Week 4 Response Paper and Research Proposal- Melissa Diaz

Melissa Diaz

Professor Hobbes

History 209S

26 January 2016

Response Paper Week 4

In “Gay New York,” the author challenged three myths about the history of the gay community between 1890 and World War II. Chauncey argued that although many believe that invisibility was the norm before the gay rights movement, gay men were very visible. Many wore red ties or bleached their hair to signal homosexuality. He explored the reasons we believe that the closet concept that we associate with the gay community today also applied to the pre-World War II era. Chauncey pointed out that we believed these myths because we think of history as linear and progressive, and we projected the homophobia of the post-World War II era onto the pre-war era.  Historians in the past also neglected to look for sources within marginalized communities for information on the gay community. The author found valuable information on the pre-war gay community by searching in African American journals, and sources involving immigrant communities or working class people. 

This piece made very bold claims in a clear and organized manner. The article was very easy to follow because each paragraph argued something specific. He also effectively used examples from popular culture to make a point, for example he talked about how Cary Grant’s character in Bringing Up Baby said he “went all gay” when he put on a women’s nightgown, which meant that the term gay was not exclusively used to describe someone who engages in same-sex relations. The author also extended his argument by commenting on the construction of the ‘normal’ world, and not just the gay world. This exploration and questioning of historical context was essential to understand the intersection of the two spheres. The author also pointed out that notions of femininity and masculinity varied across intersectional lines. The color that men chose to wear divided ethnicities as well because Irish and German immigrants did not want to be associated with “Latin” or African American men.

In Runaway Slaves, the author began with a fascinating anecdote that draws in the readier. He argued that historians have used advertisements as sources for basic information, but they can also be used to glean more information about the actions of slaves. Runaway advertisements were one of the first slave narratives, as they told stories of slave resistance. However, they were written by owners, so they can also show the ways owners used advertisements to reinforce the institution of slavery. Owners would describe the runaway slaves’ clothing, trades and skills, linguistic ability and ethnic or racial identity, which were attributes that would or would not help the runaways pretend to be free. I thought the analysis of the clothes was fascinating, partly because of her way of pairing surprising analysis and quotes directly from the primary sources. 

This article relied more heavily on the work of other historians of African American history. The footnotes were extensive and detailed, especially when the author was introducing a new concept, such as racial passing. The largest issue with the primary sources in this article is the fact that the stories of resistance the author gleaned from the advertisements were filtered through the slaveowners. Still, I think the author does a good job of constantly acknowledging that the narratives of slave resistance were being told by the owners through the runaway advertisements. 

Assignment 2

1. The key figures are the women who challenged their loss of citizenship in the courts such as Ethel Mackenzie, or who challenged anti-miscegenation laws. Representative Jeannette Rankin (R-Montana) also challenged the bill by introducing another bill in 1917 that would allow women to retain their citizenship. Other important figures include Congressmen who debated the Expatriation Act of 1907, such as Representative Nathan Kendal (R-Iowa).
2. In 1855 Congress linked the marriage of women to citizenship when it approved derivative citizenship for foreign women. Congress passed this law in the name of “family unity.” There was no mention of American women marrying foreign men until the 1907 Expatriation Act. This act allowed patriarchs to maintain control of American family structure and enforce ideas about racial hierarchy in a changing world.
3. Most of the literature focuses on coverture and the history of immigrant women, but the topic of intermarriage and citizen wives has not been covered as deeply. This time period is especially important because the government believed foreign marriage was such a risk, that they decided to take away citizenship from American women. 
4. Voices from Ellis Island Oral histories will help me include immigrant narratives and whether they mention anything about marriage or nativism in America. I would also use INS records for re-naturalization to see which women reapplied for naturalization. The bulk of my research will focus on collecting newspapers and reading through congressional debates in order to find the relation between the act and race/nativism. Congressional debates will also be useful when I analyze the reversal of the law, and the arguments that congressmen used. Newspapers would allow me to gauge the reaction of the public, but I would especially be interested in finding sources that point to women’s reactions and whether there was any resistance. I would incorporate the voices of women affected by the act by analyzing the testimonies of the intermarriage court cases.
5. I expect to use Candice Lewis Bredbenner’s A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship, but I would also like to incorporate secondary sources that focus on the radicalization of immigration and the history of anti-miscegenation laws. For this, I will use Jolie A. Sheffer’s The Romance of Race: Incest, Miscegenation, and Multiculturalism In the United States, 1880-1930. I will contribute to the literature by looking at the Expatriation Act of 1907 in the context of not just nativism and patriarchal control but anti-miscegenation and fears about race-mixing.
6. I think I will face problems narrowing the scope of my paper. I want to cover many aspects of this law, and I want to talk about how the context changed so drastically between 1907 and 1922, but I understand that I will have to focus on either a smaller window or pick one aspect of the law to analyze over time. I think looking more deeply into the primary sources will give me some direction.