The Straight State:
Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
Margot Canaday

Book Description | Table of Contents
Introduction [in PDF format]

ADDITIONAL ENDORSEMENTS:

"A groundbreaking study that wholly revises our understanding of sexuality, citizenship, and the state. Canaday asks how and why the emerging federal bureaucracy came to define, regulate, and exclude gay men and lesbians, and her answers take us into the inner workings of the state's policing machinery. This is an important book."--Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States

"In this brilliant retelling of the making of American citizenship, Margot Canaday links changing understandings of national identity to changing understandings of sexuality. Her indefatigable research and wise analysis demonstrate that political judgments about immigration, military service, and welfare have been soaked with judgments about what counts as normal--or 'degenerate'--sex. The history of federal bureaucracy is suddenly a page-turner."--Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship

"This is a terrific, complex, highly original, revelatory book. Canaday very effectively argues that the powers of the federal state and the definition of 'a homosexual' as a person grew up in dynamic relation to one another in the first half of the twentieth century. Every chapter contains fascinating new material, superbly shaped to advance her narrative. I am sure this will be an influential book."--Nancy F. Cott, author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation

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File created: 11/5/2009

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