Synopses & Reviews
"This assortment of touching, hilarious, and very smart essays moves lesbian and gay history to a new place, geographically and analytically. Ranging widely from deep South to upper South, from rural areas to urban centers, across differences of race class and gender, the authors explore the intersecting meanings of southernness and sexuality with attention to the widest angles of vision, and to the telling details of daily experience."
Lisa Duggan
coauthor with Nan D. Hunter of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture
To date, lesbian and gay history has focused largely on the East and West coasts, and on urban settings such as New York and San Francisco. The American South, on the other hand, identified with religion, traditional gender roles, and cultural conservatism, has escaped attention. Southerners celebrate their past; lesbians and gays celebrate their new-found visibility; historians celebrate the Southyet rarely have the three crossed paths.
John Howard's groundbreaking anthology casts its net widely, examining lesbian and gay experiences in Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee. James Schnur, by virtue of a Freedom of Information Act query, sheds light on the sinister machinations of the Johns Committee, whose clandestine duty it was to ferret out suspected homosexuals during the McCarthy years. In his essay on the great Southern writer William Alexander Percy, William Armstrong Percy provides tangible evidence that Southern citizens, historians, and archivists have long sought to repress or obscure certain individuals within what C. Vann Woodward described as the perverse section. Moving chronologically through America's past, from the antebellum and postbellum periods, through the Jim Crow era and the Cold War, to the present, this volume introduces an important new framework to the field of lesbian and gay historythat of regional history.
Review
"This assortment of touching, hilarious, and very smart essays moves lesbian and gay history to a new place, geographically and analytically. Ranging widely from deep South to upper South, from rural areas to urban centers, across differences of race class and gender, the authors explore the intersecting meanings of southernness and sexuality with attention to the widest angles of vision, and to the telling details of daily experience."-Lisa Duggan,coauthor with Nan D. Hunter of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture
Synopsis
To date, lesbian and gay history has focused largely on the East and West coasts, and on urban settings such as New York and San Francisco. The American South, on the other hand, identified with religion, traditional gender roles, and cultural conservatism, has escaped attention. Southerners celebrate their past; lesbians and gays celebrate their new-found visibility; historians celebrate the Southyet rarely have the three crossed paths.
John Howard's groundbreaking anthology casts its net widely, examining lesbian and gay experiences in Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee. James Schnur, by virtue of a Freedom of Information Act query, sheds light on the sinister machinations of the Johns Committee, whose clandestine duty it was to ferret out suspected homosexuals during the McCarthy years. In his essay on the great Southern writer William Alexander Percy, William Armstrong Percy provides tangible evidence that Southern citizens, historians, and archivists have long sought to repress or obscure certain individuals within what C. Vann Woodward described as the perverse section. Moving chronologically through America's past, from the antebellum and postbellum periods, through the Jim Crow era and the Cold War, to the present, this volume introduces an important new framework to the field of lesbian and gay historythat of regional history.
Synopsis
This Major Reference series brings together a wide range of key international articles in law and legal theory. Many of these essays are not readily accessible, and their presentation in these volumes will provide a vital new resource for both research and teaching. Each volume is edited by leading international authorities who explain the significance and context of articles in an informative and complete introduction.
About the Author
Senior associate editor of Southern Historian and a native Southerner, John Howard is Director of the Center for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Life and Visiting Instructor of History at Duke University.
Table of Contents
Introduction : carryin' on the lesbian and gay South / John Howard -- "Writhing bedfellows" in Antebellum South Carolina : historical interpretation and the politics of evidence / Martin Duberman -- "Only a woman like yourself" : Rebecca Alice Baldy : dutiful daughter, stalwart sister, and lesbian lover of nineteenth-century Georgia / Elizabeth W. Knowlton -- Sex, smashing, and storyville in turn-of-the-century New Orleans : reexamining the continuum of lesbian sexuality / Katy Coyle and Nadiene Van Dyke -- William Alexander Percy (1885-1942) : his homosexuality and why it matters / William Armstrong Percy III -- Personalizing the political, politicizing the personal : reflections on editing the letters of Lillian Smith / Margaret Rose Gladney -- The library, the park, and the pervert : public space and homosexual encounter in post-World War II Atlanta / John Howard -- Closet crusaders : the Johns Comittee and homophobia, 1956-1965 / James A. Schnur -- Race, class, gender, and sexuality in pre-Stonewall Charleston : perspectives on the Gordon Langley Hall affair / James T. Sears -- Softball and alcohol : the limits of lesbian community in Memphis from the 1940s through the 1960s / Daneel Buring -- Louisville's lesbian feminist union : a study in community building / Kathie D. Williams -- "Women ran it" : Charis Books and more and Atlanta's lesbian-feminist community, 1971-1981 / Saralyn Chesnut and Amanda C. Gable -- Post-lesbian-feminism : documenting "those cruddy old dykes of yore" / 'Becca Cragin -- Dateline Atlanta : place and the social construction of AIDS / Meredith Raimondo -- Queering the South : constructions of Southern/queer identity / Donna Jo Smith.