Making Women: Gender, Sexuality, and Class at an Early Twentieth Century Women’s Retreat
Author(s): Megan Springate
Year: 2015
Summary
The intimacy of guest artifacts like toiletries, cosmetics, and corset hooks from an early twentieth century privy deposit are compared with the contemporary assemblage recovered from the yard of the male caretaker of a women’s retreat located on the shores of Lake George, New York. Founded in 1903, Wiawaka Holiday House provided affordable vacations for "Girl Guests" (single women who worked in the garment factories around nearby Albany) free from the potentially corrupting presence of men. Drawing on queer theory, these artifacts are used to explore the relationships between sexuality and gender expression/performance and class during the development of the "modern American woman."
Cite this Record
Making Women: Gender, Sexuality, and Class at an Early Twentieth Century Women’s Retreat. Megan Springate. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 434167)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
class
•
Gender
•
Sexuality
Geographic Keywords
North America
•
United States of America
Temporal Keywords
20th Century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 120