Trexler, Richard C. 1932-2007

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Trexler, Richard C. 1932-2007

PERSONAL:

Born March 27, 1932, in Philadelphia, PA; died from kidney transplant complications, March 8, 2007, in Princeton, NJ; children: two. Education: Baylor University, A.B.; University of Frankfurt am Main, Ph.D., 1964.

CAREER:

Academic and historian. UTEP, assistant professor, 1964-66; Occidental College, assistant professor, 1966-68; University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, associate professor, 1970-78; State University of New York, Binghamton, professor of history, 1978-96, distinguished research professor of history, 1996-2003, distinguished professor emeritus of history, 2003-06.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 1980 and 1984; CASVA, 1984-85; J. Paul Getty Senior Research grant in the history of art, 1996-97; John Boswell Prize, Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, for Sex and Conquest.

WRITINGS:

Economic, Political, and Religious Effects of the Papal Interdict on Florence, 1376-1378, 1964.

Synodal Law in Florence and Fiesole, 1306-1518, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican City), 1971.

The Spiritual Power: Republican Florence under Interdict, Brill (Leiden, Netherlands), 1974.

(Editor and author of introduction) Francesco Filarete and Angelo Manfidi, The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic, Droz (Geneva, Switzerland), 1978.

Public Life in Renaissance Florence, Academic Press (New York, NY), 1980.

Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Binghamton, NY), 1985.

The Christian at Prayer: An Illustrated Prayer Manual Attributed to Peter the Chanter, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Binghamton, NY), 1987.

Church and Community 1200-1600: Studies in the History of Florence and New Spain, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura (Rome, Italy), 1987.

(With David Herlihy) L'Impruneta: Una Pieve, un Santuario, un Comune Rurale, introduction by Franco Cardini, F. Papafava (Firenze, Italy), 1988.

Naked before the Father: The Renunciation of Francis of Assisi, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1989.

Famiglia e Potere a Firenze Nel Rinascimento, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (Rome, Italy), 1990.

Public Life in Renaissance Florence, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1991.

Power and Dependence in Renaissance Florence, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Binghamton, NY), 1993.

Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Binghamton, NY), 1994.

Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Binghamton, NY), 1994.

Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1995.

The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1997.

Religion in Social Context in Europe and America, 1200-1700, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Tempe, AZ), 2002.

Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals and journals, including Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Biblioteken, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, Renaissance Quarterly, History of Childhood Quarterly, Studies in the Renaissance, Speculum, and History and Anthropology.

SIDELIGHTS:

Richard C. Trexler was an American academic and historian. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 27, 1932, Trexler began his higher education by completing a bachelor of arts degree from Baylor University. He then went to Germany, completing a Ph.D. in 1964 from the University of Frankfurt am Main. Trexler immediately began working as an assistant professor at UTEP, a position he held for two years. Beginning in 1966 he worked as an assistant professor for another two-year period at Occidental College. In 1970 Trexler was made an associate professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, holding that position until 1978. At that point he began working as a professor of history at the State University of New York in Binghamton. In 1996 he was made a distinguished research professor of history and retired in 2003, receiving the title of distinguished professor emeritus of history. During his career, he contributed scores of articles to academic books, periodicals, and journals, including to Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Biblioteken, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, Renaissance Quarterly, History of Childhood Quarterly, Studies in the Renaissance, Speculum, and History and Anthropology. Trexler died from kidney transplant complications on March 8, 2007, in Princeton, New Jersey.

In 1994 Trexler published Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence. The book is a collection of the author's essays on Florentine culture and society from the 1970s.

