Participant Info

First Name
Pauline
Last Name
Mortas
Country
France
State
Affiliation
Center for Nineteenth-Century History (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University)
Website URL
https://univ-paris1.academia.edu/PaulineMortas
Keywords
sexuality, gender, heterosexuality, 19th century, 20th century, France, history of virginity, history of contraception, sex market, market of sexual medication
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
other credentials

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a PhD candidate in History at the Center for 19th-Century-History (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University), under the supervision of D. Kalifa and S. Chaperon.

Some of my research is published on my academic blog, Sexcursus.

I have previousely worked and published on the history of social representations and practices regarding women’s deflowering in nineteenth-century France, analyzing various discourses about it (medicine and anatomical sciences, religion, literature, pornography individual testimonies, etc.).

My PhD research is about conjugal heterosexuality in France between the 1850s and the 1930s. It tackles the rise of a product and service market devoted to enhance this sexuality : remedies and consultations for sexual problems (impotence, frigidity, anaphrodisia, vaginismus, etc.), but also contraceptive products and devices, as well as various publications : marriage manuals, sex-advice books, etc.

 

Recent Publications

Articles in peer-review journals
« Hot stuff. Anatomy of the sex market at the dawn of the twentieth century, French History, vol. 34, issue 2, 2020, p. 213-234.

Books
Une rose épineuse. La défloration au XIXe siècle en France, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017.

Chapters
« Sextoy » in Sylvain Venayre et Pierre Singaravélou, Histoire du monde par les objets (XVIIIe-XXIe siècles), Paris, Fayard (to be published soon).
« Shaping femininity and masculinity. Protosexological discourses about defloration (France, 19th Century) », in Alain Giami and Sharman Levison (eds.), Histories of Sexology: between science and politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan (to be published soon).

Other
« Femmes et hommes face à la virginité », article in the Digital Encyclopedia for European History (available here).
« Défloration : la preuve par l’hymen », L’Histoire, n°433, February 2017 (available here).

Podcasts
Fréquence Paris Plurielle, Les Oreilles loin du Front : “Une rose épineuse” [février 2019]
France culture, La Fabrique de l’Histoire : “Contrôler le corps des jeunes filles au XIXe siècle” (avec Caroline Muller) [octobre 2017]
Radio Campus, Dessine-moi un mouton : “Histoires de la défloration” [février 2016]

Media Coverage
Country Focus
France
Expertise by Geography
Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
5, 8
Expertise by Topic
Gender, Material Culture, Medicine, Sexuality, Women