Sexual Violence in History: A Bibliography

ATTENTION: Since January 2023 the bibliography is under reconstruction , after having been offline for more than twelve months. For personal reasons the work is unfortunately progressing very slowly. Especially the information pages on the individual titles are not yet all available online.

1. Topic of the bibliography is the history of sexual violence.

2. The aim is to compile here everything that has ever been said or written on the subject. Even if it is not possible to achieve the goal, it would be just as wrong not to try it.

»The job would be simpler if the legacy were smaller, but the wealth of material overwhelms us, and we are blinded by too much light. ... To make matters worse, no day passes but someone throws another article upon this mountain of material. ... Our life is too short, and there are so many books; money is so scarce, and there is so little time.« (W.G. Ploucquet)
[Quoted in: Vickery, Brian C. Scientific Communication in History. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2000: 98.]

3. The scope of the bibliography is comprehensive:

a. All forms of sexual violence in all historical periods and regions will be considered.

b. All written and spoken forms of publication will be considered, from whatever discipline and in whatever language.

c. An evaluation of the publications does not take place here, but is the task of the scientific community and result of the academic discussion.

»A compiler cannot afford to indulge in the arrogance of deciding what is beneath notice. ... Besides, the profession's favour may change, and what has previously been condemned may later be approved. ... My object is after all not to be critical. It is recording, so far as possible, of all that has been done, said, seen, observed by physicians and others, of all ages and nations--whether right or no.« (W.G. Ploucquet)
[Quoted in: Vickery, Brian C. Scientific Communication in History. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2000: 99.]

4. The bibliography is intended to provide an overview of what has been researched to date (and where there are still research gaps) and to facilitate access to publications.

»'Searching the literature' is thus a slow, tiresome and uncertain activity; it may yield little fruit, and one never has the assurance that all the relevant papers have in fact been found.« (John Ziman)
[From: Ziman, John. Public Knowledge: An Essay Concerning the Social Dimension of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968: 120.]

5. For each title an information page will be created with three headings: Title Information (e.g. place and year of publication, publisher, ISBN/ISSN), Full-Text (links to text, audio or video files if available), and Additional Information (e.g. links to author oder speaker websites, abstracts, tables of contents, information on reviews, links to Wikipedia articles).