James H. Jones to deliver lecture on sexual researcher Alfred Kinsey

By Marc Speir
University News Service
April 13, 2007

Acclaimed historian James H. Jones will be addressing the life of Alfred Kinsey on Thursday, April 19 at 6:30 p.m. in the LBJ Student Center teaching theater on the campus of Texas State University-San Marcos.

The official title of his speech is, “Alfred C. Kinsey: The Scientist as Social Reformer.” The lecture is free of charge and open to the public.

Jones was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in biography for his book, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life, which was adapted into a screenplay for the 2004 film “Kinsey,” starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.

Kinsey is most remembered as a pioneer for his groundbreaking research of human sexuality and the storm of controversy that ensued from his inquiries and findings. The late zoology professor and his staff collected over 18,000 interviews and published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953.

His work exposed sexual tensions in society and led to the founding of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, one of the first scientific foundations to clinically study sexual behavior.

The speech is sponsored by the Taylor-Murphy lecture series, Phi Alpha Theta and the Department of History.

For further information on the lecture, contact Jimmy McWilliams via email at jm71@txstate.edu or Dwight Watson at dw25@txstate.edu.