Thomas Laqueur

Professor Thomas W. Laqueur is the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, he is a historian, sexologist, and writer. After graduating from Swarthmore and Princeton, he went on to instruct at Concord College and later joined UC Berkeley where he has resided since. His research interests are British social history and history of medicine since 1509. A recipient of the Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award, Laqueur has written books such as The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, The Making of the Modern Body, and Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780- 1850. He has introduced the concept of the "one-sex model" for life prior to the eighteenth century.