A Queer History of the United States

Informationen zum Autor Michael Bronski Klappentext Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction A Queer History of the United States is more than a "who's who" of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary-source documents, literature, and cultural histories, scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s. Leseprobe From Chapter 3: Imagining a Queer America Writing a New National Culture: The East Paradoxically, as westward expansion made the country geographically larger, new technologiesthe invention of the telegraph in the late 1830s, the growth of a national railway system, and the telephone in the 1870sfacilitated travel and communications, making the country smaller and more cohesive. In these conditions we see the eventual flourishing of a distinctly American intellectual and literary culture. Washington Irving's 1820 short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow promotes the ideal of robust, decidedly heterosexual masculinity, as embodied by Brom Bones Van Brunt, over that of the lanky, effeminized schoolteacher Ichabod Crane. Both men are courting young Katrina Van Tassel until Brom Bones frightens Crane out of town. Irving's gender and sexual message is clear. Crane's first name means inglorious in Hebrew, which Bible-literate contemporary readers would know. And as literary critic Caleb Crain points out, much of the action of the story takes place by Major Andre's tree. This is a reference to Major John Andre, the British officergenerally thought to be a lover of menwho collaborated with Benedict Arnold and was hanged by George Washington as a spy in 1780.7 For Irving, nearly four decades after the Revolution, the new, clearly heterosexual American man was an imperative. In contrast to Irving, also in 1820, nineteen-year-old Harvard student Ralph Waldo Emerson was writing entries in his journal about Martin Gay, a fellow student three years younger to whom he was attracted. Two years earlier, when he had first seen Gay, Emerson wrote: I begin to believe in the Indian doctrine of eye-fascination. The cold blue eye of [Emerson deleted the name here] has so intimately connected him to my thoughts & visions that a dozen times a day & as often . . . by night I have found myself wholly wrapped up in conjectures of his character and inclinations. . . . We have had already two or three profound stares at one another. Be it wise or weak or superstitious I must know him. Crain notes that Emerson's attraction to Gay was a form of the nineteenth-century ideal of sympathy. In this context, sympathy a form of empathy that, as Crain writes, allows us to feel emotions that are not oursis an expansive form of romantic friendship. The deeply felt connective emotion of sympathy allows one to not only value a friend for his or her emotional sincerity, but to take imaginative leaps toward understanding and sharing the emotions of another. This new understanding of the possibilities of shared emotion was likely inflected by the new America of wide-open western spaces, natural landscape, and the outlaw. In 1837 Emerson published Nature, an essay fundamental in defining transcendentalism: the distinctly American philosophy promoting individual spiritual transcendence through experiencing the material world, especially nature, rather than through organized religion. The next year, in his American Scholar speech, he urged his audience to rethink the idea of the American man (by which he meant humans) and to create an independent, original, and free national literature. Animated by the ideal of an expansive sympathy influenced by the naturalness of America, Emerson argued for an egalitarian society that values all...

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Michael Bronski

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Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction

A Queer History of the United States is more than a "who's who" of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary-source documents, literature, and cultural histories, scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s.

Résumé
Winner of the Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction

The first comprehensive history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender America, from pre-1492 to the present

"Readable, radical, and smart—a must read."—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

Intellectually dynamic and endlessly provocative, this is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a narrative that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary documents, literature, and cultural histories, scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the present, a testament to how the LGBTQ+ experience has profoundly shaped American culture and history.

American history abounds with unknown or ignored examples of queer life, from the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies to the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War and resistance to homophobic social purity movements. Bronski highlights such groundbreaking moments of queer history as:

• In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage.

•Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early 1800s, changed her name to "Publick Universal Friend," refused to use pronouns, fought for gender equality, and led her own congregation in upstate New York.

• In the mid-19th century, internationally famous Shakespearean actor Charlotte Cushman led an openly lesbian life, including a well-publicized “female marriage.”

• in the late 1920s, Augustus Granville Dill was fired by W. E. B. Du Bois from the NAACP’s magazine the Crisis after being arrested for a homosexual encounter.

Informative and empowering, this engrossing and revelatory treatise emphasizes that there is no American history without queer history.

Échantillon de lecture
**From Chapter 3: Imagining a Queer America
 
Writing a New National Culture: The East
 
Paradoxically, as westward expansion made the country geographically larger, new technologies—the invention of the telegraph in the late 1830s, the growth of a national railway system, and the telephone in the 1870s—facilitated travel and communications, making the country smaller and more cohesive. In these conditions we see the eventual flourishing of a distinctly American intellectual and literary culture. Washington Irving’s 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” promotes the ideal of robust, decidedly heterosexual masculinity, as embodied by “Brom Bones” Van Brunt, over that of the lanky, effeminized schoolteacher Ichabod Crane. Both men are courting young Katrina Van Tassel until Brom Bones frightens Crane out of town. Irving’s gender and sexual message is clear. Crane’s first name means “inglorious” in Hebrew, which Bible-literate contemporary readers would know. And as literary critic Caleb Crain points out, much of the action of the story takes place by “Major Andre’s tree.” This is a reference to Major John Andre, the British officer—generally thought to be a lover of men—who collaborated with Benedict Arnold and was hanged by George Washington as a spy in 1780.7 For Irving, nearly four decades after the Revolution, the new, clearly heterosexual American man was an imperative.
 
In contrast to Irving, also in 1820, nineteen-year-old Harvard student Ralph Waldo Emerson was writing entri…