Trexler, Richard C. : Binghamton University
Richard C. Trexler is Distinguished Professor of History at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
An earlier book, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, in paperback from Cornell, is perhaps the most influential
book in Italian Renaissance history published in the last twenty-five years.
"Courageously original."
--International History Review
"[Trexler's] work is a highly sophisticated analysis of the relation between eros and conquest, of the roles
that societal violence imposes on some of the members of the community. . . . His book is doubtless not only the
best study of the American berdache, but also a significant contribution to the understanding of the development
of power and authority in human society."
--American Historical Review
"This excellent book focuses on the erotics of power at the time of the initial colonization of the western
hemisphere and examines male culture of the period by assessing both Iberian and American attitudes toward transvestism
and homosexuality. This highly original work of history, however, never loses sight of the comparative and contemporary
implications of its findings.
. . . Trexler . . . has mined the documentary record of the period with great caution and sophistication to yield
a meticulous exposition of the interpretation the Spaniards and Portuguese placed on the sexual culture they encountered
in the new world and the construction of their own sexual behavior and attitudes in this critical early period."
--Foreign Affairs
"[A] work of erudition and detail."
--Men and Masculinities
"Trexler weaves for us an impressive analysis of the presence of the berdache and the importance of gendered
and sexualized violence in Iberian and Native societies."
--The Committee on Gay and Lesbian History
"In its exposure of the links between sexual abuse of boys and the sexualized subordination of women, Sex
and Conquest offers rare insight into gender inequality. Trexler's analysis of male dominance in sacred and secular
hierarchies offers evidence and depth, as well as sweep and vision."
--Catharine A. MacKinnon, author of Only Words
"A persuasive tour de force of deserted histories."
--Gerald Vizenor, author of Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance
Cornell University Press Web Site, February, 2001
A historical account of the berdache--biological men who performed the offices and work of women, including sexual service--in Europe and America at the time of the Conquest. Trexler examines the sexual culture of both early modern Iberia and the native American world of that era. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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