The Quest for Sexual Health: Pleasure, Politics and the Changing Landscapes of Authority and Expertise

media release: Lecture by visiting speaker Steven Epstein

Room 254, Van Hise Hall

In recent decades, the idea that people may aspire to something called “sexual health” has traveled widely in both professional and lay domains. Drawing on my recent book, which analyzes the rise, proliferation, uptake, consequences, and spillover effects of a diverse assortment of sexual health activities, I consider how the aspiration of sexual health has become an engine of productivity. It has fueled varied attempts to solve social problems; diversified the range of experts who speak with authority about bodies, risks, and pleasures; and encouraged individuals to “self-optimize” and governments to undertake campaigns of social improvement. Meanwhile, it has become a political battleground where the stakes are competing visions of the future. Conjoining “sexual” with “health” changes both terms: it alters how we conceive of sexuality but also transforms what it means to be healthy, prompting new expectations of what medicine can provide. Yet the ideal of achieving sexual health remains elusive and open-ended, while the benefits and costs of promoting it are unevenly distributed across genders, races, and sexual identities.

Steven Epstein is professor and interim chair of Sociology and John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. His research, writing, and teaching explore the changing political landscapes of health, medicine, and knowledge, with attention to the interplay of social movements, experts, and health institutions, and with a focus on the politics of sexuality, gender, and race. He is the author of award-winning books including Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge as well as Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research. His most recent book, The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022.

This event is hosted by the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies.