Q&A with New JHS Editor Annette Timm

Mathew Kuefler, the editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality for the past ten years, is passing the torch to Annette Timm, an associate professor of history at the University of Calgary, Canada. A contributor to past issues of the JHS, Timm has published articles for other journals, chapters for books, and her own works, The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin and Gender, Sex, and the Shaping of Modern Europe: A History from the French Revolution to the Present Day, which she co-authored with Joshua A. Sanborn. 

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Her current work in progress is Lebensborn: Myth, Memory, and the Sexualization of the Nazi Past. Timm has co-organized conferences such as the 2011 “Popular Sex: Mass Media and Sexuality in Germany,” which was combined with PopSex!, an exhibition of archives from Berlin’s early twentieth-century Institute for Sexual Science and original work by artists in Calgary and Berlin; and the 2007 “Democracy and Intimacy: Toward a Moral History of Postwar Europe.”

To help readers learn more about the new editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality, I conducted an interview with Annette Timm. She discusses her scholarly background, the future of the journal, and the important role of academic journals.

Could you tell us about your academic background, and how your research has prepared you for your new role as editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality?

I received my B.A. in history from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and both 

Annette Trim

my M.A. and Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Chicago. When I began writing my dissertation, I was most interested in the history of health care. (This certainly had something to do with the experience of being a Canadian in the U.S. during Clinton’s first administration.) But my interest in eugenics and population politics in Germany— the various efforts of twentieth-century regimes to increase the birth rate— quickly led me to issues of sexuality. I had chosen to focus the dissertation on all aspects of these policies before conception because I wanted to be able to employ a truly relational approach to gender with an equal focus on men and women. But focusing on everything leading up to conception of course meant focusing on sexual choices. I looked at venereal disease control and marriage counseling, because health officials believed that these were the areas of health care where they could exert the most influence on individual Germans’ choices about when, with whom, and with what intentions they should have sex. (Before penicillin, venereal diseases frequently caused sterility and congenital disease, and in my time period, marriage counseling was primarily eugenic.) In revising the dissertation into a book, I refined my argument to insist that these efforts to create a sense of duty around sexual choices were central to the social construction of the German citizen during most of the twentieth century. Turning the “personal is political” slogans of the sixties and seventies on their heads, I argued that it was only after sex was somewhat reliably separated from reproduction that the justification for the worst intrusions into private decisions in the sexual sphere ended. Sex, at least for heterosexuals, could become private again. In Germany, this story was intertwined with the process of overcoming two dictatorships and reestablishing rights to individual bodily integrity. But I believe that similar stories could be told elsewhere and that the demise of a notion of the duty to reproduce was one step on the road to sexual freedoms and family rights for gays and lesbians. 

An Inside Look at UT Press Journals

Each year the University of Texas Press publishes around 100 books. A cause for celebration, the release of a new title is heralded with ads, reviews, a social media blitz, and author appearances. Compared to the buzz surrounding a new hardcover, the arrival of a new issue of an academic journal is more understated. It’s easy to take a publication for granted when it has been reproducing itself for years—or for over a century in the case of Texas Studies in Literature and Language, which celebrated its centennial last year. So it may be easy to forget that UT Press also publishes 11 journals in various academic fields, including film and television studies, archaeoastronomy, and Asian and Latin American music.

In contrast to the production schedule of a book, a scholarly journal’s advantage is speed. Whereas a book is the culmination of years of research, writing, and editing, a journal provides a more direct way for scholars to present the latest research and critical analysis on a subject area. Occasionally, a special issue provides more than a journal’s usual scope by focusing on a chosen topic. This summer’s edition of Asian Music, for example, was devoted entirely to Indonesian pop music. And of course, more than one journal article has become the seed for a book idea.

Journal publishers excel not only in publishing the most current scholarship but also in innovating distribution of content. UT Press Journals expedites subscription delivery with digital options. Among other access models, Project Muse offers complete issues of Asian Music, Cinema Journal, Information & Culture, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Journal of Latin American Geography, Latin American Music Review, Texas Studies in Literature & Language, and The Velvet Light Trap. (Hard copies of Archaeoastronomy and Journal of Individual Psychology can be ordered through the UT Press website.)

Earlier this fall, Director Dave Hamrick announced the promotion of Journals Manager Sue Hausmann to Assistant Director, a promotion that commends everyone in her department, who have accrued a total of 65 years at UT. The strides her department has taken in electronic publishing and marketing will allow Hausmann to use her more visible position to help inform the growth of UT Press as a whole. 

“How may I keep up with UT Press Journals?” Let us count the ways:

1. UT Press has launched a new website where you can find each of our journals. Peruse tables of contents, purchase a subscription, and order single issues and articles. 
2. Follow us on Twitter (@UTPressJournals) for new issue announcements and updates on our authors, relevant academic fields, and university events.
3. Like us on Facebook. UT Press Journals has a page, and there are pages for Information & Culture, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Latin American Music Review, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and The Velvet Light Trap.

—Sheila Scoville, Promotions Coordinator