United States History
Sexuality
Comprehensive Exam Bibliography
Pre-1900
Barker-Benfield, G. J. The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and
Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Harper, 1976.
Carnes, Mark & Griffen, Clyde. eds., Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in
Victorian America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Cohen, Patricia Cline. The Murder of Helen Jewett. New York: Knopf, 1998.
Cohen, Patricia Cline, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, and Helen L. Horowitz. The Flash Press: Sporting
Male Weeklies in 1840s New York. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Cott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2000.
D'Emilio, John and Estelle Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in the United
States, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Degler, Carl. At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Gilfoyle, Timothy J. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of
Sex, 1790-1920. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.
Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2002.
Gutierrez, Ramon. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and
Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.
Haller, John S. and Robin Haller. The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1974.
Hodes, Martha. White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Horowitz, Helen L. Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in
Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Knopf, 2002.
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Katz, Jonathan. Gay American History. New York: Crowell, 1976.
Katz, Jonathan. Love Stories: Sex between Men Before Homosexuality. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001.
Kendrick,Walter. The Secret Museum. New York: Viking, 1987.
Kern, Louis J. An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias--The Shakers, the
Mormons, and the Oneida Community. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
Lyons, Clare A. Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender & Power in the Age of
Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Mohr, James C. Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Reynolds, David. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of
Emerson and Melville. New York: Knopf, 1988.
Smith, Merril D. ed., Sex and Sexuality in Early America. New York: New York University
Press, 1998.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New
York: Knopf, 1985.
Tone, Andrea. Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. New York: Hill
and Wang, 2001.
Thatcher Ulrich, Laurel. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary,
1785-1812. New York, Knopf, 1990.
Williams,Walter L. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.
Post-1900
Bailey, Beth. From Front Porch to Backseat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Banner, Lois W. American Beauty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Berube, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women In World War
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Two. New York: Free Press, 1990.
Boyer, Paul S. Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the
Computer Age, 2d ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Brandt, Allan. No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States,
1880-1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male.
World New York: Basic Books, 1994.
Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Clement, Elizabeth Alice. Love for Sale: Courting, Treating and Prostitution in New York City,
1900-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006
Cott, Nancy. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
Dubow, Sara. Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010.
Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. New York: Free Press, 1987.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment.
New York: Anchor, 1983.
Ehrenreich, Barbara, Elizabeth Hess, Gloria Jacobs. Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex.
Garden City: Anchor, 1987.
Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth
Century America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Fraterrigo, Elizabeth. Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Gallo, Marcia. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the
Lesbian Rights Movement. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006.
Gertzman, Jay A. Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920–1940. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Gordon, Linda. Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America.
New York: Penguin, 1964.
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Howard, John. Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2001.
Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the
Federal Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Katz, Jonathan. Gay American History. New York: Crowell, 1976.
Kennedy, David M. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1970.
Kinsey, Alfred. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1948
Kinsey, Alfred. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1953.
Luker, Kristin. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York:
Basic Books, 1988.
Meyerowitz, Joanne J. Women Adrift, Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Mumford, Kevin. Interzones: White/Black Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early
Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New
York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. New York: Owl Books,
1998.
Radner, Hilary, and Moya Luckett, eds. Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Reagan, Leslie J. When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States,
1867-1973. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Reed, James. The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public
Virtue. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Robinson, Paul A. The Modernization of Sex: Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters
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and Virginia Johnson. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.
Rosenberg, Rosalind. Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
Solinger, Rickie. Wake up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade. New
York: Routledge, 1992.
Tone, Andrea. Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. New York: Hill
and Wang, 2001.
Ullman, Sharon. Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997.
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