James H. Adams

Urban Reform and Sexual Vice in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (eBook, ePUB)

The Faithful and the Fallen

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This book examines the intersection and interplay between Progressive-Era rhetoric regarding commercialized vice and the realities of prostitution in early-twentieth-century Philadelphia. Arguing that any study of commercial sexual vice in a historical context is difficult given the paucity of evidence, this work instead focuses on reformers' construction of a cultural view of prostitution, which Adams argues was based more upon their perceptions of the trade than on reality itself. Looking at the urban core of the city, Progressive reformers saw vice, immorality, and decay-but as they frequently had little face-to-face interaction with prostitutes plying their trade, they were forced to construct culturally fueled archetypes to explain what they believed they saw. Ultimately, reformers in Philadelphia were battling against a rhetorical creation of their own design, and any study of anti-vice reform in the early twentieth century tells us more about the relationship between activists and the government than it does about vice itself.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 230
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Juli 2015
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781498508698
• Artikelnr.: 43100900

Autorenporträt

James H. Adams is lecturer of history at Penn State-Abington and Southern New Hampshire University.

Inhaltsangabe

Chapter 1: American Maidens and Fallen Women: Defining the Gilded Age
Prostitute
Chapter 2: Schools of Vice or Virtue: Constructing the Tenderloin
Chapter 3: Reform through Eternal Vigilance: White Slavery and the Vice
Commission
Chapter 4: Arguing Success: Deconstructing the Vice Syndicate
Chapter 5: The Color of Vice: "Negro Tenderloins" in Camden and Bethel
Court
Chapter 6: The Politics of Prostitution: The Rise of the "Charity Girl"
Chapter 7: Back to Basics: The Unseen Prostitute, 1919-1940