History 301U: Historical Methods, Spring 2015
“How to Do the History of Sexuality”
Professor Andrea Friedman
123 Busch Hall
5-4339; afriedman@wustl.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday, 1-3, or by appointment
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Researching and writing the history of sexuality presents a unique set of challenges. At many times and places sex has been supposed to be confined to the "private" sphere and so the kinds of evidence that historians often rely on can be difficult to find. Sex is also highly policed, with the result that the diversity of sexual practices is often hidden:
"what ought to be" is radically different from "what is." This course will investigate how historians of the United States have responded to these challenges as they seek to understand how sexual practices, ideologies, identities and regulatory systems have changed over time. We will practice the sorts of skills that constitute historical inquiry— identifying and interpreting primary sources, critically reading secondary sources, and putting these together to construct our own narratives of the past. Students will be introduced to theoretical frameworks as well as innovative approaches to evidence.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Elisabeth Reis, American Sexual Histories (2 nd edition) (ASH)
Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction
John Howard, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History
We will also make use of a website created by Professor Elise Chenier, Interracial Intimacies: Sex and Race in
Toronto, 1910-1950. A link is available on the “Course Documents” tab on the Blackboard page. Or you can access it directly: http://interracialintimacies.org/index.html
All other required readings are on Ares (Course Reserves) and can be accessed through our Blackboard page. I expect that you will have access to all readings during class so that you can refer to them during discussion. In most cases, the best way to do this is to print readings and bring them with you.
ELECTRONIC DEVICE POLICY: I STRONGLY PREFER THAT YOU NOT BRING TO CLASS ELECTRONIC
DEVICES THAT CAN BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET, except on those days that we will be working with
Interracial Intimacies. My reasons for making this request are succinctly explained by Anne Curzan in “ Why I’m
Asking You Not to Use Laptops .” As she concludes, “if you need or strongly prefer a laptop for taking notes or accessing readings in class for any reason, please come talk with me, and I am happy to make that work. I’ll just ask you to commit to using the laptop only for class-related work.”
COURSE REQUIREMENTS/ASSESSMENT
 Class participation (15 points). Class sessions will be organized around discussion of assigned readings. It is absolutely essential that you carefully read assigned materials and think about them prior to coming to class. Your participation grade will be determined by: o Regular attendance. You are permitted three absences. Additional absences will lower your grade. o The quality of your contributions to class discussions. Are your comments responsive to and informed by the readings for the class? Are you an attentive listener who engages in respectful and productive dialogue with other members of the class? If you are hesitant to speak up in class, please see me asap so that we can discuss strategies that will help you participate. o Research Consultations . You must visit me at least twice during the semester to discuss progress on your research paper. The first visit must occur no later than week 8. Failure to complete these visits in a timely manner will lower your class participation grade.

 Single Primary Source Essay (10 points). A 2-3 page essay, analyzing one of the primary source documents from Weeks 3-5. DUE FEBRUARY 5.
 Multiple Primary Source Essay (15 points). A 4-5 page essay analyzing at least two primary sources in conjunction with each other. DUE FEBRUARY 17.
 Secondary Source Analysis. (20 points). A 4-5 page essay analyzing two secondary sources) on one of the topics from Weeks 3-7. One source can be selected from either assigned readings or the supplemental secondary sources listed on the syllabus; the other you must identify yourself. DUE MARCH 5.
 Statement of research topic and bibliography (10 points). A one-paragraph explanation of your research topic and the questions you hope to answer, and preliminary bibliography. Your bibliography must include at least eight secondary sources (books and articles) and four primary sources. At least five of your sources
(primary and/or secondary) should be from outside the required or supplemental sources listed on the syllabus. DUE MARCH 26.
 An 8-10 page research paper using four of the secondary sources and three of the primary sources listed in your bibliography (30 points). DUE APRIL 23.
ALL course requirements must be met to pass this course. It may not be taken pass/fail.
INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS
Washington University provides accommodations and/or services to students with documented disabilities. Students should seek appropriate documentation through the Disability Resource Center http://cornerstone.wustl.edu/disabilityresources.aspx
, which will approve and arrange any accommodations. Please feel free to speak to me about your individual learning needs.
Language or behavior that makes other students feel unwelcome in this classroom will not be tolerated. Examples range from simply interrupting or ignoring others while they are talking, to overt harassment or intimidation with reference to race, sex, gender identity, sexual identity, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ability or political belief.
Washington University’s Policy on Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment can be found at http://hr.wustl.edu/policies/Pages/DiscriminationAndDiscriminatoryHarassment.aspx
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
Plagiarism or other violations of academic integrity will result in a failing grade on the assignment, and may result in a failing grade for the course. Please review Washington University’s academic integrity policy at http://www.wustl.edu/policies/undergraduate-academic-integrity.html
. A helpful guide to understanding plagiarism can be found at http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_plagiarism.html
.
NOTE: This syllabus is a work-in-progress, and may be altered during the course of the semester.
SCHEDULE:
WEEK 1
1/13 Introduction
1/15 Thinking Historically
REQUIRED READINGS:
Burke & Andrews, “What does it mean to think historically?” (Ares)
Explore Interracial Intimacies: Sex and Race in Toronto, 1910-1950, including essay “Empathy &
Empowerment”
WEEK 2
1/20 Thinking about sexuality historically

