Gender + Sexualities Workshop – ‘He Looked Pale and the Picture of Death’: Sodomy, Settler Self-Government, and the Age of Reform in 1840s Canada

Please join the Gender + Sexualities Cluster for a Paper Workshop on Monday, 8 May 2023, at 2 PM. 

We will meet in HSSB 4020 to discuss Jarett Henderson‘s chapter, “‘ He Looked Pale and the Picture of Death’: Sodomy, Settler Self-Government, and the Age of Reform in 1840s Canada.”

ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses primarily on the period from June 1841 to October 1842 – sixteen months during which Henry Black in the Canadian House of Assembly and Robert Sullivan in the Legislative Council led the effort to reform the administration of criminal justice in the newly created United Province of Canada. Although the recalibration of Britain’s colonial project in northern North America following the 1837-38 rebellion has been the subject of extensive historiography, no other work has examined these bills to improve and consolidate the criminal laws of the colony in relation to the histories of sex, gender, and settler self-government. Drawn primarily from the published Journals of the elected House of Assembly and the appointed Legislative Council, the chapter seeks to better how the re-criminalization of sex between men legitimized sodomy as a queer threat to the structures of white settler self-government that were being put into place in the early-1840s. How did this settler government legislate for the abominable, infamous, and unnatural crime of sodomy — which often included both buggery and bestiality — in early Canada? What about false accusations of, and failed attempts at, sodomy? What about anti-heterosexual threats that put a man’s property at risk? The legislative records and the colonial archives created teach us that unnatural sex, settler manhood, political independence, and self-government were intimately connected in colonial Canada and wrapped up in larger empire-wide debates about capital punishment, convict transportation, and political reform.

You can find a copy of Jarett’s paper here, (starting May 1). Please read the paper in advance and be prepared to share your observations and insights with the group.

All are welcome.