This volume examines the enduring entanglement of erotic desire with political, cultural, and historical change. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholarship, it explores how sex, sexuality, and eroticism both shape and are shaped by historical narratives, across diverse periods, geographies, and media. The chapters address secrecy, colonial and imperial regimes, regulation, and acts of resistance, revealing how the erotic functions as a site of power, negotiation, and subversion. Case studies range from ancient correspondence and colonial medical debates to queer romance, feminist art, and contemporary queer theory, engaging with contexts from People’s Poland to post-independence Lithuania, Thatcher-era Britain, and beyond.

This book will be of value to scholars and students of history, literary and cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, art history, and queer theory. Its multidisciplinary approach offers both specific historical insights and broader methodological reflections on how the study of eroticism can illuminate the workings of power and resistance. By foregrounding the erotic as a dynamic historical force, the volume invites readers to reconsider the intimate links between pleasure, politics, and the past, and to see sexuality as central to understanding human experience across time.