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John Boswell

John Eastburn Boswell (March 20, 1947 – December 24, 1994) was an American historian and a full professor at Yale University. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of religion and homosexuality, specifically Christianity and homosexuality. All of his work focused on the history of those at the margins of society.

For other people named John Boswell, see John Boswell (disambiguation).

John Boswell

John Eastburn Boswell

(1947-03-20)March 20, 1947
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

December 24, 1994(1994-12-24) (aged 47)

New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.

Jeb Boswell

Jerone Hart (1970–1994)

Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (1975)

Yale University

Robin Stacey

Christianity and homosexuality

Ralph Hexter

His first book, The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century, appeared in 1977. In 1994, Boswell's fourth book, Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, was published. He died that same year from AIDS-related complications.

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Boswell was born on March 20, 1947, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Colonel Henry Boswell Jr. and Catharine Eastburn Boswell. He earned his BA at the College of William & Mary,[1] and his PhD at Harvard University before being hired to teach at Yale University.

Career[edit]

A medieval philologist, Boswell spoke or read several Scandinavian languages, Old Icelandic, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, early and modern Russian, Old Church Slavonic, Armenian, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Akkadian.[1][2] Boswell received his doctorate in 1975 and joined the Yale University history faculty, where his colleagues included John Morton Blum, David Brion Davis, Jaroslav Pelikan, Peter Gay, Hanna Holborn Gray, Michael Howard, Donald Kagan, Howard R. Lamar, Jonathan Spence, Robin Winks, William Cronon, and Edmund Morgan. Boswell was made professor in 1982, and A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History in 1990.[1]

During the late 1980s, the influence of 's writings led to the emergence of a social constructivist view of human sexuality which emphasised the historical and cultural specificity of sexual identities such as 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual'. Despite Boswell's friendly relations with Foucault, he remained adamantly opposed to the French theorist's views, which he characterised as a reemergence of medieval nominalism, and defended his own striking essentialism in the face of changing academic fashions.

Michel Foucault

Since his death, Boswell's work has come under criticism from certain medievalists and , who—while acknowledging his personal courage in bringing the issue of sexuality into the academy—have argued it is an anachronism to speak of "gay people" in pre-modern societies and have questioned the validity of Boswell's conclusions.[23][24]

queer theorists

Several other scholars, including , Ruth Vanita, and Rictor Norton, have followed in Boswell's footsteps, building up the field of lesbian and gay studies (as distinct from queer theory), and proposing that categorizations of humans by sexual predilection much predate the 19th century (where Foucault and his followers place it), both in the West (as in Plato's Symposium) and in other cultures (e.g., India).[25]

Terry Castle

In 2006, Boswell was named with online resources as an LGBT History Month Icon.

[26]

The announced in late April 2021 that an academic building would be renamed in Boswell's honor.[27] Boswell Hall includes the departments of Gender, Sexuality, & Women's Studies and Sociology. Additionally, William & Mary's LGBTQ+ interdisciplinary scholarship program is named in his honor.

College of William & Mary

In her 2013 book The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, censures Boswell in the following passage:[28]

Sarah Schulman

The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (1977)–

Online

(1980) — winner of the National Book Award,[3][a] ISBN 978-0226067117

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

Rediscovering Gay History: Archetypes of Gay Love in Christian History (1982)

The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (1989)

Homosexuality in the Priesthood and the Religious Life (1991) (co-author)

(1994), Villard Books, ISBN 0-679-43228-0

Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe

Adelphopoiesis

The Bible and homosexuality

Alan Bray

Queer studies

Queer theology

Boswell, John (1989, 1982). , Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past, Chauncey et al., eds. New York: Meridian, New American Library, Penguin Books. ISBN 0-452-01067-5.

"Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories"

Chauncey et al., eds (1989). "Introduction", Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past (1990), New York: Meridian, New American Library, Penguin Books.  0-452-01067-5.

ISBN

PEOPLE WITH A HISTORY: John Boswell

The Life of St. Theodore of Sykeon (7th Century)

Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century

Archived 2019-01-10 at the Wayback Machine

YAMP: John Boswell

Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

John Boswell Papers (MS 1974).