Jonathan Ned Katz: 1938-present

Independent Scholar-Historian

Introduction

Jonathan Ned Katz, an independent scholar, is a historian of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual American history, who has focused on same-sex attraction and changes in the social construction of sexuality and intimate relationships over time. His works stress that the categories with which we name, describe, define and understand human sexuality are historically and culturally specific, along with the social organization of sexual activity, desire, relationships, and sexual identities. In his work, language is studied as one important tool that human beings use to construct different, historically specific sexualities and sex/gender systems.

Katz is that rare bird, a pioneering, innovative historian whose have books have helped to create the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, and sexual history in general, whose publications have received the highest scholarly accolades, who has taught and organized a historical exhibit at Yale, and headed a faculty seminar at Princeton, but who lacks any college degrees.

OutHistory.org

In 2007 and 2008, Katz initiated and directed the development of OutHistory.org, this website on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual history, produced by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, an institute at the City University of New York Graduate Center, funded by a two-year grant from the Arcus Foundation and donations from individuals. The site officially launched on October 21, 2008. The Arcus Foundation is providing a second grant to to support OutHistory's "Since Stonewall Local LGBT Local Histories Contest."

Katz’s earlier web work included his curating "The Pink and the Blue: Lesbian and Gay Life at Yale and in Connecticut, 1642-2004," an exhibit at Yale University’s Sterling Library in 2004. The online version is at present not online since Yale redesigned its website. It will be published again on the Yale GALA website (more data forthcoming).

Books

Katz’s books on sexual history include Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2001. It was co-winner of the John Boswell Prize awarded by the Committee on Lesbian and Gay History of the American Historical Association, in 2003.

Katz’s The Invention of Heterosexuality was published by Dutton in 1995 with a foreword by Gore Vidal and afterword by Lisa Duggan. It has been translated and published in Brazil, Italy, France, and Spain, and reprinted by the University of Chicago Press in 2007. It was cited by U.S. Supreme Court in its majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, June 2003, the ruling that, in effect, found U.S. sodomy laws unconstitutional.

Katz’s Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary, first published by Harper & Row, in 1983, and reprinted by Carroll & Graf in 1994 was number 21 on the list of 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books, a project of the Publishing Triangle, the association of lesbians and gay men in publishing.

Katz’s Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. was first published by T.Y. Crowell in 1976, reprinted by Avon in a mass market paperback in 1977, by Harper & Row as a trade paperback in 1985, and by New American Library, in 1992. It was number 3 on list of 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books, a project of the Publishing Triangle, the association of lesbians and gay men in publishing. It was featured in the Whitney Museum’s “The American Century: Art and Culture - Part 2, 1950-2000” (curated by Lisa Phillips, 1999-2000), along with other books constituting cultural touchstones of the last half of the twentieth century.

Katz also published two books on African American history, Resistance at Christiana: The Fugitive Slave Rebellion, Christiana, Pennsylvania, 1851, published by T.Y. Crowell in 1974, and a biography for children, Black Woman: A Fictionalized Biography of Lucy Terry Prince, co-authored with his father Bernard Katz, and published by Pantheon in 1973.

Theater Pieces

Katz’s Coming Out! A Documentary Play About Gay and Lesbian Life and Liberation, was presented by the Gay Activists Alliance in New York City in June 1972, and presented again in 1973 at an off-off Broadway theater. It was published by Arno Press-NY Times, in 1975, in a series edited by Katz.

Another theater piece, Comrades and Lovers, on the conflict between Walt Whitman and John Addington Symonds, was produced by Poets' Theater, Cambridge, Mass., in 1992; by Bailiwick Theater, Chicago, 1992; and by SAME, Atlanta, in 1991. Public readings were presented by the English Department, University of Kansas, Lawrence, 1991; by 3-Dollar Bill Theater, New York City, 1990, and by the Fund for Human Dignity, in New York City in 1989.

