Philadelphia: Temple University, 1974. First edition. Original binder (textured black paper over boards) with printed spine label. [7], 171, [45] ff. Photocopied typescript printed on one side only. Complete. With the thirty-page inmate survey, three-page list of interview questions and procedures, and extensive nine-page bibliography. Doctoral committee members listed on the title-page, including Chairman Leonard Savitz. This is seemingly Savitz’s copy, with his name written in ink in the corner of the title-page, and ink check mark next to his name in the list (presumably indicating his approval). The occasional pencil marginalia throughout is also presumably his. Some edgewear to binder. A bit of ink smudging to a couple pages and small tears to corners of two leaves. Still a clean, Very Good+ copy of what may be the first study to directly address same-sex relationships between incarcerated women as its primary focus. This is a scarce item: OCLC records only eight physical copies (five in the United States, one in Canada, and two in Germany) and four microform copies.

This PhD thesis presents the findings of Catherine I. Nelson (b. 1944), a student in the Temple University Department of Sociology, from her research in two women’s prisons in Clinton, New Jersey and Muncy, Pennsylvania in 1971. Nelson conducted an extensive survey and interviews with hundreds of inmates, gathering data about their social class, sexual orientation, sexual activity, criminal records, and lives outside of incarceration (employing the then-recent framework of “pre-prison experiences”). Nelson conducted her study within the first two decades of sociological analysis of incarcerated women, which she marks as beginning with a 1952 study by Ida Harper. Two major studies into the topic occurred in the 1960s, one by David Ward and Gene Kassenbaum and one by Rose Giallombardo. The two studies in the 1960s address same-sex relationships as an aspect of social dynamics between incarcerated women, as does Esther Heffernan’s book Making it in Prison (1972). However, according to Nelson’s review of the research and her bibliography, there do not seem to be any earlier studies that address same-sex relationships between incarcerated women as their primary focus. Nelson's research also predates the decriminalization of homosexuality in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey by nearly a decade and was conducted at a time when homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder in the DSM.

“Perhaps the first question to be answered is what is homosexuality in prison,” Nelson writes. “It cannot be defined simply as sexual relations between two women” (p. 139). She elaborates on the complexities of queer prison life: butch/femme dynamics, queer terminology (and its differences in Black and white populations), gender presentation and fluidity, and the discriminatory targeting of queer women and their relationships. Her groundbreaking research is a fascinating and complex view into the life and culture of incarcerated women, and her findings remain relevant to gender and sexuality studies—perhaps even growing in importance in the last fifty years as more modern scholars examine both Black queer culture and the injustices of the carceral system. Very Good + (Item #6750)