Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940

Associate Professor of American Studies Chad Heap charts the development of the cultural practice of slumming in Jazz-Age America. Heap argues that slumming not only created spaces where affluent whites could cross preconceived racial and sexual boundaries but also contributed significantly to a new 20th-century social order—one that was structured primarily around a polarized white/black racial axis and a hetero/homo sexual binary.