Sexual and Gender Identities in the Modern United States

Readings and Films

[F] = Foster, Thomas A., ed. Documenting Intimate Matters: Primary Sources for a History of Sexuality in America. University of Chicago Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780226257471. 

[P] = Peiss, Kathy, ed. Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality: Documents and Essays. Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 9780395903841.

[W] = Ware, Susan, ed. Modern American Women: A Documentary History. 2^nd ed. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2001. ISBN: 9780072418200.

Unit 1—Ebbs and Flows: Gender and Sexual Identities as Moving Targets

Week 1: First Day of Class

• No readings or films

Week 2: Thinking Historically about Gender, Sex, and Sexuality

Readings:

• Nancy Cott, “What Is Gender History?” Speech delivered at the American Historical Association Conference, January 2005.
• [P] Jeffrey Weeks, “The Social Construction of Sexuality,” in Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, pp. 2–9. 
• John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, Abelove et al., eds. Routledge, 1993, pp. 467–75.  ISBN: 9780415905190. [Preview with Google Books]
• Jack Halberstam, “Trans*: What’s in a Name?,” in Trans* . University of California Press, 2018, pp. 1–21. ISBN:  9780520292697. [Preview with Google Books]

Week 3: Before the Modern Era: Race, Reproduction, Intimacy, Violence

Readings:

• John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman, “The Reproductive Matrix, 1600–1800,” in Intimate Matters, 3^rd ed. University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 3–52. ISBN: 9780226923802. [Preview with Google Books] [Students may closely skim this material]
• Stephanie McCurry, “Reconstructing Belonging: The Thirteenth Amendment at Work in the World,” in Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern US History, Canaday, Cott, and Self, eds. University of Chicago Press, 2021, pp. 19–40. ISBN: 9780226794891. 
• Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” (PDF) Signs 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1975): 1–29.
• [P] “Harriet Jacobs Relates Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861,” pp. 147–52.
• [P] “Baron Lahontan Describes Love and Marriage Among the Hurons, 1703,” pp. 27–31.
• [F] “John Lawson on Native American Women, North Carolina, 1709,” pp. 14–18. [Preview with Google Books]

Film:

• “Two-Spirit.” Wisconsin Pride, PBS, June 1, 2023.

Unit 2—The Tempest: Contesting Sexual Order, c. 1900–1920

Week 4: Sex and the City: Working Class Sexuality and the Crusade against Vice

Readings:

• Sarah Deutsch, “The Moral Geography of the Working Girl (And New Woman),” in Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–1940. Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 78–114. ISBN: ‎9780195057058. 
• Kathy Peiss, “Charity Girls and City Pleasures.” (PDF) Magazine of History 18, no. 4 (July 2004): 14–16.
• Jeffrey Escoffier, Whitney Strub, and Jeffrey Patrick Colgan, “The Comstock Apparatus,” in Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern US History, Cannaday, Cott, and Self, eds. University of Chicago Press, 2021, pp. 41–59 ISBN: 9780226794891. 
• [F] George Kneeland, “Commercialized Prostitution in New York City” [1913], pp. 104–07.
• Emily Skidmore, “Life as a Trans Man in Turn-of-the-Century America.” Literary Hub, September 22, 2017.

Film:

• Alva French and Channing Joseph, “How a Former Slave Became the World’s First Drag Queen.” BBC, February 1, 2023.

Week 5: The Birth of Feminism, Women’s Suffrage, and the Politics of Reproduction

Readings:

• Nancy Cott, “The Birth of Feminism,” in The Grounding of Modern Feminism. Yale University Press, 1987, pp. 12–50. ISBN: ‎9780300038927. [Preview with Google Books]
• [P] Linda Gordon, “Birth Control and Social Revolution,” pp. 320–27.
• [P] Molly Ladd Taylor, “Eugenics, Sterilization, and Social Welfare,” pp. 327–36.
• Peruse: Thomas Dublin, Kathryn Kish Sklar, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, and Rebecca Jo Plant, “Women’s Voting and U.S. Empire,” Module 2 from The Empire Suffrage Syllabus, 2024. [Focus specifically on Weeks 5 and 6: “Civilizing Missions and Voting Rights” and “The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage in U.S. Colonies”]
• Mary Church Terrell, “The Progress of Colored Women,” address delivered before the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (1898).
• [P] Caves [1896], Sanger [1917], SCOTUS [1927], Letters to Sanger, [1924–1936], in “The Politics of Reproduction” Document Collection, pp. 310–18.

