Join us for the Meet the Author event with Eva Payne, celebrating her book "Empire of Purity," on November 12 at 6:00 PM. Engage in a captivating conversation featuring Cookie Woolner, set against a rich brown textured backdrop.

EVA PAYNE W/ COOKIE WOOLNER: EMPIRE OF PURITY

Join us as we welcome EVA PAYNE in conversation with COOKIE WOOLNER on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 at 6:00 PM to celebrate the release of her new book EMPIRE OF PURITY: THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN’ GLOBAL WAR ON PROSTITUTION

ABOUT THE BOOK:

How the United States crusade against prostitution became a tool of empireBetween the 1870s and 1930s, American social reformers, working closely with the United States government, transformed sexual vice into an international political and humanitarian concern. As these activists worked to eradicate prostitution and trafficking, they promoted sexual self-control for both men and women as a cornerstone of civilization and a basis of American exceptionalism. Empire of Purity traces the history of these efforts, showing how the policing and penalization of sexuality was used to justify American interventions around the world.Eva Payne describes how American reformers successfully pushed for international anti-trafficking agreements that mirrored US laws, calling for states to criminalize prostitution and restrict migration, and harming the very women they claimed to protect. She argues that Americans’ ambitions to reshape global sexual morality and law advanced an ideology of racial hierarchy that viewed women of color, immigrants, and sexual minorities as dangerous vectors of disease. Payne tells the stories of the sex workers themselves, revealing how these women’s experiences defy the dichotomies that have shaped American cultural and legal conceptions of prostitution and trafficking, such as choice and coercion, free and unfree labor, and white sexual innocence and the assumed depravity of nonwhites. Drawing on archives in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, Empire of Purity ties the war on sexual vice to American imperial ambitions and a politicization of sexuality that continues to govern both domestic and international policy today

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Eva Payne received a PhD from Harvard University in 2017 and is currently Assistant Professor of history at the University of Mississippi. In addition to researching the histories of gender, sexuality, and politics in the US, she is involved in public history efforts, including the Queer Mississippi Histories Project, as well as a documentary film about pop artist and nun Corita Kent. When not teaching or writing, she can be found birding in Overton Park.

ABOUT COOKIE WOOLNER:

Cookie Woolner is an associate professor of history at the University of Memphis and the author of The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire before Stonewall (UNC Press, 2023).

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Date

Nov 12 2024
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Time

6:00 pm

Cost

Free to attend.

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Location

Novel Memphis
387 Perkins Extd.
Website
https://www.novelmemphis.com
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Novel Memphis
Phone
901-922-5526
Email
info@novelmemphis.com
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