Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture (Series Q)
by Siobhan B. Somerville, Siobhan B. Somerville
List Price:
Our Price: $19.99
You Save: $2.96 (13%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $13.84 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Siobhan B. SomervilleEdition: Paperback
Published: 2000-12
ISBN: 0822324431
Number of pages: 259
Publisher: Duke University Press
Book Reviews of Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture (Series Q)
Book Review: Toward a history of sexuality AND race
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very inspiring book on historical relations between the formation of "homosexual/heterosexual" identities and the drawing of color line in American history, especially in the early Twentieth Century.
We know many books and articles on the invention of sexual identities and on the construction of racial distinctions. However, we hardly know about INTERACTIONS between these historical processes.
This book picks up pioneering sexologists, early cinemas, and African-American writers such as Pauline Hopkins, James Weldon Johnson, and Jean Toomer. It is not a comprehensive inquiry of race and sex in Twentieth-Century America, but makes great contributions to initiating studies on the interactive history of race and sexuality.
Summary of Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture (Series Q)
Queering the Color Line transforms previous understandings of how homosexuality was “invented” as a category of identity in the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing a range of sources, including sexology texts, early cinema, and African American literature, Siobhan B. Somerville argues that the emerging understanding of homosexuality depended on the context of the black/white “color line,” the dominant system of racial distinction during this period. This book thus critiques and revises tendencies to treat race and sexuality as unrelated categories of analysis, showing instead that race has historically been central to the cultural production of homosexuality.At about the same time that the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision hardened the racialized boundary between black and white, prominent trials were drawing the public’s attention to emerging categories of sexual identity. Somerville argues that these concurrent developments were not merely parallel but in fact inextricably interrelated and that the discourses of racial and sexual “deviance” were used to reinforce each other’s terms. She provides original readings of such texts as Havelock Ellis’s late nineteenth-century work on “sexual inversion,” the 1914 film A Florida Enchantment, the novels of Pauline E. Hopkins, James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, and Jean Toomer’s fiction and autobiographical writings, including Cane. Through her analyses of these texts and her archival research, Somerville contributes to the growing body of scholarship that focuses on discovering the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality.
Queering the Color Line will have broad appeal across disciplines including African American studies, gay and lesbian studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, cinema studies, and gender studies.
General Books
- History > Americas > United States > 19th Century
- 20th Century > General
- Gay & Lesbian > History
- Nonfiction
- Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > Sexuality > Human
- Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Cultural
- Discrimination & Racism
- Gender Studies
- Special Groups > Ethnic Studies
- Sociology > Culture
- Gay & Lesbian: Nonfiction: General
- Nonfiction: Social Sciences: Gender Studies: General
- Nonfiction: Social Sciences: Sociology: General
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Queer Theory
Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theoryby Stephen Barber
Routledge; Published: 2002-08-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.92
Price in other shops:
Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture (Series Q)by Siobhan B. Somerville, Siobhan B. Somerville
Duke University Press; Published: 2000-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops:
Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiographyby David M. Halperin
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1997-02-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.95
Price in other shops:
Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948-1963by Gavin Butt
Duke University Press; Published: 2005-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.25
Price in other shops:
Feminism Meets Queer Theory (Books from Differences)Indiana University Press; Published: 1997-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.00
Price in other shops:
Queer Theory: An Introductionby Annamarie Jagose
NYU Press; Published: 1997-02-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.95
Price in other shops:
A Critical Introduction to Queer Theoryby Nikki Sullivan
NYU Press; Published: 2003-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.11
Price in other shops:
Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France, 1974-1975 (Lectures at the College de France)by Michel Foucault
Picador; Published: 2003-12-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.92
Price in other shops:
Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violenceby Judith Butler
Verso; Published: 2004-05-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.95
Price in other shops:
Undoing Genderby Judith Butler
Routledge; Published: 2004-08-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.90
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desireby Katherine Frank, Katherine Frank
Duke University Press; Published: 2002-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.45
Price in other shops:
Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Centuryby Jeffrey P. Moran
Harvard University Press; Published: 2002-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.92
Price in other shops:
Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle Eastby Brian Whitaker
University of California Press; Published: 2006-11-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.25
Price in other shops:
Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racismby Patricia Hill Collins
Routledge; Published: 2005-07-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.73
Price in other shops:
No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Series Q)by Lee Edelman
Duke University Press; Published: 2004-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.83
Price in other shops:
The History of Sexuality: An Introductionby Michel Foucault
Vintage; Published: 1990-04-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Critical American Studies Series)by Roderick A. Ferguson
University of Minnesota Press; Published: 2003-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where "Black" Meets "Queer" (Series Q)by Kathryn Stockton, Kathryn Stockton
Duke University Press; Published: 2006-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.66
Price in other shops:
Black Queer Studies: A Critical AnthologyDuke University Press; Published: 2005-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $21.00
Price in other shops:
In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (Sexual Cultures)by Judith Halberstam
NYU Press; Published: 2005-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops: