Listen to a recording of the paper here.

‘Something different’: Sexology and the Department Store, Ina Linge  (University of Cambridge).

All welcome.

Part of the Centre for Medical History seminar series at University of Exeter

Abstract:

Dori and Nora, the protagonists of The Diary of a Male Bride (1907) and A Man’s Maiden Years (1907), respectively, leave their small-town relatives behind to become shop girls in the German metropolis. They appear to be members of a generation of ordinary working class girls populating the department store –except that, in the eyes of their contemporaries, they are not ordinary, because they are not girls. This talk traces the textual representation of the queer body in early twentieth-century sexological life writings as it becomes an object of display, both during sexological examination and as queer commodity on the shop floor.