The Gender and Sexuality Collection is a valuable resource for university librarians, researchers, and teaching staff. This collection delves into themes such as domesticity, education, work, sexuality, representation, religion, mental health, activism and motherhood. By surveying gender identity and sexuality from diverse perspectives, it raises critical questions about gender roles, feminist theory and heteronormativity. Covering a broad historical range from the medieval period to the present day, this collection is indispensable for those engaged in gender and sexuality studies.
| Key series |
| Gender in History |
| Rethinking Art’s Histories |
| Studies in Imperialism |
| Theory for a Global Age |
| Women, Theatre and Performance |
| Collection year | Titles |
| 2025 titles | 7 |
| 2023/4 titles | 12 |
| 2004-2022 titles | 89 |
| Total collection | 128 |
| Keywords |
| Domesticity |
| Education |
| Work |
| Nature |
| Sexuality |
| Heteronormativity |
| Representation |
| Religion |
| Global South |
| Mental health |
| Motherhood |
| Gender roles |
| Activism |
| Feminism |
| Beauty |
| Thema subject categories |
| Colonialism and imperialism |
| History |
| Economics |
| Politics and government |
| The Arts |
| Feminism and feminist theory |
| Film history, theory or criticism |
| Gender studies, gender groups |
| History of religion |
| LGBTQ+ Studies / topics |
SDG coverage
Gender and sexuality collection
The chapter argues that nursing by men was both ubiquitous and invisible in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, given a contemporary suspicion that male nurses were ‘unnatural’. It begins by sifting the scraps of evidence for male nursing in domestic and institutional settings. The former homes in on nursing by and for the poet John Keats, concerning terminal decline from pulmonary tuberculosis, and debates the significance of rare depictions of nursing by men of colour. The latter, institutional work, is initially represented by nursing in prisons. The chapter then shifts focus to the existing historiography of nursing by men and its origins in lunatic asylums as a further institutional form. It draws on the work of Len Smith in this area and then pushes his findings further. It discusses the brutal reputation of keepers in the light of expectations for masculine behaviour and argues that men occupationally required to care for others sometimes found the task a profound challenge to their male identity. The chapter highlights a contradiction in male nursing in this period: nursing by male servants, or voluntarily by multiple men, could be a sign of high status, as in the example of nursing for Nelson after he was fatally wounded, yet asylum keeping by men was reviled. ‘Dirty work’ is again an important feature. The chapter speculates that brutality was a rational if cruel response to social pressures on male keepers.
Care and medicine for older people emerged as a specialism only in the later nineteenth century: in the period covered by this book, however, the wounded, disabled, and ageing population of the Chelsea Hospital, comprised exclusively of army invalids, was cared for by a cohort of women without formal training but acquiring substantial experience of older bodies. The chapter begins by situating the Chelsea Hospital within a longer history of accommodation for older people in almshouses, and the conflicts waiting for men who were compelled to accept charity: normative masculinity made philanthropy directed to men quite fraught for both donors and recipients. The chapter then unpicks the conditions of service for 266 women appointed either to the hospital’s residential wards or to the hospital’s internal infirmary. It gives particular scrutiny to the marital experiences of women, given their capacity to form relationships with the hospital inmates. Neither inpatients nor nurses were supposed to marry after admission to the hospital as beneficiaries or staff respectively, yet a steady stream of both men and women formed partnerships in contravention of the rule and without the aim of forming a separate household. Different patterns of nurse nuptiality are discussed with reference to ‘clandestine’ marriage. The chapter concludes that the female staff were essential to the institution’s delivery of care, but that security of employment was superseded by marriage for the women’s sense of identity. Nonetheless the hospital developed a distinctive microclimate of care.
Official army regulations in this period specified some aspects of medical provisioning and attention, and the concept of ‘first aid’ was developing in advance of the name. But what care was on offer for serving soldiers, and what was the organisation of that care, before the need for nursing reform was recognised? This chapter deploys extracts from over one hundred diaries, memoirs, and collections of letters written by combatants in or observers of the wars with France between 1793 and 1815 to assess how the English were nursed in the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Belgium. Women and men, whether paid or unpaid, delivered or withheld care in ways that inspired description, comment, and judgement by their patients. There was clearly insufficient nursing care for the needs of soldiers in this period, yet the problems were as much structural as they were personal. Close attention is given to the mobilisation of stories about nursing for the purpose of racially stereotyping the anti-nurse, and to the fine detail of nurse and orderly behaviours for potential signs of trauma. The chapter concludes with an examination of the nursing on offer in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, and the role of women in Brussels in promoting the first versions of the ‘lady’ nurse later lionised by Florence Nightingale.
