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Private Spaces in Public Places: Comfort Stations, Fitting Rooms, Public Baths, and Locker Rooms in America, 1880–1930 by Laura Walikainen Rouleau (Instructor, Michigan Technological University) at Abbey's Bookshop,
Private Spaces in Public Places: Comfort Stations, Fitting Rooms, Public Baths, and Locker Rooms in America,...
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Laura Walikainen Rouleau (Instructor, Michigan Technological University)

Private Spaces in Public Places

Comfort Stations, Fitting Rooms, Public Baths, and Locker Rooms in America, 1880–1930

Laura Walikainen Rouleau (Instructor, Michigan Technological University)

$140.95   $112.83

Hardback

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English
Johns Hopkins University Press
16 July 2024
Endangered species & extinction of species
A unique history of how private spaces in public—such as public restrooms and dressing rooms—developed in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

Before the late nineteenth century, Americans bathed, dressed, undressed, and relieved themselves in the privacy of their own homes. Yet from 1880 to 1930, the social forces of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration combined to increasingly lure Americans out of the private realm and into the public sphere. In Private Spaces in Public Places, Laura W. Rouleau offers a distinctive look at the history of how new private spaces were built into the broader world.

In deciding what physical form these spaces would take, the very meaning of privacy manifested through the physical and social construction of these newly emerging spaces. Rouleau combines social history with a material culture–based analysis to examine the growing importance and physical development of spaces such