. Prior to joining Ryerson, she was a Wellcome Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the history of the book and the histories of modern medicine and sexuality, primarily in the nineteenth century. She is currently completing her first book, on the practices and politics of selling medical knowledge about sex in print in Victorian Britain, and has started work on another, about compiling and the global circulation of information in the nineteenth century. The latter is funded through a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Agata Ignaciuk, Universidad de Granada
Agata Ignaciuk is an Assistant Professor at the Department of the History of Science, University of Granada (Spain). Between 2017 and 2019, she was a Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions COFUND Research Fellow at the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. Her research focuses on gender and the history of sexual and reproductive health and rights. She is currently engaged in the research project “Catholicising Reproduction, Reproducing Catholicism: Activist Practices and Intimate Negotiations in Poland, 1930 – Present”
