Sunday, January 20, 2008

googling sex

So I'm teaching a graduate level seminar on Queer Theory (for the first time), and I'm beginning the course with Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Last night as I was reading through the first essay, on the "aberrations," I ran across a reference to the tertiary sexual characteristics. I'm familiar enough with the distinction between the primary (those features related to the genitals and to reproduction) and secondary sexual characteristics (those that are not directly related to reproduction--such as bodily hair and pitch of the voice), but I hadn't recalled reading about tertiary sexual characteristics.

So I did what I often tell my students not to do, and I googled the phrase. The second hit was a reference to a work by Albert Moll from 1909, called The Sexual Life of the Child. (Freud references this work in the Three Essays.)

When I clicked on the link, I was taken to an facsimile image of a page from a 1912 English translation of Moll's book, and the relevant passage appeared before my eyes. (Click here to see what I mean.) Is that neat or what?

Apparently I'm a little late in discovering the magic that is Google Books, but I'm pretty stoked to some more exploring. I guess I'll need to rethink my mandate to my students that they not google topics that they are researching.

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