BEFORE SEX

ANNOUNCING A DAY-LONG CONFERENCE
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ
OCTOBER 23, 2009, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM

Teleconference Room, 4th floor of Alexander Library, 169 College Ave.,
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Until recently we’ve thought of the modern sex/gender system and homosexual identity as
socio-intellectual developments of the later nineteenth century. But over the past three decades,
evidence and arguments have accumulated to suggest that the categories of oppositional gender
difference and male same-sex identity coalesced much earlier than that--during the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries.
Specialized historical research has pursued different aspects of the topic in disparate
directions. The time has come to consolidate this research in a conference that brings together
four of the most important scholars in the field and an informed audience (there will be ample
time for discussion) to conceive, debate, and test a hypothesis of the first importance for early
modern historians and the history of sexuality.

Thomas W. Laqueur (University of California-Berkeley):
“Sex, Gender, and the Enlightenment Project”

Laura Gowing (King’s College, London):
"Women, Bodies, and Sex in the Seventeenth-Century World."

Tim Hitchcock (University of Hertfordshire):
"Sexual Knowledge and Sexual Behavior in the Eighteenth Century."

Randolph Trumbach (Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of NY):
"The Emergence of the Modern Homosexual Minority in Enlightenment
Europe and the Production of a Heterosexual Majority, 1700-1750."

For more information contact Michael McKeon, michael.mckeon@rutgers.edu