September 25, 2009
John Adams and Masculine Sexual Identity
Thomas A. Foster, DePaul University
Commentator: John D'Emilio, University of Illinois at Chicago

In August 1776 John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that he had proposed that the image for the seal of the new nation be the “Choice of Hercules.” Referencing the classical allegory of choosing virtue over vice, Adams selected a particularly masculine, heroic figure to represent public and private virtue. For him, the image captured both the heart of the nation and also, as we shall see, his view of manhood. That Adams chose a decidedly manly figure to illustrate what was increasingly becoming associated with womanhood, private virtue, indicates his view that manliness included so-called feminine traits, including chastity and self-restraint.

Relatively few early modern American men left sustained commentary about their sexual behaviors and identities, and John Adams is no exception. Yet his voluminous surviving letters, personal diaries, and autobiography reveal glimpses of his views of masculine sexual identity – much of which was articulated both explicitly and implicitly via the figure of Hercules. Like most eighteenth-century Americans, Adams did not view self-retrained manliness as weak or effeminate. This essay demonstrates that Adams utilized the mythic figure of Hercules to embody his notion of masculine virtue, paying close attention to the sexual component of Adams’s beliefs.

October 30, 2009
Women, Violence, and Race in the Movements against Rape and Abortion
Commentator: Christine Stansell, University of Chicago  
Interracial Rape in the 1960s: Race and Sexual Equality in Maryland's Giles-Johnson Case
Catherine O. Jacquet, University of Illinois at Chicago
 
Beginning in the 1950s, civil rights defense teams increasingly relied on the trope of the lying white woman when defending black men against accusations of interracial rape.  Using then-popular medico-legal theories that pathologized white women as neurotic and/or nymphomaniacs, this strategy effectively pitted black men as a group against white women as a group, trading one problematic stereotype (the black beast rapist) for another (the lying white woman). This paper looks at the Giles-Johnson case, a 1961 case of black-on-white sexual violence in Maryland that gained substantial local and national attention, to analyze the racialized and sexualized constructions that came to dominant interracial rape prosecutions by the 1960s.  Beginning in the 1950s, civil rights defense teams increasingly relied on the trope of the lying white woman when defending black men against accusations of interracial rape.  Using then-popular medico-legal theories that pathologized white women as neurotic and/or nymphomaniacs, this strategy effectively pitted black men as a group against white women as a group, trading one problematic stereotype (the black beast rapist) for another (the lying white woman). This paper looks at the Giles-Johnson case, a 1961 case of black-on-white sexual violence in Maryland that gained substantial local and national attention, to analyze the racialized and sexualized constructions that came to dominant interracial rape prosecutions by the 1960s. 

Women, Gender, and Violence in the Anti-Abortion Movement, 1990-2000
Karissa Haugeberg, University of Iowa

When U.S. antiabortion violence spiked in the 1990s, many attributed the use of extreme tactics to the influx of evangelical Christian men into the movement.  My research suggests that women had an instrumental role in perpetrating and justifying antiabortion violence during this period.  Women used violent tactics, including bombing clinics and shooting abortion providers.  In the extremist wing of the movement, women delivered speeches and wrote articles justifying violence, often in religious terms.  Meanwhile, women in the professionalized wing of the movement remained remarkably silent as activists began killing abortion providers.  I hope to reveal how the diverse groups of women who comprised the U.S. antiabortion movement during the 1990s participated in and responded to the proliferation of violence.

November 13, 2009
Targeting Women in the 1950s
 Commentator: Elizabeth Fraterrigo, Loyola University

An Odd, Emotional Girl: How Psychological Profiling and Gender Shaped Security Risk Assessment Elizabeth Collins, Triton College

This paper explores the case of Marcia Harrison, a federal employee fired from the State Department in 1951. Harrison’s case is notable because she was one of only two employees on McCarthy’s list to have been fired as a security risk. The case was complex. Like many targets of the second red scare, she dabbled in left wing groups in the late 1930s. But in the end, she lost her job not because of her actions but because of her “personality.” My larger research contends that red scare politics and gender conservatism were interlocking ideologies. Furthermore, cases involving women cannot be fully explained without engaging questions of gender. In this article I will argue that psychological profiling and gender conservatism played a central role in providing grounds to terminate Harrison’s employment.

"Let Her Eat Out": The Politics of Gender and Domesticity in the Postwar Restaurant
Nicolaas Mink, University of Wisconsin–Madison

By the 1950s, the terms “Eating out,” “and “Dining out” had entered the popular lexicon, suggesting that many white, middle-class Americans were increasingly using restaurant dining as a way to escape the confines of their suburban home. This type of culinary escapism is quite remarkable considering that through World War II the restaurant industry worked tirelessly to present what was now called dining out as an ideological, culinary, and physical extension of dining rituals performed in the home. While centering my analysis on the foods and foodways that restaurants produced, my paper argues that this new culture of dining out had both expected and unexpected consequences for women, gender, and families. As one might expect, this culture enhanced the gendered fantasies extant in the postwar period. At the same time, however, the new consumer ideals that restaurants shaped and reshaped created a world that subverted feminine culinary authority--an authority that is often seen as unchallenged during this era.

January 22, 2010
The Contested Body of Mollie Fancher: Lay Authority and the Hysteria Diagnosis
Adrienne Phelps Coco, University of Illinois at Chicago
Commentator: Kim Nielsen, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay

February 19, 2010
The Long Civil Rights Movement in Chicago: Ann Harrigan and Women's Catholic Interracialism, 1933-1948
Karen Johnson, University of Illinois at Chicago
Commentator: Jane Dailey, University of Chicago

March 19, 2010
New Approaches to Second-Wave Feminism, 1964-1984
"The ERA is Their Bag, Agriculture is Mine": Midwestern Agrarian Feminists in the Second Wave, 1964-1984
Jenny Barker-Devine, Illinois College
Race Matters? African American Women, Feminism, and Consciousness-Raising in 1970s Chicago
Voichita Nachescu, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Susan Levine, University of Illinois at Chicago

April 23, 2010
Sex, Empire, and Identity: Illicit Liasons in Dr. Jonathon Troup's Journal of Dominica and Scotland, 1780s-1790s
Brooke N. Newman, University of Oxford
Commentator: Isaac Land, Indiana State University

May 21, 2010
Gender, Professionalism, and Business in the Early Twentieth Century
The "Domestication" of Business: Service in the Turn-of-the-Century American Banks
Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University/Purdue University,  Indianapolis
Murder for Love, Journalism for Bylines: The Colorful Career of Jazz Age Chicago's Premier Crime Woman Reporter
Genevieve G. McBride, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Stephen R. Byers, Marquette University
Commentator: Susan Levine, University of Illinois at Chicago

We will pre-circulate papers to those planning to attend. If you cannot attend and want to read a paper, please contact the author directly. E-mail scholl[at]newberry.org,or call (312) 255-3524 to receive a copy of the paper. Papers are available for request two weeks prior to the seminar date. Please include your e-mail address in all correspondence.

The seminar format assumes that all participants have read the essays in advance, and that all those requesting the paper will attend the seminar. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend. We encourage faculty members to call the seminar to the attention of graduate students.

2008-2009

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