Film:

• “The Ongoing Fight.” American Experience, PBS, July 26, 2020.

Optional reading:

• [W] “Frances Willard Equates Learning to Ride a Bicycle with Opening New Frontiers for Women,” pp. 15–19.

Unit 3—Locks and Dams: Creating and Policing Boundaries, c. 1920–1960

Week 6: Regulating Sexuality and Gender through the Jazz Age, Depression, and War

Readings:

• Christina Simmons, “Modern Sexuality and the Myth of Victorian Repression,” in Gender and American History Since 1890, Melosh, ed., Routledge, 2017, pp. 17–36. ISBN: ‎9781138428898. [Preview with Google Books]
• George Chauncey, “Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion?: Homosexual Identities and the Construction of Sexual Boundaries in the World War I Era.” Journal of Social History 19, no. 2 (1985) 189–211.
• Alice Kessler Harris, “Designing Women and Old Fools: Writing Gender into Social Security Law,” in Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, Kerber, ed. Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 435–46. ISBN: 9780195159820.
• [P] Mabel Hampton, “Lesbian Life in the 1920s and 1930s,” in pp. 345–46.

Film:

• Coming Out Under Fire. Directed by Arthur Dong. Black and White, 72 min. 1994. 

Week 7: Creating, Containing, and Resisting “Normal” in Post-War America

Readings:

• Elaine Tyler May, “Explosive Issues: Sex, Women, and the Bomb,” in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, May, ed. University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 154–68. ISBN: ‎9780226511757.
• Sarah Igo, “Surveying Normal Selves,” in The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 191–233. ISBN: ‎9780674023215. 
• Craig Loftin, “Unacceptable Mannerisms: Gender Anxieties, Homosexual Activism, and the Swish in the United States, 1945–1965.” Journal of Social History 40, no. 3 (2007): 577–96.
• Joanne Meyerowitz, “Transforming Sex: Christine Jorgensen in the Postwar U.S.” (PDF) OAH Magazine of History 20, no. 2 (March 2006): 16–20.
• [P] “Alfred Kinsey Reports on Americans’ Sexual Behavior, 1948–1953,” pp. 368–73.
• [F] “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts, 1950,” pp. 144–47.

Optional Films:

• “Christine Jorgensen Arriving at Idlewild airport (1952).” YouTube.
• “Christine Jorgensen on Joe Pyne 1966 or 1967.” YouTube.

Unit 4—The Flood: Breaking Barriers, c. 1960–1980

Week 8: Revolutions I: Civil Rights, the Pill, and the Emergence of Second Wave Feminism

Readings:

• Rickie Solinger, “The Population Bomb and Sexual Revolution,” in American Sexual Histories, 2^nd ed., Reis, ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 320–35.
• Betty Friedan, “The Problem that Has No Name,” from The Feminine Mystique, 50^th anniversary ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2013, pp. 1–22. ISBN: 9780393346787. [Preview with Google Books]
• Casey Hayden and Mary King, “Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo,” in Takin’ It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader, Bloom and Brienes, eds. Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 133–36.
• NY Radical Women, “No More Miss America!” [1968]. Redstockings.
• “Birth Control and Black Children: A Statement by the Black Unity (Peekskill, N.Y.),” and “A Response: By Black Sisters.” Poor Black Women, Duke University Libraries Digital Collections.
• Carol Hanisch, “The Personal Is Political - February 1969.” carolhanisch.org.
• ———. “The Personal Is Political: Introduction - January 2006.” carolhanisch.org.

