Freedoms and Rights: Gender, Race, and Sexualities in the Modern West
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2026
Pages: 140
Choose Your Format
Choose Your Platform | Help Me Choose
Ebook
$85.00 USD
Freedoms and Rights: Gender, Race, and Sexualities in the Modern West is a collection of historical writings and firsthand accounts that examines ideas of freedom, rights, and identity through influential texts and personal narratives. The book includes works on political philosophy, American independence, constitutional government, declarations of rights, slavery, women's rights, race, and social reform.
The collection also explores topics related to prostitution, sexuality, gender identity, racial violence, women's suffrage, LGBTQ+ experiences, and changing understandings of sexual behavior through historical documents, speeches, testimonies, literary works, and memoirs. The volume concludes with additional readings for further study.
CHAPTER 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
CHAPTER 2 Common Sense Thomas Paine Justifies American Independence, 1776
CHAPTER 3 The Constitution of the United States
CHAPTER 4 Letters of Eliza Wilkinson
CHAPTER 5 Enslaved Blacks Adopt the Cause of Liberty
CHAPTER 6 Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789
CHAPTER 7 Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791
CHAPTER 8 The History of Prostitution, excerpts from Chapter XXXIII (1858)
CHAPTER 9 Jack London
CHAPTER 10 Alice Mitchell as a “Case of Sexual Perversion,” 1892
CHAPTER 11 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1899)
CHAPTER 12 Ida B. Wells-Barnett Exposes the Myth of the Black Rapist, 1892
CHAPTER 13 William H. Stallings Testifies About Ku Klux Klan Lynchings, 1871
CHAPTER 14 Speech by Emmeline Pankhurst
CHAPTER 15 Black Entertainer Mabel Hampton Recalls Lesbian Life in the 1920s and 1930s
CHAPTER 16 Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin
CHAPTER 17 Samuel Delany Describes Communal Public Sex in New York in the Early 1960s
CHAPTER 18 The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action (1978)
Links to Additional Readings
Sandra Slater received her Ph.D. from University of Kentucky in 2009. Dr. Slater’s book, The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England was published with Brill in 2025. Professor Slater is currently working on a book project exploring the historic rituals, beliefs, and practices surrounding death and dying in central Appalachia and two articles: one on adultery and masculinity in early New England and the other a same-sex Civil War love story.
Freedoms and Rights: Gender, Race, and Sexualities in the Modern West is a collection of historical writings and firsthand accounts that examines ideas of freedom, rights, and identity through influential texts and personal narratives. The book includes works on political philosophy, American independence, constitutional government, declarations of rights, slavery, women's rights, race, and social reform.
The collection also explores topics related to prostitution, sexuality, gender identity, racial violence, women's suffrage, LGBTQ+ experiences, and changing understandings of sexual behavior through historical documents, speeches, testimonies, literary works, and memoirs. The volume concludes with additional readings for further study.
CHAPTER 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
CHAPTER 2 Common Sense Thomas Paine Justifies American Independence, 1776
CHAPTER 3 The Constitution of the United States
CHAPTER 4 Letters of Eliza Wilkinson
CHAPTER 5 Enslaved Blacks Adopt the Cause of Liberty
CHAPTER 6 Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789
CHAPTER 7 Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791
CHAPTER 8 The History of Prostitution, excerpts from Chapter XXXIII (1858)
CHAPTER 9 Jack London
CHAPTER 10 Alice Mitchell as a “Case of Sexual Perversion,” 1892
CHAPTER 11 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1899)
CHAPTER 12 Ida B. Wells-Barnett Exposes the Myth of the Black Rapist, 1892
CHAPTER 13 William H. Stallings Testifies About Ku Klux Klan Lynchings, 1871
CHAPTER 14 Speech by Emmeline Pankhurst
CHAPTER 15 Black Entertainer Mabel Hampton Recalls Lesbian Life in the 1920s and 1930s
CHAPTER 16 Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin
CHAPTER 17 Samuel Delany Describes Communal Public Sex in New York in the Early 1960s
CHAPTER 18 The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action (1978)
Links to Additional Readings
Sandra Slater received her Ph.D. from University of Kentucky in 2009. Dr. Slater’s book, The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England was published with Brill in 2025. Professor Slater is currently working on a book project exploring the historic rituals, beliefs, and practices surrounding death and dying in central Appalachia and two articles: one on adultery and masculinity in early New England and the other a same-sex Civil War love story.