Within the last generation, writers and scholars have worked extensively to understand how the two categories of gender and sexuality have changed over time, or remained constant. Toward this end, readings in such fields as anthropology, feminist theory, literature and literary criticism, history, psychology, and sociology are routine. To a greater or lesser extent all of these areas are considered in this course. Although often conflated, this course will emphasize how gender and sexuality are two separate--if occasionally overlapping—categories. This semester we will focus on the category of race in America—a constant—although always changing—organizing metric throughout the Country’s history. Other categories such as social class, region, sexual orientation, etc., will also be interrogated. Readings will begin with three short theoretical readings on how to approach the study of gender and sexuality, and how their study is important in understanding the larger culture of any given time and place. We will then move in roughly chronological order, from the earliest contact between Europeans and Native Americans in the Colonial Era through the mid twentieth century.
Readings include: 1) Steven Seidman, The Social Construction of Sexuality (2nd edition 2010); 2) John D’Emilio & Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (2nd edition, 1997); 3) Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman; 4) Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market; 5) Elizabeth Reis, Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex; 6) Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor ; 7) Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line ; 8) Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America; 9) Marlon B. Ross, Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era; 10) James Baldwin, Tell me How Long the Train’s Been Gone; 11) Bliss Broyard, One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life—The Story of Race and Family Secrets.