Reclaiming Transgender Lives Case Study

Bronski, Michael. "A Democracy of Death and Art." A Queer History of the United States. Boston: Beacon, 2011. N. pag. Print.
This chapter focuses upon the impact of the American Civil War upon changing masculinities and the performance of masculinity in the United States. The social and political upheaval of the time acted as a condition of emergence for new transgressive actions (such as homoerotic poetry and soldier cross-dressing). These insights are useful because they help to explain the dramatically shifting climate that led to the emergence of then-contemporary sexuality.
D'Emilio, John, and Estelle B. Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. 55-84. Print.
The chapter “Within
Both chapters become useful here because they illuminate prevailing attitudes towards sexuality (both healthy and deviant) during the Victorian era.
Elbert, Lisa. Reclaiming Transgender Lives: The Case of Albert D. J. Cashier. Diss. U of Minnesota, 2005. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2005. Print.
This dissertation uses the life of Albert D.J. Cashier as a case study for understanding an unspoken history of transgender individuals. While other works may posit patriotism, economic incentives, or love as a reason for a woman cross-dressing, Elbert considers that some female soldiers of the Civil War may have actually been transgender. She also highlights the difficulties in claiming an historical figure as trans despite contemporary language failing to map cleanly onto historical lifetimes.
Greven, David. "Gender Protest and Same-sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature." Burlington, VT : Ashgate (2014): n. pag. EBSCO Host. Web.
Studying popular culture and literature is an effective means of gleaning cultural attitudes and trends in a particular historical moment. Greven identifies works of American fiction
Lowry, Thomas P. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1994. 109-22. Print.
Despite the title, this text (chapters Prostitution East & West, I Take Pen in Hand, and Parallel
Lives) includes first-person material taken from archival research of diaries and letters. The frankness with which people of the 1860s describe sex (and the open flourishing of the sex trade) contradict ideas that sex was repressed. Instead, Lowry suggests that the dearth of sexually explicit correspondence is the result of self-censorship rather than a lack of tangibility. The chapter Parallel Lives deals with queer expressions of sexuality and identity as well as the complexities with defining historical material using modern definitions.
Miller, Heather Lee. "Sexologists Examine Lesbians and Prostitutes in the United States, 1840-1940." NWSA Journal 12.3 (2000): 67-91. JSTOR. Web.
This study historicizes the phenomena of lesbians employed as prostitutes and considers the many reasons why a lesbian woman might turn to sex work (as well as critiquing the notion that