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Jan 1, 1938 — —· 88 yrs

UNITED STATES AUTHOR · HISTORY · HOMOSEXUALITY

Jonathan Ned Katz

Also known as: Jonathan Katz, Katz, Jonathan.

9
BOOKS
3.5
AVG RATING (2)
5
READERS

Jonathan Ned Katz (born 1938) is an American historian of human sexuality who has focused on same-sex attraction and changes in the social organization of sexuality over time. His works focus on the idea, rooted in social constructionism, that the categories with which society describes and defines human sexuality are historically and culturally specific, along with the social organization of sexual activity, desire, relationships, and sexual identities.

New York City, United States
Wikipedia

We had both been involved with other people that spring, but when June came and school was out we decided to let our house for the summer and move from Palo Alto to the north coast country of California.

— from Love Stories, 1919

Most acclaimed

#1

The Invention of Heterosexuality

1995

2.0 (1)

“Heterosexuality,” assumed to denote a universal sexual and cultural norm, has been largely exempt from critical scrutiny. In this boldly original work, Jonathan Ned Katz challenges the common notion that the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality has been a timeless one. Building on the history of medical terminology, he reveals that as late as 1923, the term “heterosexuality” referred to a "morbid sexual passion," and that its current usage emerged to legitimate men and women having sex for pleasure. Drawing on the works of Sigmund Freud, James Baldwin, Betty Friedan, and Michel Foucault, The Invention of Heterosexuality considers the effects of heterosexuality’s recently forged primacy on both scientific literature and popular culture.

#2

Coming out

0.0 (0)

In June 1972, Jonathan Ned Katz's documentary play, Coming Out!, about gay and lesbian life and liberation, directed by David Roggensack, was produced by the New York Gay Activists Alliance, at its firehouse headquarters, in Soho. "In 2009," says Katz, "looking over these reviews for the first time in more than thirty years, I'm struck by the strong emotional responses reported, positive and negative. Even the worst review (see below, Marilyn Stasio, in Cue magazine, August 27-September 2, 1973) says that the play 'packs a wallop' and the material 'is dynamite stuff,' though the play is 'deadly as theatre.' I'm fascinated by the contradictory character of many of the reviews."

#3

Resistance at Christiana

1974

0.0 (0)

Along with John Brown's raid, one of the major harbingers of the Civil War and a major episode in black American history.

Books

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