Slumming Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885 1940

Heap, Chad

ISBN 10: 0226322440 / ISBN 13: 9780226322445

Published by Univ of Chicago Pr, 2010

About this Item

420 pages. 8.75x6.00x1.00 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # x-0226322440

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Slumming Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885 1940
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226322440
• ISBN 13: 9780226322445
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.61 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

In this fascinating history, Chad Heap reveals that the reality of slumming was far more widespread—and important—than nostalgia-tinged recollections would lead us to believe. From its appearance as a “fashionable dissipation” centered on the immigrant and working-class districts of 1880s New York through its spread to Chicago and into the 1930s nightspots frequented by lesbians and gay men, Slumming charts the development of this popular pastime, demonstrating how its moralizing origins were soon outstripped by the artistic, racial, and sexual adventuring that typified Jazz-Age America. And while Heap doesn’t ignore the role of exploitation and voyeurism in slumming—or the resistance it often provoked—he argues that the relatively uninhibited mingling it promoted across bounds of race and class helped to dramatically recast the racial and sexual landscape of burgeoning U.S. cities.

            “Exhaustively researched and beautifully written. . . . Vivid and astonishingly detailed.”—George Chauncey, author of Gay New York

            “This is a beautiful book that will be a milestone in our understandings of sexuality, race, normalcy, and metropolitan American modernity.”—American Historical Review

About the Author

Chad Heap is associate professor of American studies at the George Washington University.