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Invited Editorship: H-Child & Youth Sexualities
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L.S.,
Having operated Topica "Growing Up Sexually" (GUS) list for nearly one
year as a personal endeavour (
http://lists.topica.com/lists/growingupsexually/read ), I recently
imagined it would be a good idea to start a general academic discussion
list about "Growing Up Sexually" at H-Net, which requires "at least two
coeditors and a six-member advisory board to oversee list policies and
intellectual development". As was the case with the inception of "Growing
Up Sexually" at Topica, a platform of this kind does not exist and it
should. This would mean a huge leap forward from the current Topica
listserv. In the upcoming time I will be searching dedicated
university-affiliated Coeditors/Members to pull this through the
Network's Preappproval requirements (please read here for details:
http://www.h-net.org/lists/application.cgi ).
The proposed name of this list would read: H-Child & Youth Sexualities.
H-Net is "an international interdisciplinary organization of scholars and
teachers dedicated to developing the enormous educational potential of
the Internet and the World Wide Web" ( http://www.h-net.org )
Currently, H-Net has one sexological list (also recently transferred from
Topica), covering historiographic matters (H-Histsex), and one list
dedicated to the history of childhood and youth (H-Childhood).
As Topica-GUS, the List would have to accommodate a platform for sexual
development issues from a large transdisciplinary, transmethodic,
transthematic and international range of perspectives, including
sociology, ethnology and ethnography, historiography, literature and
media studies, (cyber-)pedagogy, medicine in general, developmental
psychology, developmental psychoanalysis, psychohistory, and philosophy
of (sex) education.
The need for such a platform to me is obvious, having dedictated a
preliminary web-based project to the matter ( http://growingupsexually.tk
) and having reviewed a large body of literature (webpublished:
http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/GUS_AFS.HTM ). As
judged from contemporary medicolegal discourse and mobilisation
worldwide, there seems to be a need for an ongoing effort to monitor,
review, discuss and report on world sexual development issues. The List
would be the first in providing a (currently off-discourse and
off-programmatic) nexus for discussions of multi-facetted matters too
commonly dealt with in politically restricted, interventionalist or
ethnocentric niches of the academic apparatus. In the social Sciences,
there have been major "platformal" efforts to this effect in the areas of
Gay/Lesbian Studies (incl. Gay Youth Issues), Women Studies (and Men
Studies), and (still sporadically) in Girl Studies and the emerging field
of Cyberchildhood/Cyberpedagogies. However, today, there is no institute
that specifically monitors world sexual development issues; by
comparison, there are many that monitor local "sexual abuse" and "sex
education" policies. Analogously, among many gay/lesbian/bi library
initiatives, there is no central resource facility specifically dedicated
to sexual developmental issues. In NGO land, there is no corporation that
governs such issues. Amidst the growing number of specialised sexological
journals, there is no journal for sexual development in general (there
has never been one); by contrast there are several for sexual abuse
issues. Apart from incidental university projects, there is no
international recognition of the importance of these matters, no Forum
for review. There are incidental conferences, yet no departments and very
few University courses. Apart from Holland, there have to my knowledge
been no Foundations with a specific interest to finance or supervise
research in developmental issues. To state the least, this is remarkable
given contemporary social status, public and legal salience, and
historical multi-facettedness of developmental sexualities (in the
Occidental setting anyway). A thematically dedicated List would be able
to facilitate a much-needed cross-breeding of developmental sexologies.
The List should bring together input from various angles including policy
making, programme design, medicolegal praxis, ethnohistoric survey, and
philosophical reflection. I would stress in this List the importance of
reflective, critical and international posts to invite and orchestrate as
broad a scope and dialogue as possible. There is no limit to the thematic
broadness of the matter, I'd say: filtering software, changing rites of
passage, AIDS prevention, hymenorrhaphy ethics, age of consent
legislation, declining (?) menarche ages, "homophobia" in schools,
"sexualised" behaviours in children, and so on.
The intended audience would include academics involved in aforementioned
disciplines, including sexologists, sex educators, sex education
programme developers, health care workers, child/youth psychotherapists,
intrammurally situated personnel (paediatricians, nurses), librarians,
and generally interested people.
Items to be published/discussed at the List might include:
* notifications / invitations of upcoming conferences/events;
* announcements, reviews of current publications, invitations to
contribute to upcoming publications;
* calls for papers, calls for correspondence, calls for collaboration, and
so on;
* links to web-accessible academic resources on the topic of sexual
developmental issues. These include published, to be published and
unpublished papers;
* general "open" invited discussions.
If one should be genuinely interested to make a long-term commitment as a
Co-Editor or Advisory Board Member, please contact me at
[log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] . Ideas or comments
are welcomed as well. If you feel that a colleague might be interested
please feel free to forward this message.
Cordially,
Diederik F. Janssen, MD
Nijmegen University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
[log in to unmask]
Project GUS: http://www.student.kun.nl/d.f.janssen/GUS/GUSindex.htm alias
http://growingupsexually.tk
CV + publ.: http://www.student.kun.nl/d.f.janssen/cv.htm
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