Browsing by Subject "Prostitution"
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Item (De)sexing prostitution : sex work, reform, and womanhood in Progressive Texas, 1889-1925(2012-08) Rosas, Lilia Raquel Dueñas; Zamora, Emilio; Walker, Juliet E. K., 1940-; Alidio, Kimberly; Falola, Toyin O.; McKiernan-González, John; Menchaca, MarthaThis dissertation examines the participation and regulation of African American and Mexican women in the sex industry during the Progressive period of Texas to complicate ideas of womanhood. Between 1889 and 1925, sex workers survived, resisted, and contended with several shifts to their industry caused by the interventions of religious leaders, civil servants, community members, and reformers. Red light and related vice districts were socially- and legally-sanctioned tolerated forms of amusement and leisure throughout the state. Although black and brown madams, inmates, and prostitutes were not the most visible sex workers, they were often pivotal to that social and cultural fabric of numerous cities such as San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston, and Laredo. The white slavery and antivice campaigns reshaped the discussions and reforms from the local to federal level. They created a social, economic, and political climate of stringent policing of vices that led to the eventual abolition of commercialized sex, where prostitutes of color embodied the worst tenets of womanhood. In contrast, the Mexican anarcho-socialist and African American progressive women’s club movements more broadly enhanced the views of women of color, demonstrating the ways that they (re)defined themselves. In this study, I argue that the intersection of prostitution and progressivism in the South/west represents a peculiar juncture in race- and sexual-making. At stake were the contested meanings of sexuality, race, and modernity under the growing vilification of vice by the national government and local groups in the Jim Crow Borderlands. While this dissertation contributes to the diverse historiographies of progressivism, the New South, and U.S. West, it also has important implications in enriching and facilitating the intersection of the histories of Mexican American and African American women in new and unconventional ways. Its significance is that it advances knowledge in topics of sexuality, race, and gender formation from a transborder and transregional framework. Moreover, it expands conceptual and methodological paradigms that presently exist in the field of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, by coupling them with the study of Jim Crow segregation of the Southwest.Item Empire’s angst : the politics of race, migration, and sex work in Panama, 1903-1945(2013-08) Parker, Jeffrey Wayne; Guridy, Frank Andre; Levine, Philippa; Makalani, Minkah; Mckiernan-González, John; Twinam, AnnThis dissertation explores the negotiations and conflicts over race, sex, and disease that shaped the changing contours of the nightlife in Panama from 1903 to 1945. It investigates why sexual commerce on the isthmus evoked an array of masculine anxieties from various historical actors, including U.S. officials, Panamanian authorities, and Afro-Caribbean activists. I argue that the conflicting cultural encounters over sex work remained at the heart of U.S. imperial designs, Panamanian nationalism and state-building efforts, and Afro-Caribbean visions of racial advancement during the first half of the twentieth century. Moreover, these global visions of manliness generated at the local level also took shape in dialogue with each other. This interconnected discourse on manliness highlights the intertwined histories of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean in the early twentieth century. Migrant women at the center of the drama, however, became particularly adept at navigating the multiple structures of patriarchal control. They manipulated the legal system, resisted abuses of power, participated in labor organizations, pursued economic opportunities, pressed moral claims, demanded respect, and highlighted injustices. Women embroiled in controversy selected from an array of ideas circulating the region. They also played off competing understandings of manhood in order to achieve their own ends. Often these various strategies of negotiation had contradictory outcomes. Active engagement with patriarchal institutions could simultaneously reinforce gender and racial norms while challenging the material reality of daily life. Nevertheless, the failure by the U.S. and Panamanian governments to curtail sexual deviancy and venereal disease underscored the limits of imperial power at a key global crossroads in the Americas.Item "Lizzie Crockett did have illicit intercourse with men other than her husband" : sexuality, race, and criminality in Austin at the turn of the twentieth century(2000-05) Rosas, Lilia Raquel Dueñas; Peck, GuntherIn this report, I investigate the formation of the stereotypes about sexually ready, available, and promiscuous Black and Mexican women in the history of the U.S. Southwest or Mexican Borderlands. Specifically, I