November 13 - 15, 2003
Indiana University - Bloomington

At the 50^th birthday of Kinsey's controversial "female volume," this conference provides a forum for recent feminist, historical, theoretical, international, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary scholarship related to women's sexualities. It features nationally and internationally distinguished feminist historians and theorists, as well as other critical scholars of sexuality, gender, and reproduction. Particular focus is placed upon Kinsey's sex research project - its scientific, intellectual and clinical antecedents and legacies - and its implications for understandings of women's erotic behaviors and identities since the mid-20th century.

The text of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) merits analysis, in and of itself - especially its implications in the area of sexual politics - and in relation to the profusion of 20th century texts on women's sexualities, gender relations, the status of women, and feminism. Moreover, the "life and times" of Kinsey's female volume is an important conference theme, that is, the specific national and international historical context pertaining to the diversity of women's sexualities in the 1940s, the 1950s and beyond.

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