William Fisher

Professor Fisher is currently working on two different book-length projects: the first is a book about sexual practices in early modern English culture (with chapters on kissing, chinchucking, intercrural sex, cunnilingus, the use of dildos, and flogging), and the second is a book about "bisexuality" and notions of sexual orientation.

Publications

Books

• Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, Cambridge University Press (2006). Winner of Best Book Award of 2006 from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

Articles

• “’Stray[ing] lower where the pleasant fountains lie’: Cunnilingus in Venus and Adonis and in English Culture, c. 1600-1700," in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, Race, Edited by Valerie Traub (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 333-46.
• “’Wantoning with the Thighs’: The Socialization of Thigh Sex in England c.1600-1730,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 24:1 (2015): 1-24.
• "The Erotics of Chin Chucking in Seventeenth-Century England," Sex before Sex: Figuring the Act in Early Modern England, eds. James M. Bromley and Will Stockton (University of Minnesota Press, 2013): 141-169.
• "'Had it a codpiece, 'twere a man indeed:' The Codpiece as Constitutive Accessory in Early Modern English Culture," Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, ed. Bella Mirabella (University of Michigan Press, 2011): 102-129.
• "Peaches and Figs: ‘Bisexual’ Eroticism in Bronzino’s Venus and Cupid Paintings and Burlesque Poetry,” Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice, Performance, Perversion, Punishment, ed. Allison Levy (Ashgate, 2010): 151-164.
• “Home Alone: The Place of Women’s Homoerotic Desire in Shakespeare's As You Like It,” Feminisms and Early Modern Texts: Essays for Phyllis Rackin, ed. Rebecca Bach and Gwynne A. Kennedy (Susquehanna University Press, 2010): 99-118.
• "The Sexual Politics of Victorian Historiographic Writing about 'the Renaissance,'" GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 14:1 (2007): 41-67.
• "The Renaissance Beard: Masculinity in early modern England and Europe," Renaissance Quarterly, 54:1 (2001): 155-87.
• "Handkerchiefs and Early Modern Ideologies of Gender," Shakespeare Studies, 28 (2000): 191-99.
• "Queer Money," English Literary History 66 (1999): 1-23.
• "Gabrielle's New Clothes: Cultural Valuations and Evaluations of Gabrielle d'Estrees et une de ses soeurs," Textual Practice 12:3 (1998): 251-67.