An American Obsession
Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society
University of Chicago Press, 1999
Cloth: 978-0-226-79366-5 | Paper: 978-0-226-79367-2 | Electronic: 978-0-226-79368-9
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793689.001.0001
Cloth: 978-0-226-79366-5 | Paper: 978-0-226-79367-2 | Electronic: 978-0-226-79368-9
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793689.001.0001
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ABOUT THIS BOOKTABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Drawing on original research from medical texts, psychiatric case histories, pioneering statistical surveys, first-person accounts, legal cases, sensationalist journalism, and legislative debates, Jennifer Terry has written a nuanced and textured history of how the century-old obsession with homosexuality is deeply tied to changing American anxieties about social and sexual order in the modern age.
Terry's overarching argument is compelling: that homosexuality served as a marker of the "abnormal" against which malleable, tenuous, and often contradictory concepts of the "normal" were defined. One of the few histories to take into consideration homosexuality in both women and men, Terry's work also stands out in its refusal to erase the agency of people classified as abnormal. She documents the myriad ways that gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities have coauthored, resisted, and transformed the most powerful and authoritative modern truths about sex. Proposing this history as a "useable past," An American Obsession is an indispensable contribution to the study of American cultural history.
Terry's overarching argument is compelling: that homosexuality served as a marker of the "abnormal" against which malleable, tenuous, and often contradictory concepts of the "normal" were defined. One of the few histories to take into consideration homosexuality in both women and men, Terry's work also stands out in its refusal to erase the agency of people classified as abnormal. She documents the myriad ways that gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities have coauthored, resisted, and transformed the most powerful and authoritative modern truths about sex. Proposing this history as a "useable past," An American Obsession is an indispensable contribution to the study of American cultural history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Modernity and the Vexing Presence of Homosexuals
2 Medicalizing Homosexuality
3 The United States of Perversion
4 Progressive Science in Search of Sexual Normality
5 Fluid Sexes
6 The Committee for the Study of Sex Variants
7 Sex Variant Subjects
8 Policing Homosexuality
9 Disease or Way of Life?
10 Parents, Strangers, and Other Dangers
11 Fear of a World Conspiracy
12 Discerning Allies and Enemies
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index