Essays

Katz's long historical article, "Americans in Württemberg Scandal, 1888/Part 1" was prepared for inclusion in his book Love Stories but was deleted from that publication for space considerations. It is first published on OutHistory.org.

Katz’s essays and reviews include "Coming to Terms: Conceptualizing Men's Erotic and Affectional Relations with Men in the U.S., 1820-1892, " presented at the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies and published in The Queer World, edited by Martin B. Duberman, in 1997. The latter book also includes Katz’s essay "Introduction: 'Homosexual' and 'Heterosexual' History."

His op ed piece against biological determinist theories of sexual orientation was titled "Sex Is in Our Heads, Not in Our Genes" and published in New York Newsday, in April 1995.

Katz wrote an “Introduction" to the reprint of Donn Teal’s The Gay Militants, published by St. Martin's Press, in 1995.

Katz’s essay, "The Age of Sodomitical Sin, 1607-1740," from his Gay/Lesbian Almanac, was reprinted in Reclaiming Sodom, edited by Jonathan Goldberg in 1994.

Katz’s theoretical essay, "The Political Economy of Pleasure: Toward a Theory of the Historical Organization of Erotic Activity, with Special Reference to Heterosexuality" was delivered at Harvard University, in 1990, at the 4th Annual Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference; at the American Historical Association, in 1990; at SUNY-Buffalo, in 1991; at the New York Institute for the Humanities, in 1991; at Penn State in 1992; at the University of New Hampshire in 1992; and at Carleton College, in 1994.

His article "The Invention of Heterosexuality" was first published in Socialist Review, in Jan.-Mar. 1990; and reprinted many times.

Katz’s essay “Were the '90s Gay?" was commissioned by American Heritage Magazine, and written and revised in 1990, but was never published in that periodical.

Katz’s work in popular history includes "Katz on History," nineteen columns on lesbian and gay history, published in The Advocate, 1988-1990.

“The Time of Our Lives: Thoughts on Lesbian and Gay History," an essay, was included in the catalog of first photographic exhibit on New York City Lesbian and Gay History, produced by the Office of the Mayor, in June 1988.

Katz’s essay, "Melville's Secret Sex Text" (on the novel Redburn), appeared in the Village Voice Literary Supplement, in 1982.

Reviews, Interviews

Katz’s review of Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, edited by Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson appeared in the Village Voice, in 1983.

His review of Mary Ryan’s Womanhood in America appeared in the Body Politic, 1977-78.

His review of Dennis Altman’s Homosexual Oppression and Liberation appeared in The Nation, on July 2, 1973, the first gay political book reviewed in that periodical.

For the New York Council for the Humanities, Katz reviewed a conference on "AIDS: Humanistic Perspectives," held in New York City in 1988.

"An Interview with Jose Louis Font" by Katz was published in Vision: A Journal of Film Comment (volume 1, number 2), Summer 1962.

Film reviews by Katz appeared in the Antioch College newspaper, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1956 or 1957.

Editing

Working with a board of advisors, Katz edited a series of reprints of books on "Homosexuality: Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History, and Literature" published by Arno Press-New York Times, in 1975. For his editing of that series, Katz was that year the recipient of the annual Gay Book Award, of the American Library Association Task Force on Gay Liberation.

Katz also edited the Gay Men's Health Crisis Annual Report, 1986-87 and 1988-89.

New Media and Public History

Katz co-directed a six-session workshop for SAGE (Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Elders), on how to create and edit content on OutHistory.org, October-November 2009.

Katz’s talks on new media, and on public history have included "OutHistory.org: Creating a website on LGBTQ History," presented at Archives, Libraries, Museums, and Special Collections (ALMS) Conference, in 2008.

Katz’s lecture: "Making Our History: 30 Years of Work and Questions," was presented at the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center Inaugural Conference, in 2006, in Kingston, NY. A version of the same talk, "Making Sexual History: A Quarter Century of Work and Questions," was presented at Dartmouth College in 2004.

