HIST 1017, Seminar Week 1
Sexuality as a category of historical analysis
Starting in the 1990s the history of sexuality moved out of the margins and into the
mainstream of history. Most of you students, then, have grown up in a world where
few would question the value of sexuality as a category of historical analysis. In this
week’s seminar we shall discuss how that shift happened, and some of the debates
that continue about how we can study the history of sexuality.
The first article this week (“Clio in Search of Eros)” is the introduction to a 2003
issue of one of the leading journals of American history, The William and Mary
Quarterly, devoted completely to the theme of “sexuality in early America.” As such,
the authors endeavor to point out how sexuality moved from the ‘entertainment’
section of the journal (the journal was founded in 1892) to its main pages as a
serious area of study by the 1960s and 1970s. Note the emphasis the authors put on
the influence of the French philosopher/historian Michel Foucault on historical
works that have been produced in the last quarter century, by scholars who have
either followed or fundamentally challenged his insights.
Look carefully at the title of the article; if you don’t know who “Clio” and
“Eros” are, so a little web research to find out. In other words, what does the title
mean?
Your main goal in reading this article is to get a sense of how the study of
sexuality in American history has developed over the last twenty-five years. After
reading the article you should be prepared to discuss the following question in
seminar:
What are the main themes, methods, and sources that the authors identify
have been used by historians to study sexuality?
The second article (“The Productive Hypothesis”) is more theoretical in nature (it
appeared in the journal History and Theory after all). Ostensibly a critique of
Foucault, the article does attempts to explain how Foucault’s works have challenged
the way that historians think about sexuality, and offers her own insights on
overcoming what she sees as the limitations of his methods. The language the
author uses is quite dense and is peppered with a lot of critical theory jargon. Don’t
worry if you don’t get it all … just try to work your way through.
In short, what the author is trying to do is to show that Foucault was a product of his
times, and from there to point to ways that historians can move beyond the Foucault
paradigm.
The real point the author is trying to emphasize is that the big omission in
Foucault’s work was his “neglect” of the category of gender. Thus the big question
we want to discuss in seminar is:
Can there be something called the ‘history of sexuality’ without a discussion
of gender, or as the author seemingly contends, are the categories of
masculinity and femininity necessary foundations for a deeper
understanding of the history of sexuality?