INTRODUCING THE NEW SEXUALITY STUDIES: ORIGINAL ESSAYS

Introducing the New Sexuality Studies: Original Essays is an innovative, reader-friendly collection of essays that introduces the field of sexuality studies to undergraduate students. Examining the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of sexuality, this collection is designed to serve as a comprehensive yet accessible textbook for sexuality courses at the undergraduate level. The fourth edition adds 51 new essays whilst retaining 33 of the most popular essays from previous editions.

It features perspectives that are intersectional, transnational, sex positive, and attentive to historically marginalized groups along multiple axes of inequality, including gender, race, class, ability, body size, religious identity, age, and, of course, sexuality. Essays explore how a wide variety of social institutions, including medicine, religion, the state, and education, shape sexual desires, behaviors, and identities. Sources of, and empirical research on, oppression are discussed, along with modes of resistance, activism, and policy change.

The fourth edition also adds new user-friendly features for students and instructors. Keywords are italicized and defined, and each chapter concludes with review questions to help students ascertain their comprehension of key points. There is also an online annotated table of contents to help readers identify key ideas and concepts at a glance for each chapter.

Nancy L. Fischer is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Dr. Fischer is a former chair and former secretary of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Sexualities. She is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Heterosexualities Studies (Routledge, 2020) and, in 2013, edited a special section of The Sociological Quarterly on critical heterosexuality studies. Besides sexuality, her research interests include vintage fashion and urban studies.

Laurel Westbrook is Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Dr. Westbrook is the author of Unlivable Lives: Violence and Identity in Transgender Activism (University of California Press, 2021). Their scholarship has also been published in Sexualities, Gender & Society, and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, among others, and has been recognized with multiple awards from the American Sociological Association.