The Case of Mrs. Brinsmade and Civil War New York

By Wyatt Evans

In October 1862, the New York City Metropolitan Police held Mrs. Isabella Brinsmade for over a month without charge in the precinct house on West 47th Street. The twenty-year old Louisiana native had arrived in New York that August, sent by her merchant father who thought she would be safer there than in Union-occupied New Orleans. Her husband was away fighting in the Confederate Army, and she does not appear to have maintained any special affection for him. By all accounts Mrs. Brinsmade was intelligent, high-spirited, very attractive, and... liked to talk.

Antebellum & Civil War, Gender & Sexuality, PoliticsGuest UserJuly 19, 2018Comment

"Out of ashes comes beauty": An interview with Jeffrey C. Stewart

Today on Gotham, Peter-Christian Aigner speaks with Jeffrey C. Stewart about his new book, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, the most comprehensive biography on the "father of the Harlem Renaissance."

Arts & Culture, Gender & Sexuality, Interviews, Progressive Era, Gilded Age, Race & EthnicityGuest UserJuly 17, 2018Comment

Women after Suffrage: An Interview with Elisabeth Israels Perry

Today on the blog, editor Katie Uva sits down with Elisabeth Israels Perry to talk about her research process and her insights as she prepares her new book, After the Vote: Feminist Politics in La Guardia's New York (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2019).

Gender & Sexuality, Interviews, Politics, Progressive Era, Great Depression & New DealGuest UserJuly 10, 2018Comment

Place and Community: An Interview with the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

Today on the blog, coordinating editor Katie Uva sits down with Amanda Davis of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project to learn about the distinct value of approaching LGBT history from a place-based perspective.

Gender & Sexuality, InterviewsGuest UserJune 26, 2018Comment

Amy Werbel's Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock

Reviewed by Marcela Micucci

Anthony Comstock was a household name in nineteenth-century America, so much so that his last name became synonymous with a movement and set of laws that sought to censor obscenity and eradicate vice. Historian Amy Werbel explores this anti-obscenity movement — and its champion — in her provocative and cutting-edge work, Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (2018).

Gender & Sexuality, Gilded Age, Politics, Progressive Era, ReviewsGuest UserJune 19, 2018Anthony ComstockComment

Shopping Queens, Chic and Friendly

By Daniela Sheinin

Much has been written on the American “New Woman,” what the historian Einav Rabinovitch-Fox calls “both an image and an appellation referring to a generation of women who came of age between 1890 and 1920 and challenged, through their attitudes and appearances, Victorian values and gender norms.” Her identity varied by race, class, ethnicity, and age. The New Woman breached gender norms, pressed for a public voice, and has been tied by some to feminism, the campaign for women’s suffrage, consumer culture, and female sexuality. New and sometimes radical fashion trends marked an expression of New Woman feminism and a break from a gendered, culturally confining past. These included versions of the Japanese kimono and the “ ‘Village smock,’ a bohemian version of the kimono and the dress item most associated with Greenwich Village feminists.” Moreover, there’s evidence that manufacturers produced low-price knockoffs of the kimono and other New Woman fashion trends, eagerly consumed by some working class women.

Business & Labor, Gender & Sexuality, QueensGuest UserJune 5, 2018Comment

Black Nationalist Women's Activism in 1920s Harlem

By Keisha N. Blain

Founded by Marcus Garvey, with the assistance of Amy Ashwood, in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1914, the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) was the largest and most influential Pan-Africanist movement of the twentieth century. Emphasizing racial pride, black political self-determination, racial separatism, African heritage, economic self-sufficiency, and African redemption from European colonization, Garvey envisioned the UNIA as a vehicle for improving the social, political, and economic conditions of black people everywhere. From Kingston, Jamaica, Garvey oversaw UNIA affairs before relocating to Harlem. At its peak, from 1919 to 1924, the organization attracted millions of followers in more than forty countries around the world.

This post is excerpted and adapted from Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom, courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Press.

Gender & Sexuality, Manhattan, Politics, Race & EthnicityGuest UserMay 28, 2018Comment

A Woman of Her Time: An interview with Joanna Scutts

Today on Gotham, editor Nick Juravich sits down with Joanna Scutts to discuss her new book, The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like it.

Gender & Sexuality, Interviews, ManhattanGuest UserMay 10, 2018Comment

A (Female) Walker in the City: An interview with Lauren Elkin

Today on Gotham, editor Nick Juravich speaks with Lauren Elkin, about her recent book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London, selected as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times, Guardian, New Statesman, Observer, The Millions and Emerald Street, and shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.

Gender & Sexuality, Interviews, ManhattanGuest UserMay 8, 2018Comment

Where Suffrage Took Flight: Staten Island and the Woman Suffrage Movement

By Gabriella Leone

On May 20, 1913, nationally renowned suffragist, Rosalie Gardiner Jones, made a spectacular debut in Staten Island, where she became the first suffrage activist to fly for the cause. To achieve this feat, she met her pilot Harry Bingham Brown, one of Staten Island’s resident pilots, at the Grant City train station and boarded his plane. The New York Times reported, “Gen. Rosalie did not show a sign of fear as she took her seat in the biplane, seized a steel rod, the only thing to hold to, with her left hand, had her skirts tied down with a little piece of blue string, and, with a bunch of leaflets in her right hand, nodded a smiling good-bye to the crowd below.” Decorated with 'Votes for Women' banners, the plane arrived at its destination, roughly two miles away on the island’s eastern shore, in fifteen minutes. It landed at the Flying Carnival of the Staten Island Aeronautical Society in a flurry of yellow leaflets, which Jones had been scattering along the way.

Gender & Sexuality, Politics, Progressive Era, Staten IslandGuest UserMay 3, 2018Comment