Slumming: sexual and racial encounters in American nightlife, 1885-1940

Abstract

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.