With Allan Bérubé, Katz curated the U.S. section of an exhibit on the international history of the gay movement, presented at the Berlin Academy of the Arts, and produced by the Gay Museum of Berlin and the Academy, in 1997.

Katz was an invited participant at a conference sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, 1992, to plan the 25th anniversary exhibit commemorating the Stonewall Resistance and birth of the modern gay rights movement that opened at the New York Public Library in June 1994.

Katz initiated the June proclamation by New York City Mayor of "Lesbian and Gay Pride and History Month," 1987 through 1989, and edited a calendar of History Month events in 1988 and ‘89.

Katz's Letter to the Editor, New York Times, about his own play 'Coming Out!' and Al Carmines' play 'The Faggot' was published August 12, 1973, Section: AL, Page 114.

Audio and Video

Katz was a historical consultant for "Neighborhood Voices," a video documentary on Greenwich Village in the 1950s, produced for WNYC-TV, 1985.

His script "Words," an educational documentary on the changing terms defining those called lesbian and gay, was funded by Pennsylvania Humanities Council and Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force, in 1984.

His scripts for "Black Pioneers," Volumes I and II, were produced by Caedmon Records, with Eartha Kitt and Moses Gunn, in 1968-1969.

His radio play "Resistance at Christiana," was produced on WBAI-FM, New York City; in 1969.

His radio play, "The Dispute Over the Ownership of Anthony Burns," about a fugitive slave case, was presented on WBAI-FM, in 1968.

Aging in the LGBT Community

In 2010, on February 5, at 6:30, Katz will speak at New York City's LGBT Center, 208 W. 13 Street, about expanding from the study of sexual history to the creating of sexual art, reinventing himself, and coming out as a visual artist at age 72. He will exhibit and discuss examples of his sensual paintings of male nudes. A wine and cheese reception is included. Sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, the LGBT Center, and SAGE.

In 2008, on the occasion of his birthday, Katz organized a panel “Coming Out As 70: Old as Personal and Political,” with Terry Boggis, Thomas Glave, and Amber Hollibaugh, presented by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, Center Voices, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and SAGE, at the LGBT Community Center, in New York City.

The same year he presented a lecture: "Gay, Old, Single--and Kicking!," at the LGBT Community Center, in New York City, sponsored by SAGE and the Center.

In 2006 Katz was a panelist on aging, sexuality, and intimacy, at New York University’s Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality.

In 2005, he facilitated two workshops on gay aging, singleness, sexuality, and intimacy, sponsored by SAGE in New York City.

Katz first came out as old in 2004, at age 66, at the Annual Conference of SAGE (Services & Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Elders), in a talk "On Being Gay, Old, and Single."

Teaching

In addition to teaching at Yale and conducting a faculty seminar at Princeton, as an Adjunct at Eugene Lang College, New York City, Katz taught a course on "Heterosexuality: Its History and Politics," in 1995; and a course on "Theories of Sexuality: Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual History," the same year; and a course on "Sexuality in U.S. History," in 1991. As an Adjunct in the New York University History Department Katz taught a course on "Sexuality in U.S. History," in 1984.

Honors

In addition to honors previously mentioned a panel, "Gay American History: The Politics and Prose of Jonathan Ned Katz" was presented at the Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, in 2008, chaired by John D'Emilio, University of Illinois at Chicago, with comment by Elizabeth L. Kennedy, University of Arizona, and presentations by Carolyn Dinshaw, New York University, Jim Downs, Connecticut College, Karla Jay, Pace University, and Marc Stein, York University.

Katz participated in a panel discussion: "Lessons from History: Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Jonathan Ned Katz' Gay American History," held at Harvard University in 2006, with Libby Bouvier of The History Project; Gary Buseck of GLAD; Luis Aponte-Pares of UMass, and Judith Smith, of UMass.