argue that dominant society created sexual stereotypes of women of color sexuality in opposition to sexual stereotypes of white women. I contend that dominant society used these stereotypes to regulate the sexuality of both women of color and white women. Furthermore, I deconstruct the assumption of white society that most women of color were prostitutes regardless of their occupation. Simply put, I ask: how was the sexuality of African American and Mexican women regulated and constructed in contrast to the sexuality of white women in the city of Austin between 1890 to 1914? I propose to illuminate the multiple layers of these stereotypes by analyzing court records and literature on prostitution. I conduct this case study in Austin because of its unique location and history at the crossroads of the South and Southwest and its "multiracial" or "triracial" populations of African Americans, Mexicans and Euro-Americans. Similarly, I focus on the changes in sexual regulation throughout the Progressive Era and use the analytical lenses of "sexuality" and "gender" because I hope to contribute to recent scholarly discussions that have complicated our understanding of sexuality in this period.Item On the home front : food, medicine, and disease in World War I Egypt(2019-05) Rose, Christopher Scott; Di-Capua, Yoav, 1970-; Levine, Philippa J; Brower, Benjamin C; Derr, JenniferThis dissertation describes conditions on the Egyptian home front during World War I (1914-1918). I describe how government price control policies and military requisitioning led to food shortages and famine among the rural populations and urban poor, and how, in turn, epidemic diseases rapidly spread throughout the population. I also examine tensions over the spread of sexually transmitted infections and over the legality and morality of sex work, which proliferated during the war. The wartime story of the civilian population in Egypt was one of starvation, death, and suffering. The analysis begins with a history of the state medical service from 1805 through 1914. From its beginnings as a military-focused program under the Ottoman viceroy Muḥammad ᶜAlī (1805-1849), I describe its development over the course of the 19th century through the British occupation (1882-1923). A cholera epidemic in 1883 provided a litmus test against which Egyptian health infrastructure was deemed to be insufficient. Between 1905 and 1914, several initiatives were initiated to increase medical services, but many of these were suspended at the beginning of the war. I paint a picture of a civilian population affected economically by the war, unable to afford to feed themselves adequately, and often starving in plain sight. The unprecedented increase in the number of cases and deaths from infectious diseases reveals a population whose collective immunity was weakened as a result of malnutrition. The worst epidemic, the global influenza pandemic of 1918-1920, arrived in Egypt just as the war was ending and killed over one per cent of the country’s population. I argue that the combined effect of hunger and disease during the war years is a significant factor in the social history of early 20th century Egypt, and contributes to historical understandings of the social and political developments in the decades that followed.Item The 1990s gender progressiveness in Taiwan(2018-05) Shih, Mu-Min; Tsai, Chien-hsin, 1975-; Chang, Sung-Sheng; Hoad, Neville; Oh, YoujeongTaiwan has long been obsessed with its own particular idea of progress, a concept that has been heavily influenced by different historical and cultural factors. Throughout its modern history, the island’s inhabitants have found themselves under the sway of colonial modernization, an authoritative regime, rapid economic growth, and progressive intellectual discourse. While under the political grip of totalitarianism from 1949 to 1987, the island experienced prosperity to the point of believing that discipline alone leads to progress. When control under martial law became strained due to emancipatory currents, the society of Taiwan in the 1990s sought to curb liberation from getting out-of-hand. With its modern history closely related to material progress, the Taiwanese society and culture seems to utter in the same breath both progress and restraint based on its deep roots of Confucianism. This research focuses on gender and sex in exploration of the notion of being progressive in 1990s Taiwan. The discussion of progressive gender discourse as to prostitution, feminism and homosexuality in this research casts light on the relation the social history of Taiwan has to gender, sex, and sexuality. Gender discourse in 1990s Taiwan ushered in a critical review of Confucian values. What we now call gender bias or stereotypes permeate Confucian teachings. Even though it may seem unrelated at first glance, a close reading shows that Confucian tenets about the roles both men and women play in the family and society, and the critiques of them, are inherently political. The dissertation focuses on gender discourse to uncover how it really lies behind all progressive politics in 1990s Taiwan.