REQUIRED READINGS:
Weeks, “The Social Construction of Sexuality” (Ares)
Foucault, “The History of Sexuality,” selections (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Carole Vance, ed.,
Pleasure and Danger (Routledge & Kegan, Paul, 1984), pp. 267-319
David M. Halperin, “Is There a History of Sexuality?” History and Theory 28 (1989): 257-74
1/22 The problem of sources
REQUIRED READINGS:
Degler, “What Ought to Be and What Was” (selections) (Ares)
Freedman, “The Burning of Letters Continues”’ (Ares)
Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women” (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCE:
John D. Wrathall, “Provenance as Text: Reading the Silences Around Sexuality in Manuscript
Collections,” Journal of American History 79, 1 (1993): 165-78
WEEK 3
1/27 How to Do the History of Sexuality I
REQUIRED READINGS:
Selections from Interracial Intimacies
1/29 Early modern understandings of sex and gender
REQUIRED READINGS:
ASH, ch. 1, “Bodies in Doubt: Intersex in Early America”
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCE:
Kathleen Brown, “‘Changed…into the Fashion of Man’: The Politics of Sexual Difference in a Seventeenth-
Century
Anglo-American Settlement,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 6 (1995): 171-93
WEEK 4
2/3 How to Do the History of Sexuality II
Session at ARC, Olin Library with Makiba Foster
2/5 Religion, Law, and Transgression
REQUIRED READINGS:
ASH, ch. 2, “Transgressive Male Sex in Early America”
Massachusetts Body of Liberties (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL PRIMARY SOURCE:
Samuel Danforth, “The Cry of Sodom Enquired Into; Upon Occasion of the Arraignment and Condemnation
of Benjamin Goad, for His Prodigious Villany (1674), ed. Paul Royster, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1037&context=libraryscience
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCE:
John M. Murrin, “‘Things Fearful to Name’: Bestiality in Colonial Pennsylvania History,” Pennsylvania
History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 65:5 (1998): 8-43
WEEK 5
2/10 Sex, Borderlands, Empires
REQUIRED READINGS:
ASH, ch. 3, “Indian Women, French Women, & the Regulation of Sex”

John Lawson on Native American Women (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL PRIMARY SOURCE:
Louisiana’s Code Noir, 1724 http://www.blackpast.org/primary/louisianas-code-noir-1724
SINGLE PRIMARY SOURCE ESSAY DUE
2/12 Sexual violence
REQUIRED READINGS:
ASH, ch. 4, “Rape and Sexual Power in Early America”
“Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, A Negro Man” (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Wendy Anne Warren, “‘The Cause of Her Grief’: The Rape of a Slave in Early New England,” Journal of
American History 93, 4 (2007): 1031-1049
Marybeth Arnold, “‘The Life of a Citizen in the Hands of a Woman’: Sexual Assault in New York City,
1790 to 1820,” in Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons, eds., Passion & Power: Sexuality In History
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), pp. 35-56
WEEK 6
2/17 How to Do the History of Sexuality III
Session at University Archives with Miranda Rectenwald (West Campus)
MULTIPLE PRIMARY SOURCE ESSAY DUE
2/19 Friendship, Romance, and the Erotic
REQUIRED READINGS:
ASH, ch. 5, “The Overflowing of Friendship”
Hansen, “An Erotic Friendship Between Two African-American Women” (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL PRIMARY SOURCE:
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, The Calamus Poems (1860)
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-
Century America,” SIGNS 1 (1975): 1-29
Jonathan Ned Katz, “A Gentle Angel Entered,” in Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 33-41
WEEK 7
2/24 Sex in the City
REQUIRED READINGS:
ASH, ch. 6, “Sex Among the Rabble”
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1986), esp. ch. 5, “Women and Men”
Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992), esp. chs. 4, “Brothel Riots and Broadway Pimps,” and 5,
“Sporting Men”
Cynthia M. Blair, I’ve Got to Make My Livin’: Black Women’s Sex Work in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), esp. ch 2, “Working the Prostitution Economy, 1870-1900”
2/26 Race, Sexuality, and Power
REQUIRED READINGS:
ASH, ch. 7, “White Women, Black Women, and Adultery in the Antebellum South”
Rosen, “’Not That Sort of Women’: Race, Gender, and Sexual Violence during the Memphis Riot of 1866”
(Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL PRIMARY SOURCES:
“The Memphis Riot, 1865” in Gerda Lerner, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History