In 2005, a photograph of Jonathan Ned Katz was included in Kings in Their Castles: Photographs of Queer Men at Home, by Tom Atwood (University of Wisconsin Press).

In 1986, Katz was photographed by Robert Giard for a series of photos of gay and lesbian writers.

In 2003 Katz was recipient of Yale University's Brudner Prize, an annual honor bestowed on a leading scholar in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies.

In 2002 Katz was chosen to be the annual Kessler Lecturer, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, NYC.

In 1999 Katz was chosen to be co-Grand Marshal with Joan Nestle of the annual gay pride march, by the Heritage of Pride Committee.

In the same year Katz was honored by the Monette/Horwitz Trust "for long term research and writing contributions to the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender communities," and for fostering others' work.

In 1997, in Berlin, Germany, Katz was awarded The Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Sex Research, from the German Society for Social-Scientific Sexuality Research.

In 1996 Katz received the Community Service Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force for twenty years of research on gay and lesbian history.

In 1995 Katz received the Publishing Triangle Whitehead Award for "Lifetime Achievement in Lesbian and Gay Literature."

Between 1985 and 1991, Katz spoke on the New York Council for the Humanities Speakers Program, on "Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual American History."

Between 1982 and 1993, Katz was an invited participant in a seminar on "Sexuality, Gender, and Consumer Culture," at New York Institute for the Humanities, and presented papers on "The Invention of Heterosexuality" and "The Political Economy of Pleasure."

In 1979 Katz presented a Keynote Address, "The Abominable Sinner Meets the Alternate Lifestyle," at a conference on "Attitudes Toward Homosexuality," Des Moines, sponsored by the Iowa Board for Programs in the Humanities and the N.E.H.

In 1978, he presented a Keynote Address on "Researching Homosexuality, The Importance of Being Historical," at a conference on "Constructing a History of Power and Sexuality," at New York University.

Katz has been a guest lecturer on lesbian, gay, and heterosexual American History, at the University of Chicago, Cornell, Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, the City University of New York, and many other colleges and universities.

The Papers of Jonathan Ned Katz are collected by the manuscript division of The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library.

Grants

In addition to the funding mentioned earlier, Katz received a grant to plan the development of a web site on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history from the Zebra Fund/The Funding Exchange, 2005, thanks to the generosity of the late Joan R. Heller and her partner, Dr. L. Diane Bernard.

In 1994, Katz received the Ken Dawson Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, to research sexual and affectional relations between nineteen-century American men.

In 1985, through a grant from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council to the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force Katz produced an educational documentary, "Words," on the changing terms defining those now called "Lesbian" and "Gay."

In 1984 and ’85 Katz was awarded two Writer-in-Residence Grants from The New York State Council on the Arts, supported by the Fund for Human Dignity; under the service requirement of these grants Katz twice taught a free, 12-session class on Lesbian and Gay American History.

In 1979, Katz through a grant from the Louis and Pauline Cowan Foundation to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Legal History Research Project, Katz directed research on legal history of homosexuals.

In 1978, Katz received a grant from the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation (to research American homosexual history.

In 1967 and ’68, he received grants from the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation to research and write plays for radio about fugitive slave cases.

Organizational Activities

In addition to the organizational activities already mentioned, Katz was a founding member of the Gay Academic Union in 1973, and a founding member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. In 1980, he was on the original committee that founded the National Writers Union.

Art Work

In 2010, on February 5, at 6:30, Katz will speak at New York City's LGBT Center, 208 W. 13 Street, about expanding from the study of sexual history to the creating of sexual art, reinventing himself, and coming out as a visual artist at age 72. He will exhibit and discuss examples of his sensual paintings of male nudes. A wine and cheese reception is included. Sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, the LGBT Center, and SAGE.

