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18 - Sexuality and Emotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

By
Katie Barclay
Edited by
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks  and
Mathew Kuefler
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Summary

Histories of both emotion and sexuality explore the ways that bodies and embodied practices are shaped by time, culture, and location. This chapter uses the theoretical and methodological insights from the History of Emotions to consider the emotions associated with sexuality and how these have taken cultural form at different moments. It first considers the emotions related to sexual function and desire, noting how different biological models informed what emotions were expected and experienced. It then turns to love as the predominant emotion connected with sexual practices, considering the boundaries of who and what should be incorporated within such feeling. The chapter then turns to an exploration of the emotions, particularly intimacy, of reproductive labour, acknowledging sexual practices, including those are contractual and exploitative, that sometimes sit uneasily within a framework of love. Finally, the chapter highlights some of the emotions produced by the management and policing of sexuality, such as shame and loneliness, recognising that sexuality has been a contested moral domain for many groups. Using diverse examples across time and space, this chapter seeks to denaturalise the emotions of sexuality and to provide a framework upon which further research can build.

Keywords

history of emotionsdesirepassionloveinstinctbodiesevolutionChristianityloneliness
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities , pp. 388 - 409
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Aderinto, Saheed. ‘Modernizing Love: Gender, Romantic Passion and Youth Literary Culture in Colonial Nigeria’. Africa 85, no. 3 (2015): 478–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Barbezat, Michael. ‘Love in Communities’. In A Cultural History of Love. Vol. 2: The Middle Ages, ed. Rosenwein, Barbara H and Cristiani, Riccardo. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Barclay, Katie. Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Barclay, Katie, and Reddan, Bronwyn, eds. The Feeling Heart in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Meaning, Embodiment and Making. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Reddy, William. The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia and Japan, 900–1200 ce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tait, Clodagh. ‘“Kindred Without End”: Wet-Nursing, Fosterage, and Emotion in Ireland, c. 1550–1720’. Irish Economic and Social History 47, no. 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/0332489320916020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanita, Ruth, and Kidwai, Saleem, eds. Same Sex Love in India. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.Google Scholar

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