Readings

Certain professors were responsible for certain weekly class sessions; please refer to the key below for their names.

RB = Renée Bergland

LB/STB = Leonard Buckle and Suzann Thomas-Buckle

Readings by Session

Emphasis was placed on those readings designated by an asterisk [*]. Students were asked to concentrate on these readings in particular.

WEEK # PROFESSORS TOPICS READINGS
1 RB, LB/STB Welcome/Introduction: What are we talking about? (no readings)
2 RB Early American sex: history and culture

Donne, John. "Elegy XX: To His Mistress, Going to Bed."

Bradstreet, Anne. "To My Dear and Loving Husband," and "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment."

Taylor, Edward. "Huswifery," and "Upon Wedlock and Death of Children."

Amazon logo Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution In Early America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801868009. (Focus on part one.)

Amazon logo Fessenden, Tracy, Nicholas Radel, and Magdalena Zaborowska. "Introduction." In The Puritan Origins of American Sex. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415926409.

Amazon logo Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock. "Nursing Fathers and Brides of Christ: The Feminized Body of the Puritan Convert." In A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America. Edited by Janet Moore Lindman and Michele Lise Tarter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780801487392.

Of interest

Amazon logo Foucault, Michel. Introduction to the History of Sexuality. New York, NY: Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679724698.

*Lawrence v. Texas, Amicus Curiae (Historian's Brief). (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)

3 LB/STB Marriage in social and legal history

Amazon logo *Cott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 [2000]. ISBN: 9780674008755.

Amazon logo Hertog, Hendrick. Man and Wife in America: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 [2000]. ISBN: 9780674008113.

4 RB Narratives of seduction and abandonment (What makes American seduction and sex so very American?)

Amazon logo *Rowson, Susanah. Charlotte Temple. Edited by Cathy N. Davidson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780195042382.

Amazon logo *Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood's Bastard: Sex and Love in Early Virginia. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780195144796.

Amazon logo Ulrich, Laurel Thacher. "The Serpent Beguiled Me." In Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. New York, NY: Vintage, 1991. ISBN: 9780679732570.

Armstrong. "Why Daughters Die: The Racial Logic of American Sentimentalism." Yale Journal of Criticism 7, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 1-25.

Tennenhouse, Leonard. "The Americanization of Clarissa." The Yale Journal of Criticism 11, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 177-196.

5 LB/STB Law's way for bastards and their mothers

Kelly, Linda. "Republican Mothers, Bastards' Fathers, and Good Victims: discarding Citizens and Equal Protection Through the Failures of Legal Images." Hastings Law Journal 51 (March 2000): 557.

Davis, Martha F. "Male Coverture: Law and the Illegitimate Family." Rutgers Law Review 56 (Fall 2003).

Kiernan, Kathleen. "Unmarried Cohabitation and Parenthood in Britain and Europe." Law and Policy 26, no. 1: 33-55.

Seltzer, Judith. "Families Formed Outside of Marriage." Journal of Marriage and Family 62, no. 4 (2000).

6 RB Cross-racial marriage

Amazon logo *Child, Lydia Maria Francis. A Romance of the Republic. Louisville, KY: University of Kentucky, 1997 [1867]. ISBN: 9780813109282. The e-text is available courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Choose one of the following to read

Amazon logo Sollors, Werner. Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature, and Law. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780195128574.

Amazon logo Romano, Renee. Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Post-War America. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN: 9780813029801.

7 LB/STB Cross-racial marriage and redefined marriage (Race and marriage rethought)

Amazon logo *Williams, Patricia. The Rooster's Egg: On the Persistence of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997 [1995]. ISBN: 9780674779433.

"Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950." Asian Law Journal 9 (2002).

Kiernan, Kathleen. "Redrawing the boundaries of Marriage." Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 980-987.

Amazon logo *Stack, Carol: All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Back Community. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1997 [1974]. ISBN: 9780061319822.

8 RB Intimate friendships

Amazon logo Luxon, Thomas. "Introduction." In Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage and Friendship. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2005, pp. 1-20. ISBN: 9780820703732.

Amazon logo Schweitzer, Ivy. "Smoke and Mirrors." In Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 27-71. ISBN: 9780807857786.

Amazon logo Rosenberg, Carroll Smith. "The Female World of Love and Ritual." In Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780195040395.

Choose one of the following to read

Amazon logo Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1776-1928. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780226855646.

Amazon logo Marcus, Sharon. Between Women, Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780691128351.

9 RB Boston marriage

Amazon logo James, Henry. The Bostonians. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780192834423. The e-text (Vol. I and Vol. II) is available courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Amazon logo Castle, Terry. "James and the specter of Lesbianism." In The Apparitional Lesbian. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780231076531.

Faderman, Lillian. "Acting 'Women' and Thinking 'Man': The Ploys of Famous Female Inverts." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 3 (1999): 315-329.

McColley, Kathleen. "Claiming Center Stage: Speaking Out for Homoerotic Empowerment in the Bostonians." The Henry James Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 151-169.

United States Supreme Court. Lawrence v. Texas, No. 02-102, 2002.

10 LB/STB Gay marriage (Goodridge)

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health 440 Mass. 309, 2003.

Amazon logo *Gerstman, Evan. Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780521709132.

Amazon logo *Chauncey, George. Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN: 9780465009572.

Choose one of the following to read

Amazon logo Pinello, Daniel. America's Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780521848565.

Amazon logo Koppelman, Andrew. Same Sex, Different States: When Same Sex Marriages Cross State Lines. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780300113402.

11 LB/STB Same-sex marriage and beyond

Amazon logo Eskridge, William. Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse: What We've Learned from the Evidence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780195187519.

Amazon logo *Rosenfeld, Michael J. The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780674024977.

Amazon logo Polikoff, Nancy. Beyond Straight or Gay: Marriage, Valuing All Marriages Under the Law. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780807044322.

12 LB/STB Family and feminist futures

Cherlin, Andrew. "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage." Journal of Marriage and Family 66, no. 4 (November 2004).

Amazon logo Schneider, Elizabeth M. "Part 3: Implementing Feminist Lawmaking" and "Part 4: Aspirations, Limits, and Possibilities." In Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780300094114.

Amazon logo Stacey, Judith. Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth Century America. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780465007462.

13 RB, LB/STB Course wrap-up Amazon logo Alsanea, Rajaa. Girls of Riyadh. New York, NY: Penguin, 2007. ISBN: 9781594201219.