Full Description
Connexions investigates the ways in which race and sex intersect, overlap, and inform each other in United States history. An expert team of editors curates thought-provoking articles that explore how to view the American past through the lens of race and sexuality studies. Chapters range from the prerevolutionary era to today to grapple with an array of captivating issues: how descriptions of bodies shaped colonial Americans' understandings of race and sex; same-sex sexual desire and violence within slavery; whiteness in gay and lesbian history; college women's agitation against heterosexual norms in the 1940s and 1950s; the ways society used sexualized bodies to sculpt ideas of race and racial beauty; how Mexican silent film icon Ramon Navarro masked his homosexuality with his racial identity; and sexual representation in mid-twentieth-century black print pop culture. The result is both an enlightening foray into ignored areas and an elucidation of new perspectives that challenge us to reevaluate what we "know" of our own history. Contributors: Sharon Block, Susan K. Cahn, Stephanie M. H. Camp, J. B. Carter, Ernesto Chávez, Brian Connolly, Jim Downs, Marisa J. Fuentes, Leisa D. Meyer, Wanda S. Pillow, Marc Stein, and Deborah Gray White.
Contents
CoverTitleCopyrightContentsIntroduction Jennifer Brier, Jim Downs, and Jennifer L. MorganPart 1. Deep Connections1. With Only a Trace: Same-Sex Sexual Desire and Violence on Slave Plantations, 1607-1865 / Jim Downs2. Historical Methods and Racial Identification in U.S. Lesbian and Gay History / Julian B. Carter3. Race, Class, and the U.S. Supreme Court's Doctrine of Heteronormative Supremacy / Marc SteinPart 2. Beauty and Desire4. Early American Bodies: Creating Race, Sex, and Beauty / Sharon Block5. Making Racial Beauty in the United States: Toward a History of Black Beauty / Stephanie M. H. Camp6. The Soul of the Boy Was . . . Aztec: Race and Sexuality in Ramón Novarro's Self-Narrative / Ernesto ChavezPart 3. Subjectivities7. Power and Historical Figuring: Rachael Pringle Polgreen's Troubled Archive / Marisa J. Fuentes8. The Curse of Canaan; or, A Fantasy of Origins in Nineteenth-Century America / Brian Connolly9. Mapping Sex, Race, and Gender in the Corps of Discovery Expedition / Wanda S. Pillow10. If We Got That Freedom: "Integration" and the Sexual Politics of Southern College Women, 1940-1960 / Susan K. Cahn11. Strange Love: Searching for Sexual Subjectivities in 1950s Black Print Popular Culture / Leisa D. Meyer12. Out and on the Outs: The 1990s Mass Marches and the Black and LGBT Communities / Deborah Gray WhiteAbout the ContributorsAcknowledgmentsIndex