Alison Brown, reviewing the book in Renaissance Quarterly, commented that "Trexler was novel in using insights drawn from anthropological behaviorism to define power," adding that Power and Dependence in Renaissance Florence represents some of "the best of current Florentine scholarship as well as some of its dangers." Brown noted that "Trexler's success in influencing the way we look at Florence can be seen in the extent to which his insights have been developed in full-length studies by younger scholars (some referred to in footnotes, others published too late for inclusion)." However, Brown pointed out that "only in his discussion of women does he now seem somewhat old-fashioned in allowing women, and especially his nuns and holy women, a mainly passive role as dependents instead of investigating the way in which … they more actively mediated power," adding that "it is power and how it is exercised that really interests Trexler—despite his emphasis on marginals—as his book poses the question: how far does power lie with the innovative politicians and manipulators of ritual, like the self-created martyrs Lorenzo de' Medici and Savonarola, and how far with the traditionalist honor elite and its mediators?"

Trexler published Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History in 1994. The account takes the less frequently analyzed side of gender studies by looking into issues of males, including honor rituals and homosexuality, and placing patriarchy into its historical context. The volume includes thirteen essays covering these and related concerns.

Carol Neel, writing in the Historian, wrote that the text "is marred by frequent typographic errors." Neel conceded that "despite its shortcomings, however, this volume is rewarding for the vivid sense it offers general academic readers of contemporary discussion in fields outside their specialties, for occasional delightfully mordant moments … and for fine illustrations of bonobos, Aztec sculpture, and Renaissance painting." Barbara A. Hanawalt, reviewing the book in Renaissance Quarterly, commented that, "while uneven as a collection, the freshness of the topic and some of the approaches make this a very valuable book."

Trexler published Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas in 1995. The book won the John Boswell Prize from the Committee on Lesbian and Gay History. The book looks into the issue of homosexuality and male transvestism in Native American populations before and throughout the European conquests in the New World. He also looks into the concept of a berdache, where a young male was regendered as a female to fill a gap in the community.

Maria Elena Martinez, writing in H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, remarked that "one of the strongest sections" in the book is the part discussing of how sex and gender in conquest mix together. Martinez lamented, however, that "despite Trexler's insightful discussion of sex, gender, and power in conquest, there are several theoretical and methodological problems with the study. Some of the main theoretical problems stem from the argument that Trexler sets up at the beginning of the book to explain ancient Mediterranean ‘sexual structures’ and that becomes a model for explaining the relationship of sexual violence between men to the construction of the patriarchal order." Martinez explained that the model is flawed in that it "makes too rigid a distinction between sexual violence against women … and sexual violence against men … consequently erasing women, and violence against women, from the historical construction of power"; it "relies on the all too vague explanatory factor of ‘desires’ … and leaves unresolved the questions of why desires for property and power emerge in the first place and, more important, how they function at the level of the collectivity"; and it "not only homogenizes patriarchy, but results in an ahistorical and essentialized vision of men and women and of human relations." Martinez also questioned the time scale, noting that "the ease with which Trexler moves across space and time to shed light on male homosexual behavior and transvestism among native Americans not only implies that cultural and historical specificity does not matter, but assumes that native American cultures have similar systems of meaning and representation. Can male cross-dressing practices among eighteenth-century native American groups from the eastern coast of the United States be used to explain the practices of, say, the pre-Columbian Aztecs, for which cross-dressing was part of a highly complex, and still little understood, cosmology? … Are native American cultures that homogenous … and that static?" Martinez praised the work for its innovation though, stating: "The book is innovative not only in terms of its topic but in terms of its methodological approach, which combines a close reading of various European accounts with the use of scholarship on native North Americans. The result is an impressive compilation of information and anecdotal evidence on the practices of transvestism and homosexual sodomy in the Americas that, at the very least, should inspire more scholars of Latin America—colonial and otherwise—to consider the importance of sexuality and gender in the construction of power relations."

Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof, reviewing the book in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, suggested that "Trexler has brought together an impressive body of anecdotes and accounts that reflect upon the uses of transvestism and homosexuality in the Americas. Most significantly, he has linked the history of homosexual practices to the broader question of gendered sexual violence and power." Kuznesof appended that "his analysis of war and power compellingly argues the relevance of gendered violence for relations between men."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, December 1, 1996, Will Roscoe, review of Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas, p. 860.

American Historical Review, February 1, 1982, review of Public Life in Renaissance Florence, p. 211; April 1, 1984, review of Public Life in Renaissance Florence, p. 475; October 1, 1989, Phyllis B. Roberts, review of The Christian at Prayer: An Illustrated Prayer Manual Attributed to Peter the Chanter, p. 1082; June 1, 1997, Luis N. Rivera-Pagan, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 806; October 1, 1998, Thomas Kselman, review of The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story, p. 1213; February 1, 2005, Frenando Cervantes, review of Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa, p. 192.

American Indian Culture and Research Journal, January 1, 1996, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 246; March 22, 1996, Vernon A. Rosario, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 246.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 1, 1982, David G. Baker, review of Public Life in Renaissance Florence, p. 173.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April 1, 1996, F.W. Knight, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 1358; December 1, 1997, review of The Journey of the Magi, p. 650.

Church History, June 1, 1989, Bede K. Lackner, review of The Christian at Prayer, p. 222; September 1, 1999, review of The Journey of the Magi, p. 677; December 1, 2007, Alberto Lopez Pulido, review of Reliving Golgotha, p. 865.

Contemporary Sociology, January 1, 1997, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 46.

Ethnohistory, January 1, 1998, Pete Sigal, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 135.

Foreign Affairs, March 1, 1996, Kenneth Maxwell, review of Sex and Conquest.

Hispanic American Historical Review, February 1, 1997, Susan Migden Socolow, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 102.

Historian, January 1, 1996, Carol Neel, review of Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, p. 465.

History of Religions, February 1, 2001, Thomas F.X. Noble, review of The Journey of the Magi, p. 304.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, January 1, 1997, Ann J. Kettle, review of Gender Rhetorics, p. 108; October 1, 1997, Joy Porter, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 624; July 1, 1999, Miri Rubin, review of The Journey of the Magi, p. 505.

International History Review, February 1, 1997, Tony Antonovics, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 176.

Journal of American History, June 1, 1997, Olive Patricia Dickason, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 199.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, October 1, 1998, Dennis Nineham, review of The Journey of the Magi, p. 705; October 1, 2006, Kristina A. Boylan, review of Reliving Golgotha, p. 792.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, fall, 1997, Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 326.

Journal of Social History, winter, 1997, Eric Van Young, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 437.

Library Journal, September 1, 1995, Stephen H. Peters, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 191.

New York Review of Books, January 21, 1982, Felix Gilbert, review of Public Life in Renaissance Florence, p. 62.

Pacific Historical Review, February 1, 1998, Christon I. Archer, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 101.

Reference & Research Book News, February 1, 1996, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 26; February 1, 2003, review of Religion in Social Context in Europe and America, 1200-1700, p. 18.

Renaissance Quarterly, fall, 1996, Alison Brown, review of Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence, p. 621; winter, 1996, Barbara A. Hanawalt, review of Gender Rhetorics, p. 895; sum- mer, 1997, Willard F. King, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 582.

Review of Politics, fall, 1996, Johnny Burke, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 819.

Sixteenth Century Journal, fall, 1995, James S. Baumlin, review of Gender Rhetorics, p. 727; summer, 1997, Abel A. Alves, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 547.

Social History, May 1, 1998, Sara Castro-Klaren, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 133.

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, January 1, 1995, review of Gender Rhetorics, p. 241; July 1, 1995, Thomas Kuehn, review of Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence, p. 686; January 1, 2002, Amy G. Remensnyder, review of The Journey of the Magi, p. 259.

Theological Studies, March 1, 1998, Boniface Ramsey, review of The Journey of the Magi, p. 177.

Theology, May 1, 1998, Charles Pickstone, review of The Journey of the Magi.

Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 1996, review of Sex and Conquest, p. 88.