Provincial infirmaries were established in England from the 1730s onwards and offered a modest contribution to the nation’s institutional capacity up to 1820. Their charitable funding placed distinct limits on the medical and nursing care they could offer. Even so, infirmaries supply important clues about the ambivalent nature of nurse reputations and the rewards that nurses enjoyed in practice. This chapter draws on the manuscript records of eight infirmaries to assess the terms of nurse employment for 311 named women and the significance of their proximity to pain, distress, contagion, and waste. It concludes that infirmary nurses occupied a very difficult social position and were blamed for conditions not of their making. Chapter sections focus on the salaries offered to nurses, the terms on which they lived in their hospital, the forms of recognition they were given for work well done, and the occupational environment offered by an eighteenth-century infirmary, construed as a challenge to the five senses. Hospital governors were attentive to the pressures of hospital living on inpatients, but not to their implications for nurses. Particular attention is given to the nurses’ core work of supplying and emptying chamber pots, and the evidence that this component of the nursing role created tensions for the women in post. The chapter concludes that the unspoken job description of the infirmary nurse could change quite quickly, and that women have effectually been reproached in existing histories for their failure to anticipate the change.
Nursing the English analyses the reputations and experiences of women and men who nursed the sick in the period before any calls for nursing reform. It begins in 1660, since the separation of sick nursing from childcare nursing can be dated to the final third of the seventeenth century, and to include the final epidemic of plague. It concludes in 1820, the year of Florence Nightingale’s birth. This was coincidentally the same year which saw the first European publication calling for the founding of a Protestant nursing sisterhood, a movement which eventually propelled the drive for nurse training. Chapters focus on domestic nursing by women, the long history of nursing at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, the careers of women recruited to nurse in provincial infirmaries, and the lives of ‘matrons’ who nursed old soldiers at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. The final two chapters pull together the evidence for nursing by men, the conflicts with normative masculinity that lay in wait for male carers, and the plethora of intentional and ad hoc nursing by both women and men as a result of Britain’s wars with France between 1793 and 1815. The purpose of this volume is to make a decisive statement in contradiction to the stereotype of the pre-reform nurse as ignorant, illiterate, and drunk, to characterise her (and also him) as working well in context. Gender, status, and proximity to ‘dirty work’ provide an essential framework for understanding the challenges of nursing before reform.
This chapter surveys the institutional provision of care for the metropolitan poor, giving due mention to the workhouses which proliferated in London’s parishes from the 1720s onwards, before undertaking a meticulous survey of the 611 women known to have worked at St Bartholomew’s Hospital as female ward staff in the period covered by this book. Subsections of the chapter consider recruitment and tenure, ward culture, behaviour in post, and the points of connectivity between this august institution and its lowlier employees. The material for St Barts is interleaved with occasional reference to nursing experiences at St Thomas’s Hospital, the other ancient institution in London catering to the sick poor, wherever there is scope for comparison. A quantitative survey of the women appointed as nurses or as the more senior ward ‘Sisters’ to St Barts is augmented by a qualitative review of every narrative source found for this cohort of women, including instances of trials at the Old Bailey which gave detailed accounts of interactions between staff and patients on the hospital wards, and genealogical evidence arising for selected nurses. This latter research involves analysing the contents of women’s wills to find the ways in which they forged connections with other members of female staff and concludes that their fellow employees could become fictive kin. Furthermore, the chapter confronts allegations about nurse behaviour, finding that nurses were rarely drunk but were more likely to be reproached for petty misdemeanours around the use of textiles.
Muslim men are often portrayed in academic and popular discourses as violent patriarchs and/or as terrorists. Against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile environment within the United Kingdom, this book explores the experiences of Muslim migrant husbands in the Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora. The uncertainties of migrant journeys tethered to cultural and religious marital norms intersect with gendered experiences of masculinity across space and time. In-depth interviews with 62 migrant husbands shed light on the precarity and vulnerability they experience. Their aspirational masculinities often start in the home country with collective familial dreams of migration, but can turn sour through the exposure of domestic and employment power dynamics upon arriving in the United Kingdom. The ethnography highlights experiences of domestic violence experienced by migrant husbands, which supports the notion of an in-between or liminal masculinity becoming a lived reality for these men on the move, ultimately resulting in novel ways in which a reassertion of masculinity is sought through religious Sufi traditions and musical lamentations. The book weaves together transnational dynamics between people and place along the contours of colonial legacies, showing the self and other power dynamics present within a single group identity. Violence is inflicted on incoming migrants by British-born or British citizen counterparts, through the immigration system. The book shows how citizenship can be weaponised as a performance of whiteness, namely White power, resulting in the notion that gender is performed on.
Throughout my fieldwork, migrant husband interlocutors often spoke to me about how skin colour was a factor influencing their marital choice in some way. The connections between ideas of whiteness and marriage and the persistent legacy of colonialism became increasingly glaring. This overlap is further underlined when the type of passport or citizenship held by the prospective bride or groom transacts and determines the success of the rishta. In many ways, citizenship status demonstrated by the colour of one’s passport has replaced the merit of the colour of one’s skin as a vehicle for social status and mobility. What happens when we consider the intersection of skin colour and passport colour in a transnational context? What can we learn about the intricate workings of gender, race, and colonialism? Does marriage migration in any way draw on this relationship and, if so, what role does this play in constructing multiple masculinities for migrant husbands? In this chapter, I consider the interplay between gender, race, and colonialism to understand the experience of Pakistani and Kashmiri Muslim migrant husbands. I also map out what a project focusing on the decolonising of Muslim men entails, and trace both the significance and the implications of such a project.