Barry Reay – författare

Rural Englands is the first general history of nineteenth-century English rural workers. Barry Reay provides a fresh perspective on England's rural past, reintroducing those often excluded from more traditional historical approaches, and stressing the diversity of working communities and the dynamism of rural life. Reay challenges stereotypes of country living, arguing that the extent of localization is so compelling that, instead of thinking of a unitary notion of 'rural England', we must think in terms of 'rural Englands'.Incorporating a wide range of source material, Reay examines and explores both representations and experiences of rural labour, including:- Varieties of settlement and landscape- Types of work carried out by men, women and children- Household survival strategies- Experiences of life and death- Leisure patterns- Repertoires of protest- Visual imagery- Literary representations.

Over the past twenty years, historians have overturned nearly everything we once took for granted about human sexuality. Gender, sexual orientation, "deviance," and even the biology of sex have been unmasked for what they are-historically specific, culturally contested, and above all, unstable constructions.

Microhistories: Demography, Society and Culture in Rural England, 1800-1930 uses a local study of the Blean area of Kent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore some of the more significant societal changes of the modern western world. Drawing on a wide range of research techniques, including family reconstitution and oral history, Barry Reay aims to show that the implication of the micro-study can range way beyond its modest geographical and historical boundaries. Combining cultural, demographic, economic, and social history in a way rarely encountered in historical literature, Professor Reay examines a range of topics including marriage and fertility, health and mortality, the work of women and children, and illegitimacy and sexuality. This 1996 book demonstrates the challenging potentials of microhistory, and makes a central contribution to the 'new rural history'. It will be of interest to family and oral historians, as well as to demographers and sociologists.

Microhistories: Demography, Society and Culture in Rural England, 1800-1930 uses a local study of the Blean area of Kent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore some of the more significant societal changes of the modern western world. Drawing on a wide range of research techniques, including family reconstitution and oral history, Barry Reay aims to show that the implication of the micro-study can range way beyond its modest geographical and historical boundaries. Combining cultural, demographic, economic, and social history in a way rarely encountered in historical literature, Professor Reay examines a range of topics including marriage and fertility, health and mortality, the work of women and children, and illegitimacy and sexuality. This 1996 book demonstrates the challenging potentials of microhistory, and makes a central contribution to the 'new rural history'. It will be of interest to family and oral historians, as well as to demographers and sociologists.

This text explores the beliefs and behaviour of English people across different social classes from 1550-1750. It examines different age, gender and religious groups, as well as rural and urban communities. The book focuses primarily on the majority of the population below England's social elite.

This important new book, which focuses on the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, but which looks back to the earlier decades of the century and has a conclusion dealing with the 1970s to 1990s, maps the world of those known as ‘trade’ – ostensibly straight men who would engage in homosexual sex – and hustlers – those who were paid for it. It was a milieu that was central to the sexual histories of several generations of twentieth-century American men and also influenced American literary and visual culture; the ‘trade aesthetic’ informed the work of a variety of artists, filmmakers, and writers. This sexual culture, though compelling in itself, also allows us to explore some key aspects of modern sexual history.This pioneering work, which draws on a wide range of visual and literary sources, including previously unpublished material from the Kinsey archives, will appeal to a wide range of readers, especially those interested in the histories of sex, the city, masculinity, and American culture.

This important new book, which focuses on the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, but which looks back to the earlier decades of the century and has a conclusion dealing with the 1970s to 1990s, maps the world of those known as ‘trade’ – ostensibly straight men who would engage in homosexual sex – and hustlers – those who were paid for it. It was a milieu that was central to the sexual histories of several generations of twentieth-century American men and also influenced American literary and visual culture; the ‘trade aesthetic’ informed the work of a variety of artists, filmmakers, and writers. This sexual culture, though compelling in itself, also allows us to explore some key aspects of modern sexual history.This pioneering work, which draws on a wide range of visual and literary sources, including previously unpublished material from the Kinsey archives, will appeal to a wide range of readers, especially those interested in the histories of sex, the city, masculinity, and American culture.

Sexuality in modern western culture is central to identity but the tendency to define by sexuality does not apply to the premodern past. Before the 'invention' of sexuality, erotic acts and desires were comprehended as species of sin, expressions of idealised love, courtship, and marriage, or components of intimacies between men or women, not as outworkings of an innermost self. With a focus on c. 1100–c. 1800, this book explores the shifting meanings, languages, and practices of western sex. It is the first study to combine the medieval and early modern to rethink this time of sex before sexuality, where same-sex and opposite-sex desire and eroticism bore but faint traces of what moderns came to call heterosexuality, homosexuality, lesbianism, and pornography. This volume aims to contribute to contemporary historical theory through paying attention to the particularity of premodern sexual cultures. Phillips and Reay argue that students of premodern sex will be blocked in their understanding if they use terms and concepts applicable to sexuality since the late nineteenth century, and modern commentators will never know their subject without a deeper comprehension of sex's history.

Sexuality in modern western culture is central to identity but the tendency to define by sexuality does not apply to the premodern past. Before the 'invention' of sexuality, erotic acts and desires were comprehended as species of sin, expressions of idealised love, courtship, and marriage, or components of intimacies between men or women, not as outworkings of an innermost self. With a focus on c. 1100–c. 1800, this book explores the shifting meanings, languages, and practices of western sex. It is the first study to combine the medieval and early modern to rethink this time of sex before sexuality, where same-sex and opposite-sex desire and eroticism bore but faint traces of what moderns came to call heterosexuality, homosexuality, lesbianism, and pornography. This volume aims to contribute to contemporary historical theory through paying attention to the particularity of premodern sexual cultures. Phillips and Reay argue that students of premodern sex will be blocked in their understanding if they use terms and concepts applicable to sexuality since the late nineteenth century, and modern commentators will never know their subject without a deeper comprehension of sex's history.

The concept of sex addiction took hold in the 1980s as a product of cultural anxiety. Yet, despite being essentially mythical, sex addiction has to be taken seriously as a phenomenon. Its success as a purported malady lay with its medicalization, both as a self-help movement in terms of self-diagnosis, and as a rapidly growing industry of therapists treating the new disease. The media played a role in its history, first with TV, the tabloids and the case histories of claimed celebrity victims all helping to popularize the concept, and then with the impact of the Internet.This book is a critical history of an archetypically modern sexual syndrome. Reay, Attwood and Gooder argue that this strange history of social opportunism, diagnostic amorphism, therapeutic self-interest and popular cultural endorsement is marked by an essential social conservatism: sex addiction has become a convenient term to describe disapproved sex. It is a label without explanatory force.This book will be essential reading for those interested in sexuality studies, contemporary history, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, media studies and studies of the Internet. It will also be of interest to doctors and therapists currently working in this and related fields.

The concept of sex addiction took hold in the 1980s as a product of cultural anxiety. Yet, despite being essentially mythical, sex addiction has to be taken seriously as a phenomenon. Its success as a purported malady lay with its medicalization, both as a self-help movement in terms of self-diagnosis, and as a rapidly growing industry of therapists treating the new disease. The media played a role in its history, first with TV, the tabloids and the case histories of claimed celebrity victims all helping to popularize the concept, and then with the impact of the Internet.This book is a critical history of an archetypically modern sexual syndrome. Reay, Attwood and Gooder argue that this strange history of social opportunism, diagnostic amorphism, therapeutic self-interest and popular cultural endorsement is marked by an essential social conservatism: sex addiction has become a convenient term to describe disapproved sex. It is a label without explanatory force.This book will be essential reading for those interested in sexuality studies, contemporary history, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, media studies and studies of the Internet. It will also be of interest to doctors and therapists currently working in this and related fields.

Explores the important aspects of popular cultures during the period 1550 to 1750. Barry Reay investigates the dominant beliefs and attitudes across all levels of society as well as looking at different age, gender and religious groups.

