A collection of notes, titles, citations, thoughts, images, acknowledgements, etc. relating to a senior thesis on the intellectual history of male homosexuality in the 19th century.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
New, revised, current conceptual plan
About which I’m wildly enthusiastic:
Organizing the project into chapters centered on case studies which each illustrate a different facet or theme relating to my general thesis that class relations—and in particular an upper-class/intellectual/educated privilege—defined and shaped early understandings of a sexual-object-choice model of understanding male homosexuality, and led in part to that model’s widespread adoption and credence long before gay liberation
Some possibilities:
* Symonds’ memoirs: hellenism, classicism, oxford
Regy Brett’s journals; possibly Wilde stuff?; totally Stoddard esp. when he’s in Europe with Millet he’s TOTALLY hellenistic S.O.C.
Symonds is the best way to demonstrate use of classicism to construct a model of understanding himself; how others like Brett/Johnson and whoever responded to him demonstrates that the idea had wide appeal
Albert Dodd demonstrates all this was in the air before Symonds, but Symonds sort of canonized it
* Sins of the Cities of the Plain: a strategy of justifying perversion by writing it down AND an S.O.C. approach to doing so; Saul’s position outside the class structure BUT the possibility of exploitation
* Exploitation/fetishization of WC: LOTS here—Carpenter, possibly; Whitman (Fred Vaughan, Harry Stafford); Stoddard whose fetishization of “savagery” is another side to this which dives headlong into racism
* Cleveland St (and the radical papers): class conflict/resentment in an urban setting—the downside and real problems with this UC exploitation stuff
Outstanding issues to work in somehow:
What the hell is with Earl Lind? Who he? Where his memoirs/journals/things?
The politics of Calamus/Leaves of Grass/”Democratic Vistas,” and the identity-politics battle W. has with S.
The large questions that I am unsure about (and need an advisor for):
Is this a go without a lot of original research? (I will go to archives to look at sources which have been quoted in part and not published, but likely won’t be making any new discoveries; this is an interpretive thesis)
Is this really a history thesis, not a literary one?
Thoughts?
