A few points we mentioned today may be reiterated. Back to my reference about Abraham Lincoln. During the Victorian Era, the actions and syntax of male companionship had much higher thresholds in order to cross into homosexual territory. This ideology even draws comparisons with the homoerotic relationship between Chillingworth and Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. […]
After reading all the historical documents and essays, what struck me the most was that I never learned about or heard of the Postal Act/Comstock Act or Anthony Comstock in any American history class let alone anything about the Free Lovers and other prominent figures and ideologies in this particular historical moment. A quick skim […]
At the end of our discussion last week, Professor Quinby prompted us to think about how Foucault’s notion of the deployment of sexuality shows up in our readings. I want to focus primarily on this weeks essays as I found them really interesting and a good springboard for discussion about the Scarlet Letter in class. […]
In the time periods explored by Foucault in Parts 1-3 of The History of Sexuality, what was constituted as socially acceptable sexual discourse was anything that would hit close to the bullseye, but not directly on it. It had become an art of verbal communication, and maybe even a gender competition about who could tickle the […]
