 | |
| Author | Joanne Passet |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biography |
| Publisher | Da Capo Press |
Publication date | 2008 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 353 |
| ISBN | 978-0-7867-1822-1 |
Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster is a biography of Jeannette Howard Foster, a pioneer in lesbian studies, by American historian Joanne Passet. It was published in 2008 by Da Capo Press. [1] The book includes a foreword by Lillian Faderman. [2]
In a review for The American Historical Review , Leila J. Rupp wrote: "This is a fascinating story of an extraordinary woman in lesbian history. Passet clearly admires her subject, even though she notes the racism and snobbishness that was part of her background." [1] Martha Vicinus' review for The Women's Review of Books said: "I admire Passet's thorough research, but I wish she had taken a step back to focus on the ways in which Foster's life was both exceptional and representative of the generation of lesbians between the new women of the 1920s and the gay liberationists of the 1970s." [3] Publishers Weekly found it ironic that the book devotes more attention to Foster's personal life than her professional achievements. Nonetheless, the review concluded that "Passet does justice to Foster's important place in both literary and lesbian culture." [4]
A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction. The concept of "lesbian" to differentiate women with a shared sexual orientation evolved in the 20th century. Throughout history, women have not had the same freedom or independence as men to pursue homosexual relationships, but neither have they met the same harsh punishment as gay men in some societies. Instead, lesbian relationships have often been regarded as harmless, unless a participant attempts to assert privileges traditionally enjoyed by men. As a result, little in history was documented to give an accurate description of how female homosexuality was expressed. When early sexologists in the late 19th century began to categorize and describe homosexual behavior, hampered by a lack of knowledge about homosexuality or women's sexuality, they distinguished lesbians as women who did not adhere to female gender roles. They classified them as mentally ill—a designation which has been reversed since the late 20th century in the global scientific community.
Martha Moore Ballard was an American midwife and healer. Unusual for the time, Ballard kept a diary with thousands of entries over nearly three decades, which has provided historians with invaluable insight into colonial frontier-women's lives.
Lesbianism is the sexual and romantic desire between women. There are historically fewer mentions of lesbianism than male homosexuality, due to many historical writings and records focusing primarily on men.
Leila J. Rupp is an American historian, feminist, and professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College, a member of the Seven Sisters women's colleges, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1972 as well as Ph.D. in 1976, both in history. Her areas of interest include women's movements, sexuality, and LGBT and women's history.
Barbara Grier was an American writer and publisher. She is credited for having built the lesbian book industry. After editing The Ladder magazine, published by the lesbian civil rights group Daughters of Bilitis, she co-founded a lesbian book-publishing company Naiad Press, which achieved publicity and became the world's largest publisher of lesbian books. She built a major collection of lesbian literature, catalogued with detailed indexing of topics.
Judith C. Brown is an American historian and a Professor Emerita of History at Wesleyan University. A specialist on the Italian Renaissance, she is considered a pioneer in the study of the history of sexuality whose work explored the earliest recorded examples of lesbian relationships in European history.
Jeannette Howard Foster was an American librarian, professor, poet, and researcher in the field of lesbian literature. She pioneered the study of popular fiction and ephemera in order to excavate both overt and covert lesbian themes. Her years of pioneering data collection culminated in her 1957 study Sex Variant Women in Literature, which has become a seminal resource in LGBT studies. Initially self-published by Foster via Vantage Press, it was photoduplicated and reissued in 1975 by Diana Press and reissued in 1985 by Naiad Press with updating additions and commentary by Barbara Grier.
Lois Waisbrooker was an American feminist author, editor, publisher, and campaigner of the later nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. She wrote extensively on issues of sex, marriage, birth control, and women's rights, plus related areas of radical thought like free speech, anarchism and spiritualism. She is perhaps best remembered for her 1893 novel A Sex Revolution.
Martha Vicinus is an American scholar of English literature and Women's studies. She serves as the Eliza M. Mosher Distinguished University Professor of English, Women's Studies, and History at the University of Michigan. Prior to coming to the University of Michigan, Vicinus was a faculty member in the English Department at Indiana University from 1968 to 1982. She has written several books about Victorian women as well as gender and sexuality. She earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1968.
OutHistory.org is a public website about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and heterosexual history, with a non-exclusive focus on the US and Canada. Historians contributing to the site are especially interested in documenting under-represented histories and fostering historical research that contributes to positive social change. The site features digital exhibitions on various topics of LGBTQ+ history, built from primary sources and contextualized by brief texts written by guest scholars, who have curated each exhibition. A “bookshelf” features books written by historians on LGBTQ+ topics. OutHistory is increasingly being used by teachers to introduce students to primary sources and historical analysis relating to the LGBTQ+ past.
Lisa L. Moore is a Canadian–American academic and poet. She earned a B.A. in English with honors at Queen's University in 1986, and then completed her doctorate at Cornell University in 1991. Principal themes in Moore’s work include the centrality of love between women to literary genres such as the novel, the landscape arts, and the sonnet; the transatlantic and multi-racial history of feminist art and thinking; and the importance of poetry to second-wave feminist, womanist, and lesbian cultures and politics.
Clara Louise Thompson (1884–?) was an American educator, Latinist, activist, feminist, and suffragette. She is the only woman to be awarded the American Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome.
Science Hill School, originally known as the Science Hill Female Academy was founded on March 25, 1825, by Julia A. Tevis as a female preparatory school. In 1975 the school was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1978, it was opened as a restaurant known as the Science Hill Inn by Donna Gill and Tim Barnes.
Lillian Susan Harman-O'Brien was an American sex radical feminist and editor. Her father Moses Harman edited Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, a regional, weekly paper that introduced her to issues of women's sexual freedom. She became a national icon for that cause following her "free marriage", which took place outside state and church recognition, and her subsequent imprisonment. Upon her release, Harman edited multiple publications, including an anarchist periodical with her husband. Her work culminated with her being named president of a British organization that campaigned to legitimize non-marital sex. Her first child was born under a contract that stipulated the father's responsibilities in supporting the daughter. She moved from Kansas to Chicago, remarried, and had a son. Little is known about her life following the death of her father in 1910.
Fedwa Malti-Douglas is a Lebanese-American professor and writer. She is a professor emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington. Malti-Douglas has written several books, including The Starr Report Disrobed (2000). She received a National Humanities Medal in 2015.
Verta Ann Taylor is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with focuses on gender, sexuality, social movements, and women's health.
Arlene A. Halko was an American medical physicist and gay rights advocate, based in Chicago. She was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 1996.
Joanne Passet is an American historian, teacher, librarian, and writer. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Indiana, where she taught history, and previously, library and information science. She has two doctorates, and is best known for two biographies, one of publisher Barbara Grier, and the other, of writer Jeannette Howard Foster, both of which were finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography in 2017 and 2008 respectively. She has won several awards during her career, including a Fulbright Scholarship and an award from the American Library Association.
Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey is a 1956 study written by Jeannette Howard Foster chronicling approximately 2,600 years of female same-sex attraction in literature, beginning with Sappho's works in 6th century BC and ending with Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt in 1952.
Addie Brown was an American working-class free Black woman, who worked in various New England towns and wrote of her difficulties to earn a living. Her letters depict not only the racism and sexism faced by Northern Black women, but also her struggles with education, her awareness of politics, and her romantic friendship with Rebecca Primus. An acute observer, she provided through her letters perspective on the lives of working-class people in the nineteenth century, as well as on women's intimate relationships.
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