lecture
“Nafkes on the Stoop”: Prostitutes’ Impact on the Lower East Side of New York in the Early Twentieth Century – Live on Zoom
This lecture will explore the intertwined lives of prostitutes with the larger Jewish immigrant community on the Lower East Side in the early-twentieth century. It will discuss the ways that prostitutes’ neighbors negotiated the realities of living among prostitutes – including increasing their own income by performing domestic labor or other services for sex workers, handling the noise and foot traffic in their buildings from the men coming and going, and the tensions of the use of space in the streets of New York. It will also explore themes of family and family business and look at the ways prostitutes constructed their families around the sale of sex as well as other illicit activities. Prostitutes claimed space on the streets and in the tenements of the Lower East Side and in doing so, shaped the urban environment and the Jewish immigrant experience.
Presented by:
lecture