A large, retrospective collection of Katz's drawings and paintings, from childhood to the present, is titled: "Jonathan Ned Katz Art" and is online at JonathanNedKatzArt.com: http://www.jonathannedkatzart.com/JonathanNedKatzArt.com/Welcome.html

• Katz comes out as a late-blooming visual artist in an illustrated interview by Lester Strong titled “Artist’s Profile -- Jonathan Ned Katz: Turning from History to Art,” in the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, January/February 2010, pp. 35-35.

Katz is one of the artists featured in the documentary video "Dirty Drawings," in production. For a preview, see: http://www.dirtydrawings.net/Dirty_Drawings/trailer.html

Katz drawing-painting in "Men Loving Men: Images of Love, Lust, and Longing," fundraiser for the LGBT Community Center's HIV/AIDS Youth Prevention Program and Commemorating World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, 2009

A drawing by Katz is included in Dirty Little Drawings, edited by Harvey Redding, Robert W. Richards, and Rob Hugh Rosen, and published by Bruno Gmudner Verlag in 2007.

Ten Katz art works are featured in group show, Molloy/Wright Gallery, Liberty, NY, August 19-20, 2006, along with works by photographers Catherine Opie and Marget Long.

In the mid-1970s, dissatisfied with what Katz judged to be the corny quality of the art in many gay liberation posters, he produced two bold, bright, collage works (one of men holding hands, one of women holding hands) and hung these posters on the wall of the Gay Activist Alliance Firehouse on Wooster Street in Soho. He was suddenly reminded of these works many years ago when viewing some film footage of the Firehouse that included a pan of his posters.

The first performance of Bertolt Brecht’s “Lesson in Understanding,” for which Katz created the scenery for the Judson Poets’ Theater, NYC, took place on February 12, 1965. Katz also created the scenery for “Leonce and Lena,” at a New York City off-Broadway east side theater around 1965 (further data to come).

Child Writing and Speaking

At age 12, in 1950, Katz contributed to a forum published in Parents’ Magazine asking "What Shall We Do About Television?"

At age 13, Katz was the subject of a photographic story published in Life magazine on June 11, 1951, “Life Visits a Back-yard Movie Set: Jonathan Katz, 13, Films Tom Sawyer,” photographed by Esther Bubley, now online at Google: http://books.google.com/books?id=c1EEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA140&dq=Life+magazine%22+Jonathan+Katz%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Additional photos from Bubley's Life shoot are displayed at: http://www.estherbubley.com/life_movie_frame_set.htm

As a result of the Life article, the same year Katz appeared on "We the People," WNBC-TV. He also spoke about film-making on a panel about young people's hobbies, at the New York Times Fifth Annual Boys and Girls Book Fair, at the American Museum of Natural History.

Education

Katz attended the Little Red School House in Greenwich Village, 1945-1952. He attended Music and Art High School as an art major, 1952-1956. He attended Antioch College, in 1956-1957, the College City of New York, 1957-1959, the New School, 1961-1962, and Hunter College, in 1972.

Excerpted Reviews of Katz's Books

Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Dec. 2001

“the most fully contextualized study we have so far of [Walt] Whitman’s affections for males…. Katz effectively creates a historical panorama of nineteenth-century male/male sexual behavior, and demonstrates how the culture worked to keep ‘romantic, spiritual love’ between men totally separate from sexual lust between men…. In this book context is everything, and never before have these stories been told against such a detailed backdrop of nineteenth-century male/male sexual and affectional behavior…. Katz has simply dug deeper than anyone else to put these stories together in compelling, surprising, and satisfying ways. – Ed Folsom, Editor, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 21, issue 3-4, pages 179-182.

