HIST 349.

401/GSWS 349 History of Sexuality in the United States Spring 2014

Course information: Lectures: McNeil Building, room 286-7 Monday/Wednesday 10-11 am Instructor: Professor Kathy Peiss Email: peiss@sas.upenn.edu, phone 215-898-2746 Office: College Hall 215D Office hours: Mon.1-2 pm; Wed. 2-4 pm, and by appt TAs: Alexis Neumann, aneu@sas.upenn.edu Kevin Waite, kwaite@sas.upenn.edu Recitation sections: beginning January 23/24 349.402, Fri 10-11 am, Williams 219 (Waite) 349.403, Fri 11 am-12 pm, Bennett 323 (Neumann) 349.404, Thurs. 4:30-5:30 pm, Bennett 322 (Waite) 349.405, Thurs. 4:30-5:30 pm, Bennett 138 (Neumann)

[Image from Natl Museum of American History]

Description Dissected, categorized, evaluated, policed, feared, and enjoyed: Sexuality in the American past is the primary concern of this course. Why has sexuality become so central to identities, culture, politics, and now, our history? This course explores a complex and often hidden history, from early America to the present. Many of the topics are relevant to contemporary public debates, including controversies over censorship, sexual violence, and LGBT rights. At the same time, the course explores what sexuality has meant to ordinary Americans in the past; to do so, we will use a wide range of primary sources, such as private letters, legal cases, photographs, films, and music. The course considers the following questions across the span of American history: 1. What have been the official or governing discourses of sexualityin religion, the law, government, psychiatry, and sexology? What has been their relationship to sexual regulation and politics? 2. What were popular beliefs and practices toward sexuality? How did they change over time? How can historians understand the response of ordinary people to the governing discourses on sexuality? What is the relationship between sexuality and other forms of social difference, such as gender, class, race and ethnicity? 3. What causes dramatic transformations in sexual attitudes and behavior? What have been the consequences of these transformations? 4. How does an examination of the history of sexuality inform contemporary debates and public policy?

5. How have historians uncovered the fragmentary evidence of our sexual pasts and wrestled with these questions? Readings Required books are available at Penn Book Center (34th and Sansom) and are on reserve in the Rosengarten Reserve Reading Room, ground floor of Van Pelt: Kathy Peiss, ed., Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality (Cengage/Houghton Mifflin, 2001). ISBN: 978-0395903841. Check Penn Book Center and ABEbooks or other on-line booksellers for used copies! George Chauncey, Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1995). ISBN: 978-0465026210. Wendy Kline, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (University of California Press, 2005). ISBN: 978-0520246744. Heather Murray, Not in This Family: Gays and the Meaning of Kinship in Postwar North America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). ISBN: 978-0812222241

All articles and other materials are posted or linked on the Canvas course website. Login: canvas.upenn.edu; go to the Modules section. (Chrome is the recommended browser.) Updated information about the course, including assignments and recitations, will be posted there as well. Note on Canvas: If you have trouble accessing course materials, please ask us for help. See also Canvas Support for Students: http://guides.library.upenn.edu/canvas_students, or email Canvas Support, canvas@pobox.penn.edu. Lectures and Recitations Lectures meet Monday and Wednesday at 10:00 am. Although there will be time for some questions and discussion during lectures, recitation sections will be held for in-depth discussion. (Note: the first recitation sections will be January 23/24.) If you have questions, I also encourage you to come to my office hours. I will post the Powerpoint presentations used in class on Canvas, but not the lecture notes. Course Requirements Attendance, preparation and participation. Your attendance is required in lectures and recitations, and all assigned readings for the week should be completed before sections meet. Close reading and careful preparation for class, as well as thoughtful participation in recitation sections, is crucial to your success in the course. Students who miss more than a few classes should expect to have their final grades reduced. Participation in recitations (including short exercises or in-class writing) will be 20% of the grade. Three essays. Assignment sheets will be distributed and posted on the website. #1: Analysis and comparison of primary sources on sexuality in early America. Length: 4-5 pages; 15% of final grade. Due February 17. #2: Analysis of course materials on late 19th c. and early 20th c. sexuality. Length: 5-6 pages; 20% of final grade. Due March 24.

#3. Primary documents paper. This paper requires you to find one or two significant primary documents on a theme or issue in the history of American sexuality (to 1990), and to write an analysis of the document that places it in historical context. Length: 10-12 pages; 30% of final grade. Due April 21. Take-home exam, essay question format. University regulations require that take home finals are due the day of scheduled final exam, which is Friday, May 9 by 12:00 noon. No exams after that time will be accepted; you may turn your exam in early. 15% of final grade. A few other matters Communication: Please write email using accurate and appropriate language. I will respond to email but not always immediately. If your question requires a lengthy reply or a conversation, I will ask you to see me during office hours or make an appointment. Written work: All written work should be double-spaced, with 1" margins and fonts set at 10-12 points. No e-mail attachments will be accepted without prior approval of TA. Late papers may be marked down. Evaluations: In evaluating your work, the TAs and I will look for how well you have understood the material and composed a thoughtful, engaging, and persuasive response; how well you back up your statements with evidence and offer an argument, not simply an opinion; how coherent, clear, and well organized your paper is; how you use language, with a preference for writing that is vivid, precise, and grammatically correct. We are committed to helping you develop your writing, analytical, and research skills: do not hesitate to ask for help. Students are required to complete all assignments to pass the course. Improvement over time will be taken into consideration in determining course grades. Classroom environment: Please arrive on time and turn off your cellphones; computers are to be used for note-taking only. I encourage the free expression of thought and diversity of opinion in all my courses. Censorship, including self-censorship, defeats the purposes of higher education. But I also believe that free expression is most free when it is accompanied by civility, respect, and tolerance. This may be even more the case in this course, in which you are studying sexuality as an academic subject that is, simultaneously, a deeply personal one. My aim is not to impose a point of view on you, but to encourage you to think about your own views, to subject them to the test of evidence and argument, and to revise and refine them when appropriate. Be open to the perspectives of others, engage their arguments thoughtfully, and answer them by acknowledging their viewpoints. Please note that some of the course materials use sexually explicit language and images, in the conventional sense of that phrase. Academic honesty. All course work must be performed in accordance with Penns Code of Academic Integrity, http://www.upenn.edu/academicintegrity/ai_codeofacademicintegrity.html. Violations of this code, including cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, and facilitating the academic dishonesty of others, will result in failure for the course. For a useful guide to avoiding plagiarism, see http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/engineering/ee/plagiarize.html. Please ask if you have any questions about university policy or proper practices in writing papers and citing sources. 3

COURSE OUTLINE 1/15 1/20 Course Introduction: Studying Sexuality in U.S. History Martin Luther King Day, no class

1/22 Sexuality in Early America Lecture: Sexual Cultures and Encounters in the New World Readings: Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, 1-16, 26-68 Richard Trexler, On the Ground, ch. 6, Sex and Conquest* Recitations begin 1/23-24 Week of 1/27 Sexuality in Early America (continued) Lectures: Regulating Sexuality in the Anglo-American Colonies Sexuality in the Age of Revolution Readings: Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, 70-113, 120-131 Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Taking the Trade: Abortion & Gender Relations in an 18th Century New England Village, William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, vol. 48, no.1 (January 1991): 19-49* Clare A. Lyons, Mapping an Atlantic Sexual Culture: Homoeroticism in 18th Century Philadelphia, William & Mary Quarterly 3rd series, vol. 60, no. 1 (Jan. 2003): 119-54* Sharon Block, Consent and Coercion, ch. 1 in Rape and Sexual Power in Early America* Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette, letters 1-5, 18-19, 29, 40, 59-60, 65-66*
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/foster/coquette/coquette.html; http://archive.org/stream/coquetteorhistor00fost#page/n5/mode/2up

Week of 2/3 What was Victorian about the 19th century (1820s-1870s)? Lectures: Victorian Discourses and Intimacies Utopian Alternatives Readings: Major Problems, 113-119, 131-141, 187-197, 201-237 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3-13* Donald M. Scott & Bernard Wishy, eds., Families in Utopia documents, in Americas Families: A Documentary History*

Julie Dunfey, Living the Principle of Plural Marriage: Mormon Women, Utopia, and Female Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century, Feminist Studies 10 (Fall 1984): 523-536* Suzanne Thurman, Shaker Women and Sexual Power, Journal of Womens History 10 (Spring 1998): 70-88* Sarah Barringer Gordon, Chapel and State, Legal Affairs (Jan-Feb. 2003) http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February2003/review_gordon_janfeb2003.html* Week of 2/10 Sexuality and Slaveryand Its Legacies Lectures: Sexuality and Slavery The Politics of Sexuality from Reconstruction to Jim Crow Readings: Major Problems, 142-147, 152-186 Philip D. Morgan, Sex, p. 398-411, from Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry* Madison Hemingss Memoir, in Jan Lewis and Peter Onuf, eds., Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson* Joseph J. Ellis, Appendix, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson* Annette Gordon-Reed, The Memories of a Few Negroes: Rescuing Americas Future at Monticello, Lewis and Onuf, eds., Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson* Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, chapters 1-2, 5-7, 10
http://digilib.nypl.org:80/dynaweb/digs-t/wwm97255/@Generic__BookView*

Martha Hodes, The Sexualization of Reconstruction Politics: White Women & Black Men in the South after the Civil War, Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 402-417* First paper due February 17 Week of 2/17 Sexual Knowledge in the Late 19th and early 20th Centuries Lectures: Sexual Speech and Censorship Medicalization and the Rise of Sexology Readings: Major Problems, 238-271, 16-24 Andrea Tone, Black Market Birth Control: Contraceptive Entrepreneurship and Criminality in the Gilded Age, Journal of American History 87 (Sept.2000): 435-459* Rachel P. Maines, Socially Camouflaged Technologies: The Case of the Electromechanical Vibrator, IEEE Technology and Science Magazine, June 1989, 3-11, 22* Lisa Duggan, The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology and the Lesbian Subject in Turn-of-the-Century America, Signs 18 (1993): 791-814* Sigmund Freud, The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, 4th Lecture, 1910, http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Freud/Origin/origin4.htm; also read Raymond Fanchers introduction to the lecture, http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Freud/Origin/intro.htm*

Week of 2/24 Sex and the City, 1890s-1920s Lectures: The Sexual Worlds of Urban Life: New Immigrants, New Women, and the Working-Class Homosexual Cultures Readings: Major Problems, 273-307 George Chauncey, Gay New York, introduction, chs. 1-3, 5 Nan Alamilla Boyd, Lesbian Space, Lesbian Territory, San Franciscos North Beach District, 1933-1954, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965* H.W. Lytle and John Dillon, From Dance Hall to White Slavery, ch. 6 (look at introductory material too):
http://archive.org/stream/fromdancehalltow00lytl#page/n7/mode/2up* http://archive.org/stream/fromdancehalltow00lytl#page/n99/mode/2up*

Week of 3/3 Sexual Modernity and Popular Culture Lectures: Mass Media and Heterosexual Norms in the Roaring Twenties Sexual Identities and Popular Culture in the Depressed Thirties Readings: Major Problems, 337-356 George Chauncey, Gay New York, ch. 4, 7-11 Hazel V. Carby, It Jus Be's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues, in E. DuBois and V. Ruiz, eds., Unequal Sisters, 238-249* Christina Simmons, Sexual Advice for Modern Marriage, ch. 5, Making Marriage Modern* Films excerpts: The Sheik (Paramount Pictures, 1921), http://archive.org/details/TheSheik Baby Face (Warner Brothers, 1933) Week of 3/10 Spring break: No class Week of 3/17 Sexuality and Reproduction Lectures: Birth Control Eugenics Readings: Major Problems, 308-336, 445-450, 460-471 Wendy Kline, Building a Better Race Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, http://vector.cshl.org/eugenics/ * Second paper due 3/24

