| 207 John Munroe Hall | Newark, DE 19716 | <div class="ExternalClass027B123CAE77488D9D0840C72934100D"><p>Rebecca L. Davis specializes in the histories of gender, sexuality, religion, and ethnicity in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. She received her B.A. in 1998 and her Ph.D. in 2006, both from Yale University. Before joining UD’s history department in the fall of 2007, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton’s Center for the Study for Religion. Her article, “‘Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry’: The Companionate Marriage Controversy,” was published in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of American History. She is the author of <em>More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss</em> (Harvard University Press, 2010).</p><p>Prof. Davis is one of the 2011-2012 recipients of the LGBT Religious History Award from the <a href="http://www.lgbtran.org/HistoryAward.aspx">LGBT Religious Archives Network</a>, for her essay, “’My Homosexuality Is Getting Worse Every Day‘: Norman Vincent Peale, Psychiatry, and the Liberal Protestant Response to Same-Sex Desires in Mid-Twentieth-Century America.”</p></div> | <div class="ExternalClass5E19EE7F3CDC4C589400C56034CFFCA4"><h4>Books:</h4><ul><li><em>More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss</em> (Harvard University Press, 2010)</li></ul><h4>Articles and Book Chapters</h4><ul><li>“‘These Are a Swinging Bunch of People’: Sammy Davis, Jr., Religious Conversion, and the Color of Jewish Ethnicity.” <em>American Jewish History</em> 100, no. 1 (2016): 25–50.</li><li>“‘My Homosexuality is Getting Worse Every Day’: Norman Vincent Peale, Psychiatry, and the Liberal Protestant Response to Same-Sex Desires in Mid-Twentieth Century America.” In <em>American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity</em>, edited by Catherine Brekus and W. Clark Gilpin, 347-365. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.</li><li>“‘Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry’: The Companionate Marriage Controversy,” <em>Journal of American History </em>94, no. 4 (March 2008): 1137-1163.</li></ul></div> | | | | | Publications | | | | | | rldavis@udel.edu | https://www.history.udel.edu/Documents%20Bios%20CVs/faculty/davis-rl-cv.pdf | Davis, Rebecca | | | <img alt="Professor Rebecca L. Davis" src="/Images%20Bios/faculty/davis.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> | Miller Family Early Career Professor of History | Associate Professor | | http://www.rebeccaldavis.com/ | T/R 2:00-3:00 | http://primus.nss.udel.edu/CoursesSearch/search-results?first_instr_name=Davis,Rebecca_Louise | http://primus.nss.udel.edu/experts/10872868374-Rebecca_L_Davis | |
| Heterosexual Histories | Davis, Rebecca | Michele Mitchell | New York University Press | | 2021 | https://nyupress.org/9781479802289/heterosexual-histories/ | <p><strong>The history of heterosexuality in North America across four centuries<br></strong></p><p><strong></strong>Heterosexuality is usually regarded as something inherently “natural”—but what<em> is</em>
heterosexuality, and how has it taken shape across the centuries? By
challenging ahistorical approaches to the heterosexual subject, <em>Heterosexual Histories</em>
constructs a new framework for the history of heterosexuality,
examining unexplored assumptions and insisting that not only sex but
race, class, gender, age, and geography matter to its past. Each of the
fourteen essays in this volume examines the history of heterosexuality
from a different angle, seeking to study this topic in a way that
recognizes plurality, divergence, and inequity.</p><p>Editors Rebecca
L. Davis and Michele Mitchell have formed a collection that spans four
centuries, addressing the many different racial groups, geographies, and
subcultures of heterosexuality in North America. The essays range
across disciplines with experts from various fields examining
heterosexuality from unique perspectives: a historian shows how defining
heterosexuality, sex, and desire were integral to the formation of
British America and the process of colonization; a legal scholar
examines the connections between race, sexual citizenship, and
nonmarital motherhood; a gender studies expert analyzes the
Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and explores the intersections of
heterosexuality with shame and second-wave feminism. Together, these
essays explain how differently earlier Americans understood the
varieties of gender and different-sex sexuality, how heterosexuality
emerged as a dominant way of describing gender, and how openly many
people acknowledged and addressed heterosexuality’s fragility.</p><p>By contesting presumptions of heterosexuality’s stability or consistency, <em>Heterosexual Histories</em>
opens the historical record to interrogations of the raced, classed,
and gendered varieties of heterosexuality and considers the implications
of heterosexuality’s multiplicities and changes. Providing both a
sweeping historical survey and concentrated case studies, <em>Heterosexual Histories</em> is a crucial addition to the field of sexuality studies.</p> | | |
| More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss | Davis, Rebecca | | Harvard University Press | | 2010 | http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047969 | <p>The American fixation with marriage, so prevalent in today’s debates
over marriage for same-sex couples, owes much of its intensity to a
small group of reformers who introduced Americans to marriage counseling
in the 1930s. Today, millions of couples seek help to save their
marriages each year. Over the intervening decades, marriage counseling
has powerfully promoted the idea that successful marriages are essential
to both individuals’ and the nation’s well-being.</p><p><strong>Rebecca L. Davis</strong> reveals how couples and counselors
transformed the ideal of the perfect marriage as they debated sexuality,
childcare, mobility, wage earning, and autonomy, exposing both the
fissures and aspirations of American society. From the economic
dislocations of the Great Depression, to more recent debates over
government-funded “Healthy Marriage” programs, counselors have responded
to the shifting needs and goals of American couples. Tensions among
personal fulfillment, career aims, religious identity, and socioeconomic
status have coursed through the history of marriage and explain why the
stakes in the institution are so fraught for the couples involved and
for the communities to which they belong.</p> | | |
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