Main Focus
General topics of interest include:
- Sexual Desire
- Sexual Difference
- Same-Sex Attraction
- Psychoanalysis
- Material Culture and the Built Environment
- Theater and Dramaturgy
- Sound and Music
- American History
- Critical Theory and Philosophy of History
- Aesthetics
Curriculum Vitae
PhD, American Studies, Yale University (2017)
- Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
- Dissertation: The Forgotten Union of the Two Henrys: A History of the "Peculiar and Rarest Intimacy" of the American Civil War
MA, American Studies, Yale University (2012)
MPhil, American Studies, Yale University (2012)
BA, Dartmouth College (2007)
- Senior Fellow (In lieu of a major, Senior Fellowships are awarded for projects “with an intellectual scope and breadth of imagination beyond the existing curriculum.")
- Thesis: Better Safe Than Gay: How the Imperative to “Be Safe” Has Increased the Danger of Being Gay
Project
The Forgotten Union of the Two Henrys: A History of the “Peculiar and Rarest Intimacy” of the American Civil War
Selected Literature
Books
- 2013: “You Can Tell Just By Looking”: And 20 Other Myths about LGBT Life and People, co-authored with Michael Bronski and Ann Pellegrini, Boston: Beacon Press
* Finalist for 2013 Lambda Literary Awards, LGBT Nonfiction
* Starred Publishers Weekly review
* Excerpted in The Nation, Slate, Salon, Huffington Post, and Religion Dispatches
Articles
- 2017: “The Pulpit of Henry Trumbull,” Experience, Edited by Alexander Nemerov, Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, pp. 78-98
- 2011: “James Mars,” “Prudence Crandall,” and “Marian Anderson,” historical meditations on sites along the Connecticut Freedom Trail, “Freedom’s Journey: Poems and Meditations on African American Legacies in Connecticut," Curated by Laura Wexler and Elizabeth Alexander, a project of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, privately printed
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2006: “Whorified Virgins: Gay Youth and Sex,” Sex Matters: The Sexuality and Society Reader, 2nd Edition, Edited by Mindy Stombler, et. al. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, pp. 212-216
Book Reviews/Essays
- 2018: "Melodrama and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage: How what we think is at the mercy of how we feel," including review of Accidental Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and Their Fight for Marriage Equality in Texas by David Collins, The Common Reader
- 2017: "Abraham Lincoln’s Best Friend: President Lincoln’s remarkable male friendship and the boundaries of 19th-century sex," including review of Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed by Charles Strozier, The Common Reader
- 2017: "Gay Liberation as the Quest For Community: A new book provides a different take on gay American history," including review of Stand By Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation by Jim Downs, The Common Reader
- 2010: Review of Metropolitan Lovers: The Homosexuality of Cities by Julie Abraham, Lambda Literary Review
- 2010: Review of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century by Kathryn Bond Stockton, Lambda Literary Review
Listen to my interviews of authors of new books in many of the above research areas, part of the New Books Network of podcasts.
And check out a special podcast I co-wrote and co-produced for C19 (The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists), "Networked Connections: Exploring Emily Dickinson in 1862," in which we integrated found texts and sound (the human voice, ambient noise, processed sound, silence) to explore how meanings and feelings stick to sound, and how sound can change them.