Dr Kate Fisher
Research Interests
My research and teaching interests focus primarily around the history of sexuality.
My published research has two main strands.
First: the social history of sexual attitudes and practices, especially within marriage, during the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the history of birth control.
Second, I am exploring the ways in which, in making sense of sexual behaviour Western society has often looked to a wide variety of past cultures and civilizations (from antiquity to the Far East, from primitive cultures to the Victorians). This research interrogates the Western fascination with sex in the past and examines the various ways the past has been marshalled in debates about sex and sexuality - to challenge contemporary beliefs, to sustain sexual identities, in support of movements for sexual reform, or in reinforcing claims about universal human desires.
As part of this research I have collaborated with Dr. Rebecca Langlands i (Department of Classics & Ancient History) ocuses on the role that Pompeii – both as an idea and in its material remains - has played in a wide variety of arguments about sexual morality from the 18th century to the present day.
We are also collaborating with Dr. Jana Funke on an investigation of the multivalent part played by interpretations of past civilizations in late nineteenth and early twentieth century sexology. It asks: what kind of evidence did sexologists see past cultures’ material and textual legacies as providing? What kinds of authority did the past hold for them? How did material from the past shape their ideas about sexuality and how did they view its relationship with other evidence, such as observations of animal behaviour or modern medical case studies?
Sex and History: Revealing Collections
With Rebecca Langlands, I am working on a series of exhibitions, events and schools programmes will draw upon ‘erotic objects’ from a variety of past cultures to make the dialogue between our sexual identities and those of past sexual cultures clear and meaningful to a contemporary young audience. Updating the questions asked by sexologists in the early twentieth century for the modern world, young people will use these historical objects as a resource for debating, understanding and reassessing contemporary assumptions about human sexuality, improving young people’s access to safe, sensible, informative and empowering material on sex and sexuality.
Research Supervision
I am happy to supervise work on aspects of the history of sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially birth control, courtship, sex within marriage, sexual knowledge and education, and welcome proposals seeking to use oral history.
I also supervise the 'reception' of the past or 'non-Western' societies in modern European culture - particularly as it relates to the history of sexuality and the erotic.
Research Students
I am currently supervising three PhD students:
- Pei-Ching Chen, ‘The Plebeian Cross-Dressing Woman in C18th and C19th Britain’, start date 2008
- Victoria Bates ‘Physiology and Morality: Medical Perspectives on Sexual Consent, 1850 -1914’, start date 2009, (AHRC funded)
- Jenny Grove ‘Anglo/American collectors of antique erotica in 19th and early 20th century’, start date 2009, (AHRC funded)
