The book of minor perverts : sexology, etiology, and the emergences of sexuality /

In The Book of Minor Perverts, Kahan (women's and gender studies, Louisiana State Univ.) engages with a rich range of scholarship and sources to posit that an etiological historical approach will permit a more thorough examination of the hetero/homo binary. This theoretical discourse remains in close conversation with Eve Sedgwick's The Epistemology of the Closet (1990), a work that examines the results of the "great paradigm shift"; Kahan focuses on how the shift arose in the first place. He encourages scholars to move beyond the debate over congenital or acquired positions and utilize historical etiology to "recast the recent methodological debate in queer studies that asks 'how to do the history of homosexuality'" (p. 10). Encyclopedic references to scholars and sources ranging from the 17th century to the present day make this highly theoretical yet very readable book nothing short of fascinating. In addition to Sedgwick, see works by Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (CH, Feb'79); Chauncey, Gay New York (CH, Nov'94, 32-1725), and Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality (CH, Jun'03, 40-6115). Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and above. --John D Goins, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley