Queering the Color Line

Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture

Author: Siobhan B. Somerville
ISBN: 0822324431

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

Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: 2000

Subjects: Social Science / LGBT Studies / Gay Studies, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations, Social Science / Gender Studies

This book is available in the following Community Centers: LGBT Recource Center (Location: )