Sexual Borderlands: Constructing an American Sexual Past (Women & Health)

Since the 1980s, research in the history of sexuality has grown exponentially. Not surprisingly, this new research has made its way into the classroom. Professors across the country have struggled to integrate this often theoretically difficult and eclectic material into a coherent whole. Sexual Borderlands offers students accessible yet challenging essays that cover the subject's diversity, yet allows coherence in a field that often resists such attempts. It is organized around a potential course syllabus that allows students simultaneously to engage significant theoretical as well as empirical debates. Recent research in historical frontiers led Kennedy and Ullman to the theme of sexual borderlands, which links the history of sexuality to such broad concerns in U.S. history as state formation, colonialism, class and race, and modernization. The essays in this collection place sexuality at the center of these processes and demonstrate the importance of understanding sexuality in the narrative of U.S. history. The volume provides students and teachers the tools with which to explore relationships among cultures and individuals that have shaped American identity and society while investigating their own interests.