ABSTRACT
Polygamy is most easily recognized as a central feature of the histories of marriage and religion in the United States because of the protracted conflict over The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ practice of plural marriage in the nineteenth-century.1 However, polygamy has also played a central role in the constitution, development, and execution of settler colonialism, empire, constitutional law, and white supremacy in the United States. The role of plural marriage in these histories is not immediately obvious, largely because the study of the practice has been dominated by a focus on its gendered power dynamics. But it is also precisely this focus, which tends to characterize plural marriage as solely an oppressive institution meant to maintain women’s subordination in society, that can act as a fruitful starting point for grasping polygamy’s significance specifically, and sexuality’s importance generally, in U.S. history. In other words, while it is important to approach polygamy as a sexual cultural/social practice engaged in at various times and places across U.S. history, it is equally important to examine the meanings and values attached to it as a discursive assemblage.2
