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 Queers in the Age of LGBT RIghts (in consideration, University of Chicago Press)
Bad Queers examines the expansion of sex-offender laws in America during the second half of the twentieth century, and, specifically, how those laws created a hierarchy of “good” and “bad” LGBTQ people. Texas, California, and Massachusetts were key sites of political struggle over the decriminalization or continued criminalization of broad areas of queer conduct. The “long 1970s” was an especially significant era in which a groundswell of social movements challenged and redefined sex-offender laws, expanding them into an increasingly centralized system of state power overseen by the federal government.
Book 2: The Children’s Crusade: Governing Child Sexuality in the Modern Transatlantic World
The Children’s Crusade examines 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.
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“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.
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