Hutton Honors College

The Impact of Kinsey Beyond Sex Research:
Talk and Kinsey Tour

With Jennifer Bass, Kinsey Institute Director of Communications, and
James Capshew, Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Science

Friday, February 19, 2010 * 3-5 p.m. * The Kinsey Institute (Morrison 313) * SIGN-UP REQUIRED
Refreshments Provided

The publication of IU professor Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and his subsequent Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 opened the eyes of people around the world to a once-taboo subject and strongly shaped the social and cultural landscape of generations to come. The world-renowned Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, located on the IU campus, has continued Kinsey's legacy with its contributions to research and scholarship on sexuality, gender, and reproduction. As surprising perhaps has been the impact of the methods used by Kinsey and other sex researchers on research in other fields.

Kinsey was a Harvard-trained zoologist specializing in gall wasps when IU asked him to teach a "marriage course" in 1938. The Association of Women Students petitioned "for a course for students who were married or contemplating marriage," and the not-for-credit course was approved by then-IU president Herman B Wells. As Kinsey prepared for the course, he found that there was startlingly little scientific work on human sexuality, which prompted him to apply his own zoology training to the study of human sexual behaviors. Kinsey's meticulous use of the scientific method to study human behavior and the techniques he developed for interviews were unheard of at the time and have had an impact that has reached well beyond sex research.

Join Jennifer Bass, Kinsey Institute director of communications, and James Capshew, associate professor of History and Philosophy of Science, for a private tour of the Kinsey Institute and a discussion of Kinsey's impact.

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