An American Obsession – Science, Medicine & the Place of Homosexuality: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society - Hardcover

Terry, Jennifer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226793664 ISBN 13: 9780226793665

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0226793664
• ISBN 13: 9780226793665
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 416