Rebecca L. Davis

Selected Works

“Purity and Population: American Jews, Marriage, and Sexuality”

In Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth Century United States, edited by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather White

" 'These Are a Swinging Bunch of People': Sammy Davis Jr., Religious Conversion, and the Color of Jewish Ethnicity"

American Jewish History 100, no. 1 (January 2016): 25-50.

More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss

Why are Americans so obsessed with marriage?

“‘My Homosexuality is Getting Worse Every Day’: Norman Vincent Peale, Psychiatry, and the Liberal Protestant Response to Same-Sex Desires in Mid-Twentieth Century America"

In American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity, edited by Catherine Brekus and W. Clark Gilpin

"Family"

In The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America, edited by Philip Goff

"Eroticized Wives: Evangelical Marriage Guides and God’s Plan for the Christian Family"

In The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity, edited by Margaret Kamitsuka

"'Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry': The Companionate Marriage Controversy"

Journal of American History, 94, no. 4 (March 2008): 1137-1163

Contact

Quick Links

Council on Contemporary Families

Rebecca is a Research Associate of the CCF, "a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to providing the press and public with the latest research and best-practice findings about American families."

OAH Distinguished Lectureship

Find out more about the topics I can discuss with your academic or non-academic group, several of which connect my historical research to topics relevant to today's political moment.

Sexing History

A new podcast about how the history of sexuality shapes our present

Women Also Know History

This website compiles information about women historians and their areas of expertise. I'm grateful for this site and proud to be included on it.

University of Delaware History Department

My home department, featuring news about our faculty, students, and interdisciplinary partners.

Indivisible Swarthmore: Moving the Needle

Moving the Needle is a grassroots organizing group, serving Swarthmore and the surrounding communities, that connects social justice ideals with political action.

Authors Guild

Advocates for published authors since 1912