“[W]hile thinking too hard about achieving orgasm in the bedroom (…or kitchen…or office…or elsewhere) may foreclose its possibility, Jagose shows the opposite effect occurs in critical inquiry.” — Marcie Bianco, Lambda Literary Review
“Altogether, I did learn more about orgasms. As a piece of cultural criticism, it is scholarly and carefully wrought. . . . The strength of Jagose’s book lies not in the repetition of this romantic position but rather in its careful trace of the human orgasm in social, medical and representational history. ‘Seeing’ orgasm’s trace in this way is quite handy.” — Sally R. Munt, Times Higher Education
“The diversity of the archival material covered in Orgasmology is the book’s greatest strength. Jagose’s method is an intricate meshwork of discourses, unified by her focus on the same elusive object. . . . Jagose offers a fascinating tour of the orgasm in the 20th-century. . . .” — Sand Avidar-Walzer, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Orgasmology is a frothy series of engagements with the cultural-bodily terrain of orgasm. . . . A good gift for the feminist-studies grad student who doesn’t have time for orgasms.” — Ela Przbylo, Bitch
“Orgasmology itself enacts the discursive diversity and productivity that characterizes twentieth-century orgasm. Eloquently written, and supple and wide-ranging in its argument, the book is bound to produce galvanizing effects on scholars working in queer theory, gender studies and cultural studies.” — Guy Davidson, Australian Humanities Review
“Orgasmology surprises more often than not, questioning queer and straight orthodoxies alike. More than a niche read for those steeped in the arcane world of queer theory, Orgasmology’s provocative and insistent questioning of the apparently self-evident facts of sex makes it a rewarding read for anyone interested in the history of human sexuality.” — Emily McAvan, Global Comment
“Jagose’s interdisciplinary archive – spanning science, philosophy, the arts, and media – structurally parallels the multivalence of her research subject and offers exciting contributions to the fields of feminist and queer studies. . . . Jagose’s commitment to thinking orgasm in terms of a beyond, of elsewheres previously unknown, is compelling, exciting, and inspiring for anyone interested in busting the paradigms, and reinventing the possibilities, of the sexual and indeed the human.” — Ben Bagocius, Make
“Orgasmology utilizes queer theory and is therefore useful when discussing this theory. It could also be used in the classroom in order to discuss methodology and subject matters that are not as obvious as others (for example orgasm is quite a tricky subject matter).” — Elin Weiss, Metapsychology Online Reviews
"Jagose models the payoff of looking at again, more, differently, or sideways after you (think that you) have taken a stance on something — including orgasms. As I read Orgasmology, I kept pausing to revisit texts and cultural moments that I have long found generative for queer thinking that either looked differently interesting from the orgasm out or from the orgasm revisited with the benefit of Jagose’seye toward history, representation, science, instruction, and politics." — Erica Rand, GLQ
“Orgasmology is penned with elegance and clarity. The tone is scholarly, with some welcome spots of humour. Jagose’s analysis demonstrates an encyclopaedic knowledge of queer and feminist scholarship. Her critical eye is shrewd: nothing is taken for granted, and the author constantly unsettles accepted ways of thinking and arguing.” — Jay Daniel Thompson, M/C Reviews
“Orgasmology is an intriguing theoretical work and while Jagose’s prose is too complex to assign to undergraduates, sexuality scholars will find Orgasmology challenges them to think outside the confines of current sexuality theory and to maintain the growth and dynamism that has been a feature of sexuality studies since its inception.” — Heather Stanley, Canadian Journal of History
“The discussion of Shortbus demonstrates Jagose’s talent for imaginative close readings, which she folds into a broad and synthetic account of large swathes of cultural material.” — Damon R. Young, Continuum
"Jagose’s appeal to take the orgasm seriously will resonate with many queer scholars. Indeed, this historiographic project is itself formidable in its commitment to putting the work of medicine, art, and popular culture in dialogue with the biological and the social realms, two seemingly unlike arenas that she convincingly insists are mutually constitutive." — Alyxandra Vesey, QED
"Orgasmology disrupts queer doxa through a renewed emphasis on the materiality of sexual practice. Neither gay nor straight, queer nor normative, male nor female, orgasm shows up everywhere; its lability allows Annamarie Jagose to roam freely across a wide range of critical discourses, scenes, and textual objects. Sentence by sentence, this book is extremely rewarding—funny, finely observed, and smart in all the right places." — Heather Love, author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History
"Just when they told you queer theory was dead, along comes a book that shows, yet again, what all the excitement was—and still is—about. Annamarie Jagose's patient, systematic demonstration that orgasm is the deconstruction of sex may seem at first to be pretty standard stuff, but the picture it discloses of the rise of twentieth-century sexuality, and of heterosexuality in particular, is so lucid and so surprising that you wonder why we never could see it in such eloquent detail before. You finish this book feeling ten times smarter than when you started it." — David M. Halperin, author of How To Be Gay