
eBook - PDF
An American Obsession
Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
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.
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Yes, you can access An American Obsession by Jennifer Terry in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & LGBT Studies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Publisher
University of Chicago PressYear
2010Print ISBN
9780226793672, 9780226793665eBook ISBN
9780226793689Table of contents
- 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