Long Before Foucault
This article is only a portion of the full article. If you are already a premium subscriber please login. If you are not a premium subscriber, please subscribe for access to all of our content.

Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America
Edited by Thomas A. Foster
New York University Press. 405 pages, $25.

IN 1976, Jonathan Katz published one of the first comprehensive histories of same-sex sexuality in the United States. His Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. is credited with legitimating gay history as a viable subject for academic inquiry and providing a necessary starting point for this emerging field of study. Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America, contributes to and complicates this field considerably. Thomas A. Foster’s new anthology tackles a number of subjects not covered in previous works, collecting fourteen essays on subjects ranging from Spanish and Pueblo perceptions of same-sex sexuality in Colonial New Mexico to homoerotic depictions of the black male body in the early years of the Republic.