Carolyn DePew
Staff Writer
The Pulitzer Prize Board announced on April 14 that University of Houston history professor James H. Jones had earned the runner-up position for his critical biography of the influential sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey.
Although his piece, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, came in behind Katherine Graham's Personal History, Jones described his nomination as a "great honor for us all."
He said, "the competition for this award is incredible, and being a finalist is an honor."
Jones said that a letter he received from Columbia University, which sponsors the awards, described the honor best, calling it "a rare distinction."
Jones' honor brings not only personal glory but also worldwide recognition for the university, said UH President Arthur K. Smith.
"Dr. Jones represents the very best in our faculty with his dedication to research, teaching and service. His being a finalist is a clear acknowledgment that the work being done by historians and other faculty in the liberal arts has a direct impact on our lives," Smith said.
Jones began his study of social reformer Kinsey more than 25 years ago while attending graduate school. Jones said one of his professors suggested investigating Kinsey for a dissertation, and he had worked on this project sporadically until the book was published.
The late Kinsey's work of compiling studies of men and women's sexual habits revolutionized the sexual attitudes of American society. The repercussions of his work have been seen as recently as 1995, when Congress introduced a bill calling for an investigation of Kinsey's influence on sex education in American public schools.
The work traces Kinsey's life, beginning with his troubled and repressed childhood. As the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., described it, Jones' book illustrates that the psychologically-wounded Kinsey emerged from his childhood "determined to rescue humanity from the emotional scars and sexual repression he had suffered."
Kinsey devoted his life and considerable scientific training to liberating humanity from its sexual inhibitions and bringing to the forefront issues such as homosexuality, bestiality and masturbation that had previously been shunned from discourse or even acknowledgment.
The biography delves deeper into Kinsey's life and shows that there was a darker, private side to this man's sexual obsessions, which lay under the surface of his crusade for sexual liberation.
Citing many anonymous sources, Jones wrote that Kinsey privately participated in many of the acts that he studied. These included painful masochistic practices, homosexual encounters and husband- and wife-swapping with the staff of the Kinsey Institute. Jones reported that these group activities were frequently filmed in the attic of Kinsey's home.
Kirkus, a prominent literary critical entity, described Jones' work as "an exhaustive, compelling portrait of a scientist hailed as both a 'genius' and a 'dirty old man.'"
Jones wrote and edited several other books during his extensive research on Kinsey, including the award-winning Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which documents the 40-year deception involving the U.S. government's use of 399 poor, uneducated and unknowing African-American men in a medical experiment.
Jones is presently working on a new project but would not disclose any information on it.
UH College of Humanities, Fine Arts and Communication Dean Lois Zamora praised Jones for his many contributions to the university and the field of history. She said, "Jones is one of those rare historians who himself makes history. His books, Bad Blood and now his biography of Alfred Kinsey, have radically revised the way in which we understand American history in this century."