Veronika Fuechtner - A Global History of Sexual Science, 1880–1960

This project began in conversations between Veronika Fuechtner and Douglas E. Haynes, colleagues at Dartmouth College, when they discovered they were both recalling library books from each other. As it turned out, we were both researching the history of sexual science in colonial India. As we started talking about our respective projects, we quickly realized that relatively little work had been published on sexual science outside Europe and North America, despite a rapidly developing interest in this subject. We ultimately decided to submit a proposal for an intensive research seminar at the Leslie Humanities Center at Dartmouth. We are deeply grateful for the encouragement and help we received during and after the application process from Adrian Randolph, then director of the center. And we wish to thank the Leslie Center for a sizable grant that made it possible to invite twenty-two long- and short-term fellows from all over the world to our research institute, Towards a Global History of Sexual Science, during the summer of 2013. The Matariki Network of Universities provided the funding for our fellow from Queens University, Ishita Pande. We also thank Colleen Boggs, who succeeded Adrian Randolph as the Leslie Center director, for her continued support as the institute moved from proposal to reality. We especially wish to acknowledge Isabel Weatherdon, the Leslie Centers administrator, for her daily efforts on behalf of the institute during 201213.

This volume is first and foremost a product of the intense and exciting discussions during the summer of 2013. The ideas that inform the introduction and the essays that are included were forged in our biweekly sessions, in regular lectures during these seven weeks, and in the extensive social occasions that punctuated the institute. (Several of the participants even rented a house together during the summer.) We wish to acknowledge the fellows of the institute for their roles during this time, including the non-Dartmouth participants Sanjam Ahluwalia, Chiara Beccalossi, Pablo Ben, Shrikant Botre, Rainer Herrn, Rebecca Hodes, Ryan M. Jones, Kurt MacMillan, Rachel Hui-Chi Hsu, Ishita Pande, and Angela Willey (all of whose pieces are included in this volume); Ryan Jones joined this volumes editorial team of Fuechtner and Haynes immediately after the end of the institute. We also wish to thank the Dartmouth fellows Aimee Bahng, Michael Dietrich, Susannah Heschel, Elizabeth Perez, and Dennis Washburn. For us, participation in the institute with all of you was one of the most rewarding periods of our careers. Our guest speakers Heike Bauer, Donna Drucker, Kate Fisher, Jana Funke, Ralph Leck, Kirsten Leng, Mark McLelland, Jill Smith, and Michiko Suzuki added further stimulation to the institutes discussion; Howard Chiang participated virtually from Singapore (in the middle of the night!) in a conversation about his work. Some of our guests stayed on for extra days to participate in institute sessions after their talks. Essays by Fisher and Funke, Leck, Leng, McLelland, and Suzuki appear in this volume, and Howard Chiang has contributed the afterword. Udi Greenberg, Marianne Hirsch, Richard Kremer, Leo Spitzer, Silvia Spitta, and Nikhil Rao served as moderators in institute sessions, enhancing our interactions with the campus intellectual community. A number of individuals, including Kit Heintzman, Klaus Milich, and Durba Mitra, joined our discussions and made valuable contributions. Klaus was an exceptional host to us all. We also wish to mention Annabel Martin, then chair of the Womens and Gender Studies Program, and Cristen Brooks, administrator of the program for their support to the institute. We especially wish to thank our student assistants Lulu Chang, Sanders Davis, Tien-Tien Jong, Aditya Shah, and Danielle Smith for all their efforts.

We have also incurred many debts in the process of editing this volume. Danielle Smith, Anthony Otey, and Arielle Concilio provided us with extensive help in reading and rereading the contributions numerous times. Howard Chiang, Richard Kremer, Nikhil Rao, Dennis Washburn, and Tze-ki Hon read drafts of the introduction. Comments made by Howard and by Chris Waters at a triple panel on our research at the American Historical Association have also informed the perspective of the introduction and, we suspect, that of several of the essays. Todd Presner graciously brought our project to the attention of University of California Press. Ruben Gallo and Geoff Eley served as readers for the manuscript and provided numerous comments that have guided our revisions of the introduction and our final editorial suggestions to the contributors. Finally, we wish to acknowledge Niels Hooper and the editorial team at the University of California Press for guiding us through the process of converting our manuscript to a book. Nielss enthusiasm for our project was unwavering. And his recognition that it was important to include our full range of participants was essential to our being able to state our arguments on the global character of the history of sexual science.