Sex and Sexuality in Early America

Sex and Sexuality in Early America PDF Author: Merril D. Smith
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814780687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Sex and sexuality have always been the subject of much attention, both scholarly and popular. Yet, accounts of the early years of the United States tend to overlook the importance of their influence on the shaping of American culture. This book addresses this neglected topic with original research covering a wide spectrum, from sexual behavior to sexual perceptions and imagery, and more.

Sex and Sexuality in Early America

Sex and Sexuality in Early America PDF Author: Merril D. Smith
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814780679
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
What role did sexual assault play in the conquest of America? How did American attitudes toward female sexuality evolve, and how was sexuality regulated in the early Republic? Sex and sexuality have always been the subject of much attention, both scholarly and popular. Yet, accounts of the early years of the United States tend to overlook the importance of their influence on the shaping of American culture. Sex and Sexuality in Early America addresses this neglected topic with original research covering a wide spectrum, from sexual behavior to sexual perceptions and imagery. Focusing on the period between the initial contact of Europeans and Native Americans up to 1800, the essays encompass all of colonial North America, including the Caribbean and Spanish territories. Challenging previous assumptions, these essays address such topics as rape as a tool of conquest; perceptions and responses to Native American sexuality; fornication, bastardy, celibacy, and religion in colonial New England; gendered speech in captivity narratives; representations of masculinity in eighteenth- century seduction tales, the sexual cosmos of a southern planter, and sexual transgression and madness in early American fiction. The contributors include Stephanie Wood, Gordon Sayre, Steven Neuwirth, Else L. Hambleton, Erik R. Seeman, Richard Godbeer, Trevor Burnard, Natalie A. Zacek, Wayne Bodle, Heather Smyth, Rodney Hessinger, and Karen A. Weyler.

The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America

The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America PDF Author: Greta LaFleur
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421426439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Ultimately, The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America not only rewrites all dominant scholarly narratives of eighteenth-century sexual behavior but poses a major intervention into queer theoretical understandings of the relationship between sex and the subject.

Sexual Revolution in Early America

Sexual Revolution in Early America PDF Author: Richard Godbeer
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801878918
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
An Alternate Selection of the History Book Club In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman traveling through New York, found it appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married and that no one viewed "ante-nuptial fornication" as anything scandalous or sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a "stage of debauchery" in which polygamy was "very common," "concubinage general," and "bastardy no disrepute." These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict the stereotype of Puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular imagination. In Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer boldly overturns conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial Americans. His eye-opening historical account spans two centuries and most of British North America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawing on exhaustive research into diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records and official documents, Godbeer's absorbing narrative uncovers a persistent struggle between the moral authorities and the widespread expression of popular customs and individual urges. Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans had toward sexuality. For example, although believing that sex could be morally corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied "conjugal fellowship" to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and class affected the debate about sexual mores, from anxieties about Anglo-Indian sexual relations to the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over their African slaves. He concludes by detailing the fundamental shift in sexual culture during the eighteenth century towards the acceptance of a more individualistic concept of sexual desire and fulfillment. Today's moral critics, in their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual consequences of unregulated sexual behavior, often harken back to a more innocent age; as this groundbreaking work makes clear, America's sexual culture has always been rich, vibrant, and contentious.

Rape and Sexual Power in Early America

Rape and Sexual Power in Early America PDF Author: Sharon Block
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807838934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In a comprehensive examination of rape and its prosecution in British America between 1700 and 1820, Sharon Block exposes the dynamics of sexual power on which colonial and early republican Anglo-American society was based. Block analyzes the legal, social, and cultural implications of more than nine hundred documented incidents of sexual coercion and hundreds more extralegal commentaries found in almanacs, newspapers, broadsides, and other print and manuscript sources. Highlighting the gap between reports of coerced sex and incidents that were publicly classified as rape, Block demonstrates that public definitions of rape were based less on what actually happened than on who was involved. She challenges conventional narratives that claim sexual relations between white women and black men became racially charged only in the late nineteenth century. Her analysis extends racial ties to rape back into the colonial period and beyond the boundaries of the southern slave-labor system. Early Americans' treatment of rape, Block argues, both enacted and helped to sustain the social, racial, gender, and political hierarchies of a New World and a new nation.

Long Before Stonewall

Long Before Stonewall PDF Author: Thomas C. Foster
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814727492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
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Intimate Matters

Intimate Matters PDF Author: John D'Emilio
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
Preface to the Second EditionAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: The Repoductive Matrix, 1600-18001. Cultural Diversity in the Era of Settlement2. Family Life and the Refulation of Deviance3. Seeds of ChangePart II: Divided Passions, 1780-19004. Within the Family5. Race and Sexuality6. Outside the Family7. Sexual PoliticsPart III: Toward a New Sexual Order, 1880-19308. "Civilized Morality" Under Stress9. Crusades for Sexual Order10. Breaking with the PastPart IV: The Rise and Fall of Sexual Liberalism, 1920 to the Present11. Beyond Reproduction12. Redrawing the Boundaries13. Sexual Revolutions14. The Sexualized Society15. The Contemporary Political CrisisAfterwordNotesSelected BibliographyIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Sex and Sexuality in Early America

Sex and Sexuality in Early America PDF Author: Merril D. Smith
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814780687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
Sex and sexuality have always been the subject of much attention, both scholarly and popular. Yet, accounts of the early years of the United States tend to overlook the importance of their influence on the shaping of American culture. This book addresses this neglected topic with original research covering a wide spectrum, from sexual behavior to sexual perceptions and imagery, and more.

The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America

The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America PDF Author: Greta LaFleur
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421438844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book

Book Description
Ultimately, The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America not only rewrites all dominant scholarly narratives of eighteenth-century sexual behavior but poses a major intervention into queer theoretical understandings of the relationship between sex and the subject.

Sex and Sexuality in Early America

Sex and Sexuality in Early America PDF Author: Merril D Smith
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814729363
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
What role did sexual assault play in the conquest of America? How did American attitudes toward female sexuality evolve, and how was sexuality regulated in the early Republic? Sex and sexuality have always been the subject of much attention, both scholarly and popular. Yet, accounts of the early years of the United States tend to overlook the importance of their influence on the shaping of American culture. Sex and Sexuality in Early America addresses this neglected topic with original research covering a wide spectrum, from sexual behavior to sexual perceptions and imagery. Focusing on the period between the initial contact of Europeans and Native Americans up to 1800, the essays encompass all of colonial North America, including the Caribbean and Spanish territories. Challenging previous assumptions, these essays address such topics as rape as a tool of conquest; perceptions and responses to Native American sexuality; fornication, bastardy, celibacy, and religion in colonial New England; gendered speech in captivity narratives; representations of masculinity in eighteenth- century seduction tales, the sexual cosmos of a southern planter, and sexual transgression and madness in early American fiction. The contributors include Stephanie Wood, Gordon Sayre, Steven Neuwirth, Else L. Hambleton, Erik R. Seeman, Richard Godbeer, Trevor Burnard, Natalie A. Zacek, Wayne Bodle, Heather Smyth, Rodney Hessinger, and Karen A. Weyler.

Long Before Stonewall

Long Before Stonewall PDF Author: Thomas A. Foster
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814727506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
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