...Benjamin Kahan This essay charts a history and theory of celibacy. Redressing the scholarly and popular tendency to read celibacy as “closeted” homosexuality, I disarticulate the history of celibacy from the history of homosexuality. Despite Michel Foucault's much-recited lesson...

...Melissa E. Sanchez Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life . Kahan Benjamin . Durham, NC : Duke University Press , 2013 . xv + 235 pp . © 2015 by Duke University Press 2015 BOOKS IN BRIEF 171 tion: Remaking Gender...

... Sexuality without Sex? Melissa E. Sanchez Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life Benjamin Kahan Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. xv + 235 pp. Benjamin Kahan’s book begins from the intriguing, and seemingly counterintui- tive premise, that celibacy is itself a “sexual...

..., for an attunement to asexual resonances, and for a queer approach to archiving. Finally, we turn to two examples of asexual resonance that we feel effectively trou- ble asexuality’s current parameters: feminist political asexuality and celibacy of the 1960s and 1970s, and the “asexual aesthetics...

...- sity of Sydney, and the National Humanities Center. He is the author of Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life (2013) and the editor of Heinrich Kaan’s “Psychopathia Sexualis” (1844): A Classic Text in the History of Sexuality (2016). Catriona Sandilands is a professor in the faculty...

..., Taiwan (sex.ncu.edu.tw), widely known for its social activism and intellectual stamina. Benjamin Kahan is a postdoctoral lecturer in English at Washington University in St. Louis. His current book project examines the emergence of celibacy as an important nineteenth...

... studies at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life (2013) and The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergences of Sexuality (2019). He is also the editor of Heinrich Kaan's “Psychopathia Sexualis” (1844): A Classic Text...

... — to include monks and nuns, Mills asks provocatively in one chapter. After all, monas- tics turned to or were supposed to orient their erotic desires toward God: virgin- ity, chastity, and celibacy, he argues, may thus have been “analogous, in certain respects, to sexual orientation” (246...

..., is marriage over and against celibacy. Celibacy represented the moral ideal of the Church before the Reformation, and the Reformers’ emphasis on marriage provides a counterpoint to this ideal. We do not always associate mar­ riage with sexual freedom, but for the Reformers marriage represented not just...

...’ celibacy along with their countervailing rhythms and movements facilitated collective experimentation with ways of living outside patriarchal gender hierarchies, compulsory heterosexuality, and, indeed, compulsive sexuality itself: “Shaker rhythms were, precisely, both queer and sacred, for they lifted...

... of the CBO, the hospital, or government- sponsored welfare. Mobilizing Desire and Affect Reddy (2006) argues that hijras selectively deploy certain aspects of their histories like asexuality and celibacy to establish their legitimacy. In contrast, thirunan- gais fashion themselves as always desiring...

... exuality is central to the construction of sanctity in the Middle Ages. Medieval saints’ lives repeatedly celebrate and dwell upon virginity, celibacy or repentance for past sexual activity, so that sexuality, rather than being effaced through the renunciation of genital sex, becomes a crucial...

...- normativity (celibacy, effeminacy, “perversion,” seductive oratorical power) that strongly prefigures — although does not precisely overlap — modern antigay dis- Victorian England’s Queer Catholicism 557 course.55 As a homophobic attack, it seems a bit...

... the historical coor- dinates for the emergence of sodomitic discourse in the twelfth century, including the Gregorian reforms of the late eleventh century, increasing clerical control of the marriage ceremony and changing defi nitions of marriage, the institution of clerical celibacy by 1148...

... eleventh century, increasing clerical control of the marriage ceremony and changing defi nitions of marriage, the institution of clerical celibacy by 1148, and with it a new attention to and condemnation of cler- ical sodomy. From the historical emergence of sodomy, Burgwinkle turns...

... eleventh century, increasing clerical control of the marriage ceremony and changing defi nitions of marriage, the institution of clerical celibacy by 1148, and with it a new attention to and condemnation of cler- ical sodomy. From the historical emergence of sodomy, Burgwinkle turns...

... eleventh century, increasing clerical control of the marriage ceremony and changing defi nitions of marriage, the institution of clerical celibacy by 1148, and with it a new attention to and condemnation of cler- ical sodomy. From the historical emergence of sodomy, Burgwinkle turns...

...) the homosexual stops acting on his desire (i.e., elects to become celibate and successfully maintains that celibacy) or, better, (2) he is able to “completely work through” the problem to achieve “heterosexual adaptation and marriage” (245–46). Bowers’s report of greater success...

... the historical coor- dinates for the emergence of sodomitic discourse in the twelfth century, including the Gregorian reforms of the late eleventh century, increasing clerical control of the marriage ceremony and changing defi nitions of marriage, the institution of clerical celibacy by 1148...

... eleventh century, increasing clerical control of the marriage ceremony and changing defi nitions of marriage, the institution of clerical celibacy by 1148, and with it a new attention to and condemnation of cler- ical sodomy. From the historical emergence of sodomy, Burgwinkle turns...