Whether in front of the camera or behind it, Candice Vadala understood herself as both an artist and an entrepreneur. As Candida Royalle (1950–2015)—underground actress, porn star, producer of adult movies and staunch feminist—she made a business of pleasure. She helped crystallise the broader hedonistic turn in American life in the second half of the twentieth century: a period when the rules of sex were rewritten; when the white-hot “sex wars” cleaved feminism and realigned American politics; when Big Freud, Big Drugs and Big Porn all came into looming focus; when the sex industry of the 1970s and ’80s radically upended conventional understandings of law, technology, culture, love and human desire.With full access to Royalle’s remarkable archive, historian Jane Kamensky has spent years examining the intersection of Royalle’s life with the clashes that have defined her era—and ours. Deeply informed by these never-before-studied materials, Kamensky explodes the conventions of biography, with its assumptions about who makes history and how. Written with cinematic verve, Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution evokes Royalle’s times in their broadest contours as Kamensky traces the rise of an improbable heroine who broke the mould and was herself broken in turn.
Jane Kamensky is the author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley, winner of the New-York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize, and professor emerita of history at Harvard University. She is the president of Monticello/the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and has previously served as director of the Schlesinger Library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Edward G. Gray, Jane Kamensky, US) Gray, Edward G. (Professor of History, Professor of History, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, US) Kamensky, Jane (Harry S. Truman Professor of American History, Harry S. Truman Professor of American History, Brandeis University, Cambridge, MA, Edward G Gray
Edward G. Gray, Jane Kamensky, US) Gray, Edward G. (Professor of History, Professor of History, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, US) Kamensky, Jane (Harry S. Truman Professor of American History, Harry S. Truman Professor of American History, Brandeis University, Cambridge, MA
Mary Beth Norton, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey
Mary Beth Norton, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey
Mary Beth Norton, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey
Mary Beth Norton, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey
Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton, David W Blight
Mary Beth Norton, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey
Mary Beth Norton, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey
Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrik Logevall, Beth Bailey, Mary Beth Norton, Jane (Harvard University) Kamensky, Carol (College of William and Mary) Sheriff, David W. (Yale University) Blight, Howard (Brown University) Chudacoff, Fredrik (Harvard University) Logevall, Beth (University of Kansas) Bailey, Mary Beth (Cornell University) Norton