Destination: Alexandria, Buenos Aires, Constantinople; "White Slavers" in Late Imperial Austria

The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: Naturalizing and modernizing Europe's East, past and present

“…Yet despite the tremendous recent growth of scholarly literatures expanding our knowledge of the history of sexuality in general, as well as specifically in Europe (both insightfully reviewed by Herzog 2009 and 2013, respectively), the importance of excavating the older histories of sexuality which have shaped Europe's postsocialist present, and its thinking about sexuality and its personal, social, and political significances, has been, as Herzog (2013) notes, relatively neglected. Recently emerging scholarship is beginning to direct attention to such concerns, as new and important studies on sex work under late Habsburg rule (Stauter-Halsted, 2011; Wingfield, 2011), sexual intimacies in East Germany (McLellan, 2011), and queer urban life in late 19th- and early 20th-century Budapest (Kurimay, 2012) demonstrate. Much of the balance of research on the history of Eastern European sexualities, however, has focused on Russia and the Soviet Union (e.g.…”