Readings

Certain professors were responsible for certain weekly class sessions; please refer to the key below for their names.

RB = Renée Bergland

LB/STB = Leonard Buckle and Suzann Thomas-Buckle

Readings by Session

Emphasis was placed on those readings designated by an asterisk [*]. Students were asked to concentrate on these readings in particular.

WEEK # PROFESSORS TOPICS READINGS
1 RB, LB/STB Welcome/Introduction: What are we talking about? (no readings)
2 RB Early American sex: history and culture

Donne, John. "Elegy XX: To His Mistress, Going to Bed."

Bradstreet, Anne. "To My Dear and Loving Husband," and "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment."

Taylor, Edward. "Huswifery," and "Upon Wedlock and Death of Children."

Buy at Amazon Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution In Early America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801868009. (Focus on part one.)

Buy at Amazon Fessenden, Tracy, Nicholas Radel, and Magdalena Zaborowska. "Introduction." In The Puritan Origins of American Sex. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415926409.

Buy at Amazon Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock. "Nursing Fathers and Brides of Christ: The Feminized Body of the Puritan Convert." In A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America. Edited by Janet Moore Lindman and Michele Lise Tarter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780801487392.

Of interest

Buy at Amazon Foucault, Michel. Introduction to the History of Sexuality. New York, NY: Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679724698.

*Lawrence v. Texas, Amicus Curiae (Historian's Brief). (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)

3 LB/STB Marriage in social and legal history

Buy at Amazon *Cott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 [2000]. ISBN: 9780674008755.

Buy at Amazon Hertog, Hendrick. Man and Wife in America: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 [2000]. ISBN: 9780674008113.

4 RB Narratives of seduction and abandonment (What makes American seduction and sex so very American?)

Buy at Amazon *Rowson, Susanah. Charlotte Temple. Edited by Cathy N. Davidson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780195042382.

Buy at Amazon *Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood's Bastard: Sex and Love in Early Virginia. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780195144796.

Buy at Amazon Ulrich, Laurel Thacher. "The Serpent Beguiled Me." In Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. New York, NY: Vintage, 1991. ISBN: 9780679732570.

Armstrong. "Why Daughters Die: The Racial Logic of American Sentimentalism." Yale Journal of Criticism 7, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 1-25.

Tennenhouse, Leonard. "The Americanization of Clarissa." The Yale Journal of Criticism 11, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 177-196.

5 LB/STB Law's way for bastards and their mothers

Kelly, Linda. "Republican Mothers, Bastards' Fathers, and Good Victims: discarding Citizens and Equal Protection Through the Failures of Legal Images." Hastings Law Journal 51 (March 2000): 557.

Davis, Martha F. "Male Coverture: Law and the Illegitimate Family." Rutgers Law Review 56 (Fall 2003).

Kiernan, Kathleen. "Unmarried Cohabitation and Parenthood in Britain and Europe." Law and Policy 26, no. 1: 33-55.

Seltzer, Judith. "Families Formed Outside of Marriage." Journal of Marriage and Family 62, no. 4 (2000).

6 RB Cross-racial marriage

Buy at Amazon *Child, Lydia Maria Francis. A Romance of the Republic. Louisville, KY: University of Kentucky, 1997 [1867]. ISBN: 9780813109282. The e-text is available courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Choose one of the following to read

Buy at Amazon Sollors, Werner. Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature, and Law. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780195128574.

Buy at Amazon Romano, Renee. Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Post-War America. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN: 9780813029801.

7 LB/STB Cross-racial marriage and redefined marriage (Race and marriage rethought)

Buy at Amazon *Williams, Patricia. The Rooster's Egg: On the Persistence of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997 [1995]. ISBN: 9780674779433.

"Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950." Asian Law Journal 9 (2002).

Kiernan, Kathleen. "Redrawing the boundaries of Marriage." Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 980-987.

Buy at Amazon *Stack, Carol: All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Back Community. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1997 [1974]. ISBN: 9780061319822.

8 RB Intimate friendships

Buy at Amazon Luxon, Thomas. "Introduction." In Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage and Friendship. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2005, pp. 1-20. ISBN: 9780820703732.

Buy at Amazon Schweitzer, Ivy. "Smoke and Mirrors." In Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 27-71. ISBN: 9780807857786.

Buy at Amazon Rosenberg, Carroll Smith. "The Female World of Love and Ritual." In Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780195040395.

Choose one of the following to read

Buy at Amazon Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1776-1928. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780226855646.

Buy at Amazon Marcus, Sharon. Between Women, Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780691128351.

9 RB Boston marriage

Buy at Amazon James, Henry. The Bostonians. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780192834423. The e-text (Vol. I and Vol. II) is available courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Buy at Amazon Castle, Terry. "James and the specter of Lesbianism." In The Apparitional Lesbian. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780231076531.

Faderman, Lillian. "Acting 'Women' and Thinking 'Man': The Ploys of Famous Female Inverts." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 3 (1999): 315-329.

McColley, Kathleen. "Claiming Center Stage: Speaking Out for Homoerotic Empowerment in the Bostonians." The Henry James Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 151-169.

United States Supreme Court. Lawrence v. Texas, No. 02-102, 2002.

10 LB/STB Gay marriage (Goodridge)

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health 440 Mass. 309, 2003.

Buy at Amazon *Gerstman, Evan. Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780521709132.

Buy at Amazon *Chauncey, George. Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN: 9780465009572.

Choose one of the following to read

Buy at Amazon Pinello, Daniel. America's Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780521848565.

Buy at Amazon Koppelman, Andrew. Same Sex, Different States: When Same Sex Marriages Cross State Lines. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780300113402.

11 LB/STB Same-sex marriage and beyond

Buy at Amazon Eskridge, William. Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse: What We've Learned from the Evidence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780195187519.

Buy at Amazon *Rosenfeld, Michael J. The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780674024977.

Buy at Amazon Polikoff, Nancy. Beyond Straight or Gay: Marriage, Valuing All Marriages Under the Law. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780807044322.

12 LB/STB Family and feminist futures

Cherlin, Andrew. "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage." Journal of Marriage and Family 66, no. 4 (November 2004).

Buy at Amazon Schneider, Elizabeth M. "Part 3: Implementing Feminist Lawmaking" and "Part 4: Aspirations, Limits, and Possibilities." In Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780300094114.

Buy at Amazon Stacey, Judith. Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth Century America. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780465007462.

13 RB, LB/STB Course wrap-up Buy at Amazon Alsanea, Rajaa. Girls of Riyadh. New York, NY: Penguin, 2007. ISBN: 9781594201219.