Event overview
Chiara Beccalossi is an Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary European History at the University of Lincoln.
In the first half of the twentieth century, hormones were considered life’s master molecules. Medical doctors and scientists believed that by fully understanding how hormones functioned, they could eventually treat almost all disorders and control life itself. Endocrinologists promoted an understanding of the body in which variations in sex characteristics, and even so-called ‘sexual perversions’, were attributed to anomalies in the internal secretions produced by the testes or the ovaries.
In Catholic countries in Southern Europe and Latin America, where eugenic methods such as sterilisation were rejected, fascist governments financially supported hormone research, believing that hormones could ‘correct’ all sorts of anomalies and improve the ‘Latin race’. Among other things, hormone therapies came to be used to normalise queer people in these regions.
This talk will explore how, in the first half of the twentieth century, hormone research challenged ideas of binary gender while introducing the notion that the body and its sexual characteristics are malleable. However, hormone research in its practical application was used to erase variations and normalise individuals instead of making room for human diversity. By focusing on 3 case studies – Italy, Argentina and Brazil – this talk will show how hormone therapies were used and abused to normalise queer people, in particular gay and intersex individuals.
Chiara Beccalossi
Chiara Beccalossi’s main research interests focus on the history of the medicalisation of sexuality and gender identity. She works on European history, in particular Southern European, modern British, Latin American and transnational history. Chiara’s first book, ‘Female Sexual Inversion: Same-Sex Desires in Italian and British Sexology, c. 1870–1920’ (2012), explores how same-sex desires came to be considered a medical disorder in Italy and Britain. Combining sexuality studies with medical history, her monograph offers fresh perspectives on how medical practitioners constructed female same-sex desires in Italy and Britain. Chiara also co-edited ‘Italian Sexualities Uncovered, 1789-1914’ (2015) with Valeria Babini and Lucy Riall, ‘A Cultural History in the Age of Empire’ (2011) with Ivan Crozier, and has published numerous articles.
In 2015 Chiara was awarded a five-year Wellcome Trust grant to develop a new area of research. She is now working on a project entitled ‘Sexology, Hormones and Medical Experiments in the Latin Atlantic World: Local Power and International Networks, 1918-1985’. By focussing on four case studies of medical institutes in Italy, Spain, Argentina and Brazil, this new research explores how hormone research changed sexology after WWI. It investigates the exchanges and collaborations between Southern Europe and Latin America.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Dec 2019 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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