- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press (10 Dec 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0226793672
- ISBN-13: 978-0226793672
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.3 x 3.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,865,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
An American Obsession
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Product Description
Product Description
Drawing on research from medical texts, psychiatric case histories, pioneering statistical surveys, first-person accounts, legal cases, sensationalist journalism and legislative debates, this text is a 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. The overarching argument is that homosexuality served as a marker of the "abnormal" against which malleable, tenuous and often contradictory concepts of the "normal" were defined. The book takes into consideration homosexuality in both women and men and refuses to erase the agency of people classified as abnormal. It documents the ways that gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities have co-authored, resisted and transformed the most powerful and authoritative modern truths about sex.
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First Sentence
When they first appeared in the late nineteenth century, scientific writings on homosexuality offered meditations on the complex nature of sexuality in modernity and especially on the myriad social disruptions and cultural transformations with which modernity came to be associated. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
When they first appeared in the late nineteenth century, scientific writings on homosexuality offered meditations on the complex nature of sexuality in modernity and especially on the myriad social disruptions and cultural transformations with which modernity came to be associated. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Publishers Weekly review (October 11, 1999), 3 Feb 2000
By Paul Robinson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: An American Obsession: Science, Medicine and the Place of Homosexuality in Modern Society (Paperback)
From Publishers Weekly (October 11, 1999) In this persuasively argued social history, Terry, an associate professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University, contends that homosexuality "has acquired a symbolic centrality in American culture" as a dominant marker between the "normal" and the "abnormal" across a diverse range of disciplines and milieus. Drawing upon a wide range of materials - from personal memoirs to legal cases, yellow journalism, pulp fiction, religious writings, psychology texts and "scientific" studies (which prove to be not all that scientific) - Terry demonstrates how, over the past 100 years, theories about the causes, nature and possible "cure" for homosexuality have focused far more on notions of sexuality, sin, gender and "social good" than on homosexuality itself. Analyzing the work of such 19th-century sexologists as Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis, she illustrates how their naïve, often contradictory theories became so influential that they still inform contemporary thought, including "gay gene" studies and the religious beliefs and rhetoric of the Christian right. While her broad survey is vital to the book, Terry's real strength is her detailed explorations of individual groups - such as the Committee for the study of Sex Variants, a multidisciplinary group of physicians and scientists who, in 1935, attempted to understand the "problem" of homosexuality on a scientific basis - and events, such as the harsh religious, psychoanalytic and cultural backlash against Kinsey's work in the early 1950s. Her exhaustively researched, astute synthesis is not only an original and important contribution to lesbian and gay studies, but sheds new light on the sociology of American life and the history of science. Copyright Publishers Weekly. All rights reserved.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Joanne Meyerowitz, editor of Not June Cleaver, 3 Feb 2000
By Paul Robinson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: An American Obsession: Science, Medicine and the Place of Homosexuality in Modern Society (Paperback)
"Jennifer Terry's engaging book provides a sweeping overview of American scientific thought on homosexuality. No one else has provided the depth of analysis or the breadth of coverage offered here. Terry makes a compelling argument: Homosexuality served as a marker of the `abnormal' by which the `normal' was defined."
3.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Kindle version, 24 Dec 2011
By J. Fried "Beware Abstractions" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society: Science, Medicine and the Place of Homosexuality in Modern Society (Kindle Edition)
This is a review of the Kindle version of this book. I've not completed reading it yet, so this review will be limited to my concerns about the book's appearance and usability on the Kindle. A later addition to this review will cover the content of the book.I am disappointed with the Kindle version of this book. The fonts look very poor. One of the reasons that many of us purchase Kindle versions of books is to provide us with good typeface presentation to make it easier to read as well as control over the presentation, ie., choice of typeface, line spacing, etc., in order to ensure consistency of presentation that is required by those of us with reading difficulties. So, in this case i've lost both the controls and the font face provided really looks like a poor photo copy. My second concern is that the footnotes are not actually active. With Kindle, or any ebook for that matter, you expect to be able to click on footnote numbers so that you can be taken to the actual footnote which is located elsewhere in the book. With a book like this easy access to the footnotes is very important in that it allows for an easy reading flow. For this book the footnotes are merely text so that if you want to read the footnote you have to search through the book, there is no index to the footnotes, to find the footnote.
Given that the price difference between the Kindle and print versions is very little, and that the price of the book is expensive when compared to other Kindle books of a technical nature, i am very disappointed. I appreciate the rave reviews others have given this book, but their reviews are about the content rather than the presentation. I feel that my 3-star rating is actually rather high given the poor quality of the Kindle version.
My review of the content will follow once i've completed reading the entire book, which will be a while given the quality of the Kindle edition presentation.
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