Trans seems to be everywhere in American culture. Yet there is little understanding of how this came about. Are people aware that there were earlier periods of gender flexibility and contestability in American history? How well known is it that a previous period of trans visibility in the 1960s and early 1970s faced a vehement backlash right at the time that trans, in the form of what was then termed transvestism and transsexuality, seemed to be so ascendant? Was there transness before transsexuality was named in the 1950s and transgender emerged in the 1990s? Barry Reay explores this history: from a time before trans in the nineteenth century to the transsexual moment of the 1960s and 1970s, the transgender turn of the 1990s, and the so-called tipping point of current culture. It is a rich and varied history, where same-sex desires and identities, cross-dressing, and transsexual and transgender identities jostled for recognition. It is a history that is not at all flattering to US psychiatric and surgical practices.Arguing for the complexity of a trans past and present, Trans America will be a groundbreaking work for the trans community, as well as anyone interested in the history of medicine, sexuality, psychology and psychiatry.

Trans seems to be everywhere in American culture. Yet there is little understanding of how this came about. Are people aware that there were earlier periods of gender flexibility and contestability in American history? How well known is it that a previous period of trans visibility in the 1960s and early 1970s faced a vehement backlash right at the time that trans, in the form of what was then termed transvestism and transsexuality, seemed to be so ascendant? Was there transness before transsexuality was named in the 1950s and transgender emerged in the 1990s? Barry Reay explores this history: from a time before trans in the nineteenth century to the transsexual moment of the 1960s and 1970s, the transgender turn of the 1990s, and the so-called tipping point of current culture. It is a rich and varied history, where same-sex desires and identities, cross-dressing, and transsexual and transgender identities jostled for recognition. It is a history that is not at all flattering to US psychiatric and surgical practices.Arguing for the complexity of a trans past and present, Trans America will be a groundbreaking work for the trans community, as well as anyone interested in the history of medicine, sexuality, psychology and psychiatry.

The archive has assumed a new significance in the history of sex, and this book visits a series of such archives, including the Kinsey Institute’s erotic art; gay masturbatory journals in the New York Public Library; the private archive of an amateur pornographer; and one man’s lifetime photographic dossier on Baltimore hustlers. Shedding new light on American sexual history, the topics covered are both fascinating and wide-ranging: the art history of homoeroticism; casual sex before hooking-up; transgender; New York queer sex; masturbation; pornography; sex in the city. This book will appeal to a wide readership: those interested in American studies, sexuality studies, contemporary history, the history of sex, psychology, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, queer studies, trans studies, pornography studies, visual studies, museum studies, and media studies.

The archive has assumed a new significance in the history of sex, and this book visits a series of such archives, including the Kinsey Institute’s erotic art; gay masturbatory journals in the New York Public Library; the private archive of an amateur pornographer; and one man’s lifetime photographic dossier on Baltimore hustlers. Shedding new light on American sexual history, the topics covered are both fascinating and wide-ranging: the art history of homoeroticism; casual sex before hooking-up; transgender; New York queer sex; masturbation; pornography; sex in the city. This book will appeal to a wide readership: those interested in American studies, sexuality studies, contemporary history, the history of sex, psychology, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, queer studies, trans studies, pornography studies, visual studies, museum studies, and media studies.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, in New York and in Paris, daring publishers and writers were producing banned pornographic literature. The books were written by young, impecunious writers, poets, and artists, many anonymously. Most of these pornographers wrote to survive, but some also relished the freedom to experiment that anonymity provided - men writing as women, and women writing as men - and some (Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller) went on to become influential figures in modernist literature. Dirty books tells the stories of these authors and their remarkable publishers: Jack Kahane of Obelisk Press and his son Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, whose catalogue and repertoire anticipated that of the more famous US publisher Grove Press. It offers a humorous and vivid snapshot of a fascinating moment in pornographic and literary history, uncovering a hidden, earlier history of the sexual revolution, when the profits made from erotica helped launch the careers of literary cult figures.