Editors' Note

The Current Issue

This issue of the Journal of the History of Sexuality contains a set of articles on a common topicthe World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR). Although the life of the WLSR was short (it was established after the First World War and dissolved before the Second), the organization did involve most of the sexual reform leaders in Europe and some of those in the Americas. The WLSR's international congresses, which were attended by medical and legal professionals as well as social activists, addressed the key sexual issues of the agemarital reform, birth control, prostitution, toleration of sexual minorities, censorship. The WLSR's members were deeply affected by other political and social events that were unfolding in Europe: racial intolerance, rivalries between nation-states, struggles between democratic and totalitarian political systems. Thus the records of the organization and the recollections of its participants shed light upon those events.

The rst of the articles, by Ralf Dose, was previously published by the University of Manchester Press and provides a general introduction to the WLSR. The subsequent articles concentrate on the WLSR's activities in Britain, the Netherlands, and Spain. The editors are grateful to Richard Cleminson for organizing the conference at which these papers were rst presented.

Call for Papers

Lesley A. Hall (Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine) and Julian Carter (Draper Program, New York University) are the guest editors for a special issue of the Journal of the History of Sexuality on "Studying the History of Sexuality: Theory, Methods, Praxis" to be published in 2004. The deadline for submitting completed manuscripts is January 31, 2004, but those interested in making a submission should contact one of the guest editors as soon as possible about criteria. Julian Carter may be reached at <juliancarter@mindspring.com> and Lesley A. Hall at <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>.

In this issue JHS seeks to represent the best current thinking about major conceptual and practical issues at the heart of our professional practice. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

The relations of the history of sexuality to other elds within history:

• women's/gender history
• lesbian/gay/transgender history
• history of childhood/child rearing/education
• "age studies" and ideas of the life-cycle more generally
• colonial and postcolonial studies
• political history, history of the state
• legal history
• history of medicine/science/technology
• demographic history

The relations of the history of sexuality to, and the inuence upon it of:

• queer theory
• feminist theory
• literary criticism
• ethnology/anthropology
• geography and spatial relations
• developments in the social sciences
• developments in the life sciences
• activism

Methodological approaches and problems:

• theorizing premodern sexualities
• using participant observation and community membership as sources of data, for example, the intersection of ethnographic methods and oral history
• locating and interpreting medical sources
• locating and interpreting legal and/or governmental sources

The position of the scholar in history of sexuality:

• past and current employment, research, and educational opportunities for sexuality scholars: who gets hired where with what job descriptions (i.e., are many historians of sexuality "passing" as something else? as independent researchers? etc.)
• teaching and mentoring within secondary and postsecondary contexts
• the expansion of electronic media and its implications for sexuality scholarship

We would also be interested in analyses of the reasons that certain issues get constituted as central to inquiries about particular timeplace elds (e.g., homosexuality and sexology in late-nineteenth-century Europe; race and prostitution in early-twentieth-century North America; eugenics and reproduction in colonial India).

We welcome contributions from employed and independent scholars in all geographical and temporal subelds and of any disciplinary afliation.

Call for Reviewers

We invite you to help maintain the high standards of the Journal of the History of Sexuality by adding your name to our list of expert reviewers to referee manuscripts for potential publication and to review recently published books. To add your name to our list, please send your current academic afliation...