Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America
Jennifer Brier, Jim Downs, and Jennifer L. Morgan
Abstract
This book investigates the ways in which race and sex intersect, overlap, and inform each other in United States history. The book includes 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 1940 ... More
This book investigates the ways in which race and sex intersect, overlap, and inform each other in United States history. The book includes 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. The book looks at how racial subjugation feeds sexual normativity as well as how sexual and racial subjects enact liberating claims that can fall short of liberation even as they bring into being imaginative ideas about social, political, and cultural change.
Keywords:
race,
United States history,
sexual representation,
same-sex,
slavery,
gay history,
lesbian history,
heterosexual norms,
racial beauty
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780252040399 |
| Published to Illinois Scholarship Online: April 2017 |
DOI:10.5406/illinois/9780252040399.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Jennifer Brier, editor
University of Illinois Chicago
Jim Downs, editor
Connecticut College
Jennifer L. Morgan, editor
New York University
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