"a living tableau of 19th-century male sex in America...History at its best: informative, insightful, at times downright titilating"--Kirkus Reviews

"nuanced, careful, and humane readings of the ways that gay people have achieved visibility in America...fresh and poignant material even to readers well acquainted with the subject...[Katz's] fondness for his subjects is among the book's most appealing qualities." -- Boston Globe

"highly provocative, often startling.... [Katz] has researched deeply and widely, uncovering astonishing materials...Written clearly, succinctly and free from postmodern jargon, Katz's arguments are strong and vibrant.... contributes surprising, even shocking, insights into how sexual and emotional relationships are constructed, as well as demonstrating the enormous diversity and malleability of human eroticism."--Publishers Weekly

"always interesting and informative....Katz is a diligent social and sexual historian...the overall tone is welcoming, sane, and considered."--Times Literary Supplement

"Katz relates stories with the skill of a novelist, drawing us into the lives and loves of his characters.... Katz's work is rightly being hailed as a landmark work in the history of sexuality for its theoretical originality, remarkable research, and beautifully written portraits of male relationships.."--Seminary Co-Op Bookstore

"the bulk of the book...goes well beyond the well known to tell the remarkable stories of everyday men attracted to other men. Love Stories is a masterwork of both dedicated research and engaging storytelling."---Q-Online

"deeply researched....surprisingly honest and complex stories of gay affection"....Katz, a meticulously close reader, explores the vagaries of 19th-century gay life with indefatigable patience....fills in yawning gaps in the scholarship of sexuality"---The Advocate

"Katz has long been recognized as a pioneering gay historian...We read him for his archival work, his gathering together of stories of men, famous and otherwise, who desired men, stories that become bolder and more radical, like a gay coming-out story, as the book progresses" -- Philadelphia Inquirer

Katz's "stories take us from the 1830s to the 1890s, and in that time we can see perceptions about intimacy change as society changes" -- Washington Post

"His new book draws extensively on scholarship that Katz himself set in motion a quarter of a century ago, yet Love Stories also strengthens its author's reputation as an innovator. The book's subtitle, Sex between Men before Homosexuality, captures Katz's thesis: that the very idea that human sexual desire is typicallyoriented in a single direction is of modern construction. Understanding men's sexual encounters before that notion became common, Katz argues, requires that we first understand the full significance of the cultural corner that was turned about a century ago when the modern concept of sexual identity emerged. Katz's book seeks to describe the haphazard movement toward that corner, the 'search for an affirmative language of lust between men.' Katz is an able storyteller, a lively writer . . . . Love Stories is no mere collection of individual stories. . . . There is subtle attention to context in this book, recognition that the meaning of its subjects' acts "was imbedded in a particular, shifting historical arrangement of affection and sexuality". . . . Katz's unanswered questions are among his book's more valuable contributions. His concluding call for further investigation of 'how aspecific act or desire fit or did not fit with an age's larger arrangement of gender, procreation, production, and power' is inspiring. --John Ibson, Journal of American History, June 2003

'The Invention of Heterosexuality' (NY: Dutton, 1995)

“Engaging . . . important . . . Among the best books I have read on sexual identity . . . can change the way you think about sex and gender, about yourself and about whom you might become.” Louise DeSalvo, Los Angeles Times

“Superb and iconoclastic critique of the history of heterosexuality.” Richard Horton (Editor, The Lancet) New York Review of Books

“Lively and provocative.” Carol Tavris, New York Times Book Review

“A valuable primer . . . misses no significant twists in sexual politics.” Gary Indiana, Village Voice Literary Supplement

“One of the most important—if not outright subversive—works to emerge from gay and lesbian studies in years.” Mark Thompson, The Advocate

Winner of Critic’s Choice Award, San Francisco Review

One of the best books of 1995. Village Voice Literary Supplement

"This book contains an amateur historian's reflections on a few articles and books about sexuality published between 1892 and 1984. . . . Katz's book is premised on a very strong linguistic determinism. . . . In this view, rather than reflecting something in the world, obscure texts make the world, invent social practices, and remold the people in the texts' image(s). . . . I cannot imagine the book being of any use to historians of sexuality . . . ." Stephen O. Murray, “Discourse Creationism: The Invention of Heterosexuality by Jonathan Ned Katz.” Journal of Sex Research