Week of 3/24 Sexuality and Public Policy Lectures: Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Public Policy before AIDS New Legal Regimes, 1930s-1950s: Rights to Sexual Expression, Regulating Deviance Readings: Major Problems, 446-450, 460-471 George Chauncey, Gay New York, ch. 12 and epilogue (311-364) Leigh Ann Wheeler, Are You Free to Read, See, and Hear?: Creating Consumer Rights Out of the First Amendment, ch. 3, in How Sex Became a Civil Liberty* Margot Canaday, Building the Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship Under the 1944 G.I. Bill, Journal of American History 90 (December 2003): 935-57* Week of 3/31 Evolution or Revolution? Sexual Liberalism in Postwar America Lectures: The Contradictions of Post-WWII Sexual Liberalism The Making of the 1960s Sexual Revolution Readings: Major Problems, 367-374, 379-381, 393-403, 406-412, 423-431 Sarah Igo, The Private Lives of the Public, ch. 6, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public* Renee Romano, Culture Wars and Schoolhouse Doors, ch. 5 in Race Mixing: BlackWhite Marriage in Postwar America* Danielle McGuire, It Was like All of Us Had Been Raped: Sexual Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle, Journal of American History 91 (2004): 906-31* Robert O. Self, Sex in the City: The Politics of Sexual Liberalism in Los Angeles, 19631979, Gender and History 20 (August 2008), 288-311. Week of 4/7 Sexuality and Social Movements I Lectures: Feminism and the Politics of Sexuality From the Homophile Movement to Gay Liberation to LGBT Rights Readings: Major Problems, 381-384, 414-422, 431-443 Heather Murray, Not in this Family, introduction & ch 1-3 Cherrie Moraga, From a Long Line of Vendidas: Chicanas and Feminism, in Teresa de Lauretis, Feminist Studies/Critical Studies (1986), originally published 1983* Anne Koedt, The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, *
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/notes/#myth

New York Radical Women, Women Rap About Sex, Notes from the First Year (1968)
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/notes/#sexrap

Radicalesbians, The Woman Identified Woman, Documents from the Womens Liberation Movement, Duke University; http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/womid/ 7

Week of 4/14 Sexuality and Social Movements II Lectures: The Emergence of a Transsexual/Transgender Movement The Conservative Counter-Revolution Readings: Major Problems, 374-76, 384-392 Joanne Meyerowitz, A Fierce and Demanding Drive, ch. 4 How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States* Screaming Queens: The Riot at Comptons Cafeteria (2005), excerpts Janice M. Irvine, ch. 5, Victims, Villainsand Neighbors, in Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States* Amy DeRogatis, What Would Jesus Do? Sexuality and Salvation in Protestant Evangelical Sex Manuals, 1950s to the Present, Church History 74 (Mar. 2005): 97-137* Whitney Strub, Perversion for Profit: Citizens for Decent Literature and the Arousal of an Antiporn Public in the 1960s, Journal of the History of Sexuality 15 (2006): 258-291* Carolyn Bronstein, Battling Pornography (2011), introduction* Perversion for Profit (1965), http://archive.org/details/Perversi1965 Primary documents paper due 4/21 Week of 4/21 Sexuality in the Late 20th Century Lectures: The AIDS Crisis Sexual Politics and the Culture Wars Readings: Heather Murray, Not in This Family, ch. 4-5 Major Problems, 451-460, 471-483 Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, How To Have Sex in an Epidemic (1983)*
http://richardberkowitz.com/category/4-how-to-have-sex-in-an-epidemic/ (scroll to bottom) AIDS Memorial Quilt Website, www.aidsquilt.org, http://research.microsoft.com/enus/um/redmond/projects/aidsquilt/

Excerpts from Tony Kushner, Angels in America (1993; HBO production, 2003) Week of 4/28 Historical perspectives on our times Lectures: Sexuality, Marriage, and Family in Everyday Life and Media Archiving the Present Reading: Major Problems, 484-514 Murray, Not in This Family, epilogue Take home final exam due Friday, May 9, no later than 12:00 noon. 8