Research Interests
History of sexuality, LGBTQ studies, and queer theory
History of the carceral state
Twentieth-century U.S. history
Political and legal history
Modern transatlantic history
Book Projects
Book 1: Policing Gay Sex: Male Homosexuality and the Expansion of the Carceral State in Modern America (in production)
Policing Gay Sex examines the expansion of police power over gay male sexual practices. From the 1950s to the early 2000s, I argue, shifting coalitions of gay activists, other social movements, state officials, and experts constructed a system of carceral power, first primarily at the local and state levels of government but ultimately also at the federal level, over a matrix of forms of gay sex that were criminalized or decriminalized to different extents. The book’s six chapters focus on three states (Texas, California, Massachusetts) where political struggles were particularly significant for the development of federal carceral state power over three broad areas of sexual conduct (gay sex between consenting adults in private under sodomy laws, gay sex in public place under the auspices of vagrancy laws, and gay sex involving underage child or teenage boys under age of consent and other laws). Policing Gay Sex brings gay history into closer conversation with the history of the expansion of the carceral state and the rise of mass incarceration. In so doing, the book changes how we think about the expansion of the carceral state and how we conceptualize key aspects of gay male political and legal history.
Book 2: The Children’s Crusade: Governing Child Sexuality in the Modern Transatlantic World
The Children’s Crusade investigates the expansion of state power over child sexual abuse in the US, UK, Germany, and France from the late 18th to the early 21st centuries. During this period, experts, activists, and government officials invented new ways of protecting children and teenagers from sexual harm. While their efforts were meant to protect children, sometimes they also had the effect of punishing young people themselves. Either way, one thing that remained consistent about movements to protect children was that they contributed to the expansion of criminalization and state power.
Review Essays
“Bad Queers: LGBTQ People and the Carceral State in Modern America,” Law & Social Inquiry 47, no. 2 (2022): 691–711, https://doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2021.59.
Articles
“The Invention of Bad Gay Sex: Texas and the Creation of a Criminal Underclass of Gay People,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 26, no. 1 (2017): 53–87.
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“The Creation of the Modern Sex Offender,” in The War on Sex, ed. David Halperin and Trevor Hoppe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 247–267.
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