This essay focuses on a sex scandal surrounding the only known instance in the early U.S. of a clergyman accused of making same-sex sexual advances. The scandal points to the contested meanings of Christian manliness and the gendered construction of male networks of gossip, sex talk, and sex reform, and addresses the crucial historical question of how to distinguish among intimacy, love, spirituality, and sexual desire.
History of Women and Gender
Join us for an in-depth exploration of cutting-edge scholarship.
The Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender invites scholars and students to meet periodically and discuss new research. Sessions may consider any aspect of the history of women and gender without chronological limitations. A collaboration of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and the Massachusetts Historical Society, the seminar meets in turn at the facilities of the two sponsors.
Seminar meetings revolve around the discussion of a precirculated paper. Sessions open with remarks from the essayist and an assigned commentator, after which the discussion is opened to the floor. After each session, the Society serves a light buffet supper.
History of Women and Gender Seminar
Male Same-Sex Intimacy and a Clergy Sex Scandal in Early 19th-Century New England
18 October 2012. Thursday, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
Location: Schlesinger Library
Bruce Dorsey, Swarthmore College
Comment: Aaron S. Lecklider, University of Massachusetts—Boston
This essay explores the contested meanings of Christian manliness and male intimacy, and the gendered construction of male networks of gossip and sex reform, during an antebellum clergy sex scandal involving same-sex sexual advances toward men.
details
History of Women and Gender Seminar
The Origins of the Domestic Worker Rights Movement
6 December 2012. Thursday, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
Premilla Nadasen, Queens College
Comment: Ruth Milkman, City University of New York and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
This seminar paper is part of a book-length project. It follows four women in particular, Geraldine Roberts, Mary McClendon, Geraldine Miller, and Dorothy Bolden, to examine how and why they launched local campaigns for the rights of domestic workers.
details
History of Women and Gender Seminar
Quotidian Erasures: Gender and the Logic of the Early Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
7 February 2013. Thursday, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
Location: Schlesinger Library
Jennifer Morgan, New York University
Comment: Linda Heywood, Boston University
This seminar paper argues that demography is central to the ways in which enslaved African women both emerge from and are made invisible by the mechanisms of the slave trade.
details
History of Women and Gender Seminar
Panel Discussion: The Big Tent of U.S. Women’s and Gender History: A State of the Field
18 April 2013. Thursday, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
Essayists: Cornelia H. Dayton, University of Connecticut, and Lisa Levenstein, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Panelists: Crystal Feimster, Yale University, Jane Gerhard, Mount Holyoke College, and Betsy More, Harvard University
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More events
18 October 2012
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
History of Women and Gender Seminar
Male Same-Sex Intimacy and a Clergy Sex Scandal in Early 19th-Century New England
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: Schlesinger Library
Bruce Dorsey, Swarthmore College
Comment: Aaron S. Lecklider, University of Massachusetts—Boston
6 December 2012
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
History of Women and Gender Seminar
The Origins of the Domestic Worker Rights Movement
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Premilla Nadasen, Queens College
Comment: Ruth Milkman, City University of New York and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
This seminar paper is part of a book-length project. It follows four women in particular, Geraldine Roberts, Mary McClendon, Geraldine Miller, and Dorothy Bolden, to examine how and why they launched local campaigns for the rights of domestic workers.
7 February 2013
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
History of Women and Gender Seminar
Quotidian Erasures: Gender and the Logic of the Early Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location: Schlesinger Library
Jennifer Morgan, New York University
Comment: Linda Heywood, Boston University
This seminar paper argues that demography is central to the ways in which enslaved African women both emerge from and are made invisible by the mechanisms of the slave trade. Demography is evidence, but it is also a critical problem of early modern ideology—as is what the gathering of demographic evidence meant to those who were collecting it and being collected.
18 April 2013
Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required.
History of Women and Gender Seminar
View manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts from the Society's collections related to the Abolitionist movement in Boston.
Forever Free features the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Visitors can learn how the MHS acquired this extraordinary pen as well as view paintings, broadsides, engravings, and manuscripts that tell the story of how Boston celebrated Emancipation.
View documents and artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln.
In Death Lamented features rings, bracelets, brooches, and other pieces of mourning jewelry from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, ranging from early gold bands with death’s head iconography to jeweled brooches and intricately woven hairwork pieces of the Civil War era.
