Rachel Pearl Maines

Background

Rachel Pearl Maines was born on July 8, 1950, in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States, to John Edward Maines and Natalie Petesch Maines.

Education

In 1971, Maines received Bachelor of Arts in Classics from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1983, she received Doctor of Philosophy in Applied History from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Career

From 1972 to 1975, Maines was a library reference assistant at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, United States. From 1974 to 1983 she served as director of the Center for the History of American Needlework in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

From 1975 to 1983, Rachel was a lecturer in fine arts at the University of Pittsburgh and international policy analyst at National Defense Executive Reserve from 1982 to 1991. Maines also worked as an assistant professor at Clarkson University from 1983 to 1986, and in 1985 she became the owner of Maines and Associates (archival services) in Ithaca.

Achievements

• Rachel P. Maines is a historian most widely known as the author of The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, which relates the history of electrical vibrating devices designed to facilitate female orgasm. Maines traces the creation of vibrators to the 1880s, when clitoral massage was employed as a treatment for what physicians diagnosed in women as hysteria, an emotional stale perceived to be a consequence of sexual frustration.
  
  The implementation of the vibrator enabled physicians to prompt female orgasm within ten minutes, thus allowing the treatment of sizable numbers of patients. The use of vibrators as a medical instrument declined in the 1920s after the device began appearing in pornography, but the item realized renewed prominence in the 1960s when perceptions of sexual practice, and experimentation, allegedly became less repressive.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria, ” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction

    (From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging f...)

    1998
  • Asbestos and Fire: Technological Tradeoffs and the Body at Risk

    (For much of the industrial era, asbestos was a widely acc...)

    2005
  • Hedonizing Technologies: Paths to Pleasure in Hobbies and Leisure

    (Rachel P. Maines's latest work examines the rise of hobbi...)

    2009

Membership

Maines is a member of the American History Association, Organization of American Historians, Society of American Archivists, Economic History Association and National Council of Public History.

Interests

• Avocations: reading, knitting, animals.

Connections

On March 7, 1973, Maines married Christopher Cooper, but they divorced in September 1976. On August 6, 1981, Rachel married Garrel Shane Pottinger. She has a daughter, Rachel.

Father:

John Edward Maines

Mother:

Natalie Petesch

Daughter:

Rachel Maines

husband:

Garrel Shane Pottinger

Ex-husband:

Christopher Cooper