Thomas Walter Laqueur (born September 6, 1945) is an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

sexologist Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term ''sexology'' does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism. Sexologists a ...

and writer. He is the author of ''Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation'' and ''Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud'' as well as many articles and reviews. He is the winner of the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...

's 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award, and is currently the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, located in

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. Laqueur was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2015.

Thought

One-sex model

Laqueur wrote that there was an ancient " one-sex model", in which the woman was only described as imperfect man / human and he postulates that definitions of sex/gender were historically different and changeable. This argument has been challenged by some historians of science, notably

Katharine Park Katharine Park is a Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. She specializes in the history of gender, sexuality, and the female body in medieval and Renaissance Europe, as well as categories and practices of experience ...

and Robert A. Nye; Monica Green, Heinz-Jürgen Voss, and Helen King, who reject the suggestion that ancient descriptions show a homogenous model, the one-sex model which then mutated in the 18th century to a two-sex model. They encourage a more differentiated perception that makes clear that gender theories of natural philosophy as well as biology and medicine, are embedded and constructed in certain social contexts.

Bibliography

Books

* * * * *

Selected articles

* "The Queen Caroline Affair: Politics as Art in the Reign of George IV," ''The Journal of Modern History'' Vol. 54, No. 3, September 1982 *

References

External links

University of California, Berkeley Department of History Faculty: Thomas W. Laqueur
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Laqueur, Thomas W. 1945 births 20th-century scholars 21st-century scholars American sexologists 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Living people University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Writers from California Swarthmore College alumni Princeton University alumni Rockefeller Fellows Historians from California American male non-fiction writers