Publisher's Synopsis
The first single-volume collection to provide everything an instructor needs to offer an undergraduate class in Queer American history
Queer American History: A Reader in Documents and Essays brings together in a single volume iconic primary sources, canonical essays, and new research for courses that cover Queer U.S. history from 1600 to 2010. Encouraging students to think critically about the past, this comprehensive and accessible textbook explores how queer identity has been constructed by race, class, and gender from the colonial era through the early twenty-first century.
Field-defining essays are paired with relevant primary sources to allow students to examine and interpret the actual historical studies and archival materials. The chapters are organized chronologically and thematically, each opening with a brief introduction to the topic and situating secondary sources and primary sources in relation to one another. Throughout the text, students are exposed to topics and documents not typically covered in standard courses on U.S. History, such as sexual identity in Indigenous America, representations of gender and sex in eighteenth-century print culture, sexology and sexual orientation, the legal regulation of sodomy, the Lavender Scare, Gay Liberation and the Movement for Rights, the emergence of transgender identity, and more.
- Presents both previously published essays and directly related primary source material
- Includes an introduction to approaches to Queer history that focuses on the social construction of sexual identities and the varied meanings of same-sex sexual acts
- Emphasizes racial and regional diversity, featuring scholarship on African, Asian, Latinx, and Native Americans
- Includes excerpts from books and essays written by some of the founders of the field
- Covers a broad range of key topics, such as Queer culture in Western and rural America, various identities and subcultures, and law and assimilation in the twenty-first century
Edited by widely respected leaders in their fields, Queer American History: A Reader in Documents and Essays is the ideal textbook for undergraduate courses in LGBT or Queer, as well as interdisciplinary courses in Sexuality Studies or Women and Gender Studies.
