Long before Stonewall : histories of same-sex sexuality in early America /
edited by Thomas A. Foster ; with an afterword by John D'Emilio.
- ix, 405 pages ; 23 cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction : long before Stonewall / Warfare, homosexuality, and gender status among American Indian men in the Southwest / Weibe-town and the Delawares-as-women : gender crossing and same-sex relations in eighteenth-century Northeastern Indian culture / "Abominable sin" in colonial New Mexico : Spanish and Pueblo perceptions of same-sex sexuality / "The cry of Sodom" : discourse, intercourse, and desire in colonial New England / Border crossings : the queer erotics of Quakerism in seventeenth-century New England / Hermaphrodites and "same-sex" sex in early America / Mapping an Atlantic sexual culture : homoeroticism in eighteenth-century Philadelphia / An excerpt from Surpassing the love of men / Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio : an early American romance / The swan of Litchfield : Sarah Pierce and the lesbian landscape poem / Sexual desire, crime, and punishment in the early republic / The black body erotic and the republican body politic, 1790-1820 / What's sex got to do with it? : marriage versus circulation in The Pennsylvania magazine, 1775-1776 / In a French position : radical pornography and homoerotic society in Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond or the secret witness / Thomas A. Foster -- Ramon A. Gutierrez -- Gunlog Fur -- Tracy Brown -- Richard Godbeer -- Anne G. Myles -- Elizabeth Reis -- Clare A. Lyons -- Lillian Faderman -- Caleb Crain -- Lisa L. Moore -- Mark E. Kann -- John Saillant -- Laura Mandell -- Stephen Shapiro -- Afterword / John D'Emilio. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
""A major, ground-breaking study of early America. Readers will come away with a fresh sense of the centrality of sexuality to any understanding of the formation of the new Republic."-Martha Vicinus, author of Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928 "This splendid collection, interdisciplinary but deeply historical, illustrates the maturation of lesbian and gay history as it has expanded its chronological and regional scope and its methodological depths.."-Estelle B. Freedman, author of Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics Although the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City symbolically mark the start of the gay rights movement, individuals came together long before the modern era to express their same-sex romantic and sexual attraction toward one another, and in a myriad of ways. Some reflected on their desires in quiet solitude, while others endured verbal, physical, and legal harassment for publicly expressing homosexual interest through words or actions. Long Before Stonewall seeks to uncover the many iterations of same-sex desire in colonial America and the early Republic, as well as to expand the scope of how we define and recognize homosocial behavior. Thomas A. Foster has assembled a path-breaking, interdisciplinary collection of original and classic essays that explore topics ranging from homoerotic imagery of black men to prison reform to the development of sexual orientations. This collection spans a regional and temporal breadth that stretches from the colonial Southwest to Quaker communities in New England. It also includes a challenge to commonly accepted understandings of the Native American berdache. Throughout, connections of race, class, status, and gender are emphasized, exposing the deep foundations on which modern sexual political movements and identities are built."--Publisher description.