WEEK 8
(New York: Vintage Books, 1973), pp. 173-179; and “KKK Terror During Reconstruction,” pp. 180-188
For the complete text of the Congressional investigation into the Memphis Riot, see “Memphis Riots and
Massacres,” House Report 101, 39th Congress, 1st Session, http://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/ampage?collId=llss&fileName=1200/1274/llss1274.db&recNum=10
3/3 How to Do the History of Sexuality IV
REQUIRED READING:
Interracial Intimacies (selections)
3/5 INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS DURING CLASS TIME – MY OFFICE
SECONDARY SOURCE ESSAY DUE
WEEK 9: SPRING BREAK!
WEEK 10
3/17 Sexuality, Technology, Capitalism
REQUIRED READING:
Technology of Orgasm, selections
3/19 Sexuality and the State
REQUIRED READING:
ASH, ch. 9, “Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America”
“Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City” (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth-Century America,”
Journal of American History 83, 1 (1996): 44-69
Nancy F. Cott, “Marriage and Women's Citizenship in the United States, 1830-1934,” American Historical
Review 103, 5 (1998): 1440-74
Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after
Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), esp. ch. 7, “A Burden of
Responsibility: Gender, ‘Miscegenation,’ and Race Type”
Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2010)
WEEK 11
3/24 Sexuality and Medicine
REQUIRED READING:
ASH, ch. 11, “When Abortion Was Illegal”
“The Notification to the Health Authorities of Cases of Abortion and Miscarriage” (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), esp. chapters 3, 4, or 5
Rebecca Kluchin, Fit to be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 2011), esp. ch. 3, “Sterilizing ‘Unfit’ Women”
3/26 Sexuality and the Media I
REQUIRED READING:
ASH, ch .14, “Sex Change and the Popular Press”
“The Case of Christine,” Time Magazine, April 20, 1953

http://www.christinejorgensen.org/ReadPubs/Time2/Time2Cvr.html
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCE:
David Harley Serlin, “Christine Jorgensen and the Cold War Closet,” Radical History Review 62 (1995): 136-
65
RESEARCH TOPIC/BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
WEEK 12
3/31 Oral History/Geographies of Intimacy
REQUIRED READING:
Men Like That, selections
4/2 Oral History/Geographies of Intimacy, cont’d.
REQUIRED READING:
Men Like That, selections
WEEK 13
4/7 Sexuality and the Media II
REQUIRED READING:
ASH, ch. 13, “Lesbian Pulp Novels and US Lesbian identity”
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Marcel Barriault, “Hard to Dismiss: The Archival Value of Gay Male Erotica and Pornography,” Archivaria 68
(Fall 2009): 219-46
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Playboy Joins the Battle of the Sexes” in The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the
Flight
from Commitment (New York: Anchor Books, 1983)
4/9 How to Do the History of Sexuality V
REQUIRED READING:
Interracial Intimacies
WEEK 14
4/14 Sexual revolutions
REQUIRED READING:
David Allyn, “In Loco Parentis” (Ares)
“Feminist Anselma Dell’Olio Argues That “The Sexual Revolution Wasn’t Our War” (Ares)
SUPPLEMENTAL PRIMARY SOURCES:
Carl Wittman, “Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto” (1969)
Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” (1970)
SUPPLEMENTAL SECONDARY SOURCES:
Terence Kissack, “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York’s Gay Liberation Front, 1969-1971,” Radical
History Review 62 (1995): 104-34
Wini Breines, “The ‘Other’ Fifties: Beats and Bad Girls,” in Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver:
Women
and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), pp. 382-408
4/16 Pleasure and Danger
REQUIRED READING:
ASH, ch. 16, “Marketing Safe Sex”
WEEK 15

4/21 NO CLASS – WORK ON YOUR PAPER
4/23 Conclusion
In-class presentations
RESEARCH PAPER DUE