"Katz's central thesis can be stated simply: Heterosexuality is a recent invention that has come to organize the arrangement between the sexes in a historically specific way. . . . Katz turns to texts and intriguingly plays back all the constructionists claims that have been made about homosexuality over the pat quarter century . . . . It is a long overdue argument. . . . Yet while its central thesis is important, the book comes with a number of flaws. . . . It remains at the level of the text. Now, although this is hugely fashionable, I want to know how lived lives were affected by Freud's ideas, not just in therapy but in everyday life. . . . I want to know much more about the ways in which 'heterosexuality' comes out in films, on TV, in pop music, and in the day-to-day practices of men's and women's lives. . . . The final chapters of Katz's book signposts the progressive destabilization of the term heterosexual. . . . The listing here is extraordinarily selective and, again, there is no discussion of consumption, audience, or impact. . . . Katz's book is important in opening up debates that ultimately it does not do justice to. But in fairness, Katz's book is acknowledged as only being a prolegomenon. He opens up a field in a challenging way, but he leaves many qustions still be to be posed and developed. . . ." Ken Plummer, "Beyond Texts: Constructionism Revisited." GLQ Vol. 4 No 1, 1998, pp. 109-115.

Jonathan Ned Katz responds to Ken Plummer:

Well, it's November 9, 2009 and I would love to read the book the Plummer describes in his critique of The Invention of Heterosexuality. Will somebody please write that book?

Actually, I agree with every one of Plummer's criticisms, it's just that I was writing a different book.

(1) I had a contract from an editor at a commercial publisher, who wanted a book that would appeal to the biggest possible audience, not just scholarly, academic readers. As an independent scholar, I was (and am) also interested in writing serious, intellectually challenging books that try to reach readers outside of academia. So I set out to write a book that would be clear, fairly short, serious and sometimes funny -- thought-provoking and entertaining.

(2) As far as I knew (and know), The Invention was the first book specifically on the "history of heterosexuality" (it may have coined that phrase). Because it was the first such book, it could not possibly be definitive. In my mind it would be impressionistic and suggestive, and helpfully provocative of future, more detailed, scholarly works.

(3) As I thought about what to put in the book and what to leave out I faced the problem that "heterosexuality" and its history is a giant, potentially overwhelming subject, and that I was only writing a small, first book. At its widest, heterosexual history encompasses everything about the changing acts, feelings, identities, ideas, and institutions that profoundly influence the relationships of women and men with each other. How was I not to be overwhelmed by the potential vastness of heterosexual history? How to keep focused was a major preoccupation as I began work on the book. So, I decided to focus on the word "heterosexual" and the changing idea. Since everybody uses language, everybody is potentially interested in its history, this seemed a good way to appeal to a general reader, and a good way to keep the book focused. The focus on the heterosexual word and idea was a rhetorical device that I chose to limit what I would write about while keeping a general reader involved. The weight of Invention is certainly on the ideology of heterosexuality. But in the book's last chapter, "Toward A New Pleasure System," my analysis clearly suggests that the hetero/homo binary is the product of a particular, historical, system of domination, a historically specific system of power. As a person deeply influenced in my understanding of the world by materialist ideas and Marxism, I end The Invention by pointing to the historical system of heterosexual domination, and our need to change that system.

Photographs of Jonathan Ned Katz

Tom Atwood's photograph of Katz appears in Kings in Their Castles: Photographs of Queer Men at Home (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, September 2005). For Atwood's book, and Katz' photo see: http://www.tomatwood.com/kings.php

Robert Giard's photograph of Katz appears in Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997) and can be viewed on line at: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=1826868&imageID=1661107&total=1&num=0&word=Katz%2C%20Jonathan%2C%201938%2D&s=3&notword=&d=&c=&f=2&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&imgs=20&pos=1&e=w

References

A version of this biographical entry first appeared on Wikipedia. It is expanded here to contain the fullest list available of Katz's works.

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Katz, Jonathan Ned (1938- ) Resume Vita