Film:

• Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. Directed by Nancy B. Kates and Bennett Singer. Color and black-and-white, 2003. 83 min.

Week 9: Revolutions II: Feminism as a Mass Movement and the Emergence of Gay Liberation

Readings:

• Nancy Rosenstock, “Second-Wave Feminism: Accomplishments and Lessons.” Against the Current 211 (March/April 2021).
• Library of Congress, “1969: The Stonewall Uprising,” in LGBTQIA+ Studies: A Resource Guide. [Read the introduction and peruse the rest of the site]
• Carl Wittman, “A Gay Manifesto.” The Red Butterfly, 1969. libcom.org.
• [W] Boston Women’s Health Collective, “Preface to Our Bodies, Ourselves,” pp. 417–22.
• [W] Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” [1977], pp. 354–64.
• Angela Davis, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective,” in Women, Race, and Class. Vintage, 1983. ISBN: ‎9780394713519.

Optional Readings:

• Radicallesbians, “What is a Lesbian?” [1970], in Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, Kerber, ed. Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 580–82. ISBN: 9780195159820.
• Third World Gay Liberation, “What We Want, What We Believe” [1971], in Takin’ It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader, Bloom and Brienes, eds. Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 502–06. ISBN: 9780195066241.
• Barbara Ehrenreich, “What is Socialist Feminism?” 1976. Marxists Internet Archive.

Optional Audio:

• “Asian American Women vs. The Women’s Movement.” KPFA, March 8, 1979. American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

Unit 5—Changing Tides: Gender and Sexuality as Battlegrounds, c. 1980–2000

Week 10: The Religious Right and the AIDS Epidemic

Readings:

• Margot Canaday, “The AIDS Crisis on the Job,” in Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America. Princeton University Press, 2023, pp. 187–226. ISBN: ‎9780691205953.
• Susan Faludi, selections from Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women [1991], in Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, WWII to the Present, Schneir, ed. Vintage, 1994, pp. 454–68.
• Phyllis Schlafly, Interview with The Washington Star [1976], in The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945–2000: A Brief History with Documents, Story and Laurie, eds. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007, pp. 103–07. ISBN: ‎ 9780312450649.
• Larry Kramer, “1,112 and Counting.” New York Native 59 (March 14–27, 1983): 1–8. 
• Rebecca Walker, “Becoming the Third Wave.” Ms. 2, no. 4 (January 1992): 39–41.

Film:

• How to Survive a Plague. Directed by David France. Color, 2012. 110 min. 

Week 11: Law and Economy at Century’s End

Readings:

• George Chauncey, “‘What Gay Studies Taught the Court’: The Historians Amicus Brief in Lawrence v. Texas.” GLQ 10, no. 3 (2024): 509–38.
• Steven Mintz. “Does History Matter?” Inside Higher Ed, July 2, 2013.
• Nancy Fraser. “Contradictions of Capital and Care.” New Left Review 100 (July/Aug 2016).

Unit 6—Sexuality and Gender in the 21^st Century: Diverging Currents?

Week 12: New Trajectories in the Politics of Gender and Sexuality

Readings:

• Serena Mayeri, “The Critical Role of History after Dobbs.” Penn Carey Law, University of Pennsylvania, March 20, 2024. [Just read the website introduction—follow the link to an excellent, OPTIONAL, analysis of Dobbs and history from Mayeri]
• Interview with Nancy Fraser, “A Feminism Aimed at Liberating All Women Must Be Anti-capitalist.” Tribune, December 10,  2021.
• Carmen Rios, “ERA Now: Inside the Intersectional Movement for Women’s Constitutional Equality.” National Women’s History Museum, April 23, 2024.
• “Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures in 2024.” ACLU.

Optional Film:

• The Janes. Directed by Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes. Color and black-and-white, 2022. 101 min.

Week 13: Last Day of Class

• No readings or films