Johns Hopkins University Press
Sexual Revolution in Early America
Key Metrics
- Richard Godbeer
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Paperback
- 9780801878916
- 8.9 X 5.94 X 1.16 inches
- 1.3 pounds
- History > United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775)
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman traveling through New York, found it appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married and that no one viewed ante-nuptial fornication as anything scandalous or sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a stage of debauchery in which polygamy was very common, concubinage general, and bastardy no disrepute. These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict the stereotype of Puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular imagination.
In Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer boldly overturns conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial Americans. His eye-opening historical account spans two centuries and most of British North America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawing on exhaustive research into diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records and official documents, Godbeer's absorbing narrative uncovers a persistent struggle between the moral authorities and the widespread expression of popular customs and individual urges.
Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans had toward sexuality. For example, although believing that sex could be morally corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied conjugal fellowship to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and class affected the debate about sexual mores, from anxieties about Anglo-Indian sexual relations to the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over their African slaves. He concludes by detailing the fundamental shift in sexual culture during the eighteenth century towards the acceptance of a more individualistic concept of sexual desire and fulfillment. Today's moral critics, in their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual consequences of unregulated sexual behavior, often harken back to a more innocent age; as this groundbreaking work makes clear, America's sexual culture has always been rich, vibrant, and contentious.
Author Bio
Dr. Godbeer joined KU on July 1, 2019. He received his B.A. from Oxford University in 1984 and his Ph.D from Brandeis University in 1989. He taught in the Department of History at the University of California, Riverside, from 1989 to 2004 and in the Department of History at the University of Miami from 2004 to 2014; he served as founding Director of the Humanities Research Center at Virginia Commonwealth University from 2014 to 2019.
His research focuses on witchcraft, religious culture, gender, and sexuality in colonial and revolutionary North America.
Dr. Godbeer is the author of six books: The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge University Press, 1992), Sexual Revolution in Early America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 (Oxford University Press, 2004), The Overflowing of Friendship: Love between Men and the Creation of the American Republic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), The Salem Witch Hunt: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martins, 2011), and World of Trouble: A Philadelphia Quaker Family's Journey Through the American Revolution (forthcoming from Yale University Press in Fall 2019).
Dr. Godbeer is currently working on two book projects, Performing Patriarchy: What Gender Meant in Early America and The Empire of Topsy-Turvy, which will tell the story of the partnership between composer Arthur Sullivan, dramatist W.S. Gilbert, and theatre impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, who together dominated the late Victorian theatre in England and produced a string of famous comic operas, including The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance.
Dr. Godbeer has been awarded research grants and fellowships by a range of institutions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. He has taught a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses on the colonial and revolutionary periods, including the first half of the U.S. survey, Images of a New World, Witchcraft in Early America, Religious Culture in Early America, Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in Early America, The American Revolution, and U.S. LGBTQ History.
Source: The University of Kansas
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