Fierce Desires: Variation, Conflict, and Pleasure in the History of America
The Conference Center at Penn State Great Valley 30 East Swedesford Road, Malvern, PA, United StatesFrom puritans to polyamory, Professor Rebecca Davis explores the story of America’s sexual past.In the United States today, we have government decrees that there are only two sexes, debates about “trad wives” and polyamory, and frequent references to the nation’s “puritan” past. But in her latest book—and in this talk—Professor Rebecca L. Davis argues that seventeenth-century Puritans are a weak precedent for how the history of sexuality has unfolded in the United States. Into the 1800s, the United States was far more welcoming of gender nonconformity and same-sex/queer desires than we might presume. Instead, a significant shift occurred in the
