Hudson River Undercover: Online Lecture

Online lecture: NOT at a physical location.

“Hudson River Undercover” explores how working-class recreation and private surveillance collided aboard Hudson River steamboat excursions during the early twentieth century. The talk focuses on an investigation report written mere weeks after the onset of federal wartime alcohol prohibition in July 1919 by an undercover agent working for New York’s Committee of Fourteen, an influential private anti-vice organization backed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Held in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, the investigation report reveals how wage-earning women articulated femininity and sought out individual freedoms, companionship, pleasure, and romance via Hudson River steamboat excursions at a time when authorities were particularly anxious to monitor and control working women’s leisure activities.

Presented by Austin Gallas. Austin writes about US history, focusing on urban moral reform efforts, private surveillance, and the politics of leisure culture during the Progressive Era. Austin holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he teaches in the School of Integrative Studies. His work has been published in The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, and Literary Journalism Studies.

Register here: https://bit.ly/4exKng6