Sexology, ”Race” and the work of Magnus Hirschfeld

Find out more about studying Gender Studies at SOAS at http://www.soas.ac.uk/genderstudies/ This seminar titled "Sexology, "Race" and the work of Magnus Hirschfeld: Rethinking the Making of a Modern History of Sexuality" was held by the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS University of London on 29 October 2009. This seminar will explore issues of “race” in the formation of sexology and sexual theory. In so doing it will reconsider some broader questions about the entangled discourses of "race" and sexuality in the modern history of sexuality, and their gendering. The focus will be on the writings of Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish German sexologist and reformer whose work– such as the publication of the first journal dedicated to same-sex sexuality and the establishment of the first Institute of Sexual Sciences – was instrumental in establishing sexology as a recognized field of investigation. The investigation concentrates on the period from the establishment of an independent sexological discipline in Germany around 1900 to the destruction of Hirschfeld’s institute during the Nazi book burnings in 1933. However, this discussion's conceptual reach will deliberately go beyond national and historical boundaries: by examining Hirschfeld’s hitherto little studied writings on “race” and their English reception, Dr Bauer develops the theoretical imperative of recent queer postcolonial scholarship to expose the racialized logic which continues to underpin modern genealogies and chronologies of sex. You can find out more about this event at https://goo.gl/YMw5Rh