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Sull'Autore

Thomas A. Foster is Professor of History at DePaul University. He is the editor of New Men: Manliness in Early America (NYU Press, 2011).

Opere di Thomas A. Foster

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male

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'Long Before Stonewall' may not be as comprehensive a history as I expected, but I found it full of insight on the subject of early American homosexuality and overturned many (well, all) of my assumptions on the subject.

Many of the essays were previously published as part of full-length books or in journals, but those written especially for the collection make an excellent effort to incorporate the other authors' research into their own, making it cohesive beyond the general subject. The variety of scholarship involved, too, helped keep the book level-minded, not focusing too much on one group of people or style of thought.

The essays are separated into four sections: 'Colonial Native Americas', 'Colonial British America', 'Romantic Bonds in the Early Republic', and 'Reformers in the New Nation'. These groupings help create a chronology of the adaption of attitudes towards homosexuality (or what we know refer to as homosexuality) going into the Victorian period.

The editor, Thomas A. Foster, acknowledges the unavoidable disproportionate attention towards those communities in Philadelphia and New England that left behind the most sources. There is so much that wasn't preserved in writing or the oral tradition, and so much that was purposely expunged.

I read this over such an extended period of time I cannot get into each essay, but there are highlights. The research into the court records of the Spanish and Puritans concerning sodomy by Tracy Brown and Richard Godbeer were particularly eye-opening. The fact that sodomy, which underwent many changes in definition, was a capital crime was known to me, what I didn't realize was what lengths were undergone to effectively prevent carrying out the sentence. The excerpts of court testimony brought out the humanity of the Puritans in a way nothing else has - especially since I'm now reading about the Salem witch trials. The Spanish didn't get off so lightly, but they get points for obsession. I also really enjoyed Caleb Crain's reading of three diaries of late 18th century Philadelphia gentleman and the complicated relationship they shared. He's put out a couple books that I will find.

LGBT studies is so sprawling, fragmentary and often conjectural that it is quite the feat to get anything together that approaches this level of thoroughness. From genteel erotic landscape poetry by proto-lesbians, to early treatment of hermaphrodites and problematic sexing, and abolitionist eroticizing of slaves, and the ever-popular homoerotic novel - this book touches on so many fields I'd have trouble finding someone who wouldn't find a part of this book pertinent to their interest. And once they're started, what's to stop them from reading the rest?
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ManWithAnAgenda | Feb 18, 2019 |
A bit repetitive, but overall an interesting study of male sexuality and its social contexts in eighteenth-century Massachusetts (and more broadly extensible at least to a certain extent). Limited in scope, but it seems to be well-researched.
 
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JBD1 | 2 altre recensioni | Feb 16, 2017 |
"If you want to actually know about the sex lives of the Founding Fathers, you're welcome to try to read between the lines of their correspondence and come to your own conclusions (inevitably colored by your own perceptions) just like every previous biographer has done as Foster points out"
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/2015/10/sex-and-founding-fathers-thomas-foste...… (altro)
½
 
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mongoosenamedt | 2 altre recensioni | Oct 28, 2015 |
Sex and the Founding Fathers does not directly deal with sex and the founding fathers, as you might expect. Instead the author examines how people have remembered the founding fathers and their sex lives throughout history. He argues that how we view the founding fathers says something about our values. We like to imagine that the founding fathers were paragons of virtue. How we remember them shows what we think an ideal American should be like.

I was quite excited to start this book. However, the book I expected was actually about the founding fathers, with commentary on their biographies on the side. I also expected some good narrative non-fiction from the parts describing the founding fathers. This book met neither of those expectations. Instead of talking directly about the founding fathers, the author only describes them through the medium of other biographies. At times, this degenerated into lists of quotes from other biographies, which could get quite dry. The organization was a bit iffy as well. Organizing by topic was a wise choice, but the author didn’t always stay on topic. He repeated himself quite a bit, both between topics and between founding fathers.

Despite the dry tone and disorienting organization, I still could have liked this book if the topic was handled well. However, the author is constantly making sweeping assertions about the type of biographies published at different times. He only supports these assertions with cherry picked examples. If he wants to make broad claims, he needs to support them with numbers. For instance, he claims that more biographies considered the possibility Washington was infertile once infertility became a prevalent social problem. In that case, a greater percentage of published biographies should begin to include that possibility. Just sharing a few examples of such biographies tells me nothing. Alternately, the author could have added scholarly acumen to his book by sharing the truth of the founding father’s lives, instead of just sharing what previous biographers have claimed. In the absence of any scholarly contribution, it’s hard to overlook the fact that this just wasn’t an entertaining read. I had high hopes for this book going in, but I find myself unable to recommend it.

This review first published on Doing Dewey.
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Segnalato
DoingDewey | 2 altre recensioni | Jun 29, 2014 |

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Statistiche

Opere
10
Utenti
238
Popolarità
#95,270
Voto
½ 3.3
Recensioni
7
ISBN
26

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