Kinsey Institute offers lectures

Headlining a Horizons of Knowledge Lecture, professor Patricia Meyers Spacks came to IU Thursday to speak about "Exposures: Sex, Privacy and Sensibility." \nSpacks is a professor of English at the University of Virginia and has written many articles and books, including "The Female Imagination," as well as her newest book, "Boredom." Her lecture, sponsored by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, focused on the topic of privacy. \nSpacks began her lecture associating her reasons for writing with the problems of privacy. The main problem she cited was the contradictory attitudes of modern culture. Spacks mentioned magazines, talk shows and reality programming as ways society violates its own privacy, while at the same time, she said, society builds walled communities and worries about Internet exploitation. This conflict is one Spacks refers to as a "desire to know and a desire to protect," and is not limited to recent years. \nSpacks linked modern tabloid tendencies to literary attitudes of the 18th century. More so in the 18th century than ever, "there was intense publicity of and journalistic attention to sex," Spacks said.\nUsing "Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," by John Cleland; "Pamela," by Samuel Richardson and Boswell's "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson," by James Boswell as examples to back her assertions, Spacks explained aspects of "publicizing the private."\nAlthough these novels were the 1700s' equivalent of pornography, she referred to elements of privacy in the writings.\nAmong these elements, Spacks said journal or letter writing made the indulgence of details seem more private and personal. She also said while the male authors described their adventures as conquests, female perspectives were used "to prove their virtue."\nThese points summed up Spacks' statements and concluded her lecture.\nThe next lecture in the Kinsey Institute seminar series will be Oct. 11 with Carol Greenhouse, entitled "Sex on the Right."\nThe Kinsey Institute itself was founded in 1947 by Alfred C. Kinsey as an education-based center for increased knowledge of relationships.\nFurther information on the Institute or its lectures can be found at www.indiana.edu/~kinsey