Joshua Wickerham

my contributions to the Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender

I got a letter in late July from the editor of the new four-volume Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender announcing its publication. I wrote three contributions in Fall of 2006 on Chinese sexual history. I’m excited because these are my first published encyclopedia entries.

I have yet to see a copy of the set, as I am based in China while the books are hitting North American library shelves. If anyone runs across the set, could you take photos of my entries and mail them to me?

I wrote the first entry, on modern Chinese sexuality and gender, with the head librarian at the Kinsey Institute, Liana Zhou. This opportunity presented itself during a visit to the Kinsey Institute and a meeting with Dr. Zhou. She suggested I contribute to the modern Chinese section because of my longstanding interest with HIV/AIDS prevention and gay life in China. I also wrote the pre-modern Chinese sex and gender entry (pre-1911), which I describe as “5,000 years in 4,000 words”. Finally, I wrote an entry on the famous republic-era sexologist Zhang Jingsheng.

The encyclopedia set is cited as: Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, ed. Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007.

Here’s the blurb from the Thomson Gale website:

Gender studies have become a major academic field in the past 25 years, providing a lens through which to reexamine and reevaluate knowledge in every area of human interaction and activity. The Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender encompasses the various concepts of sex and gender that have arisen from the critical study of those subjects worldwide, as well as the emerging reimagination of the more traditional humanities and social sciences. Broad theoretical essays address issues of sex and gender at the personal and the social level; others examine issues of identity, status, class, ethnicity, race, and nation; of sexuality and the body; of social institutions and the structures of representation – all through the lens of gender. With a truly global perspective, topics of individual entries include changing conceptions of “the feminine,” the family and masculinity, religion, morality, cultural images, medical practice, public health, economy and society and many more. In addition, the work discusses the influences of gender studies on various academic disciplines, examining how it has transformed and utilized methods and theories that have evolved.