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: The Invention of Bad Gay Sex: Policing Male Homosexuality in the Postwar United States (in production)
The Invention of Bad Gay sex examines the history of the criminalization of male same-sex sexual conduct and delineates how the policing of gay male sex has contributed to the expansion of the American carceral state and the rise of mass incarceration. In the course of the second half of the twentieth century, gay activists engaged in political struggles with other social movements, experts, and state officials over the criminalization of forms of gay male sexual behavior. By the 1990s and 2000s, the result was a ranking system of “good” and “bad” gay sex in the American carceral state.
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.
Click here to view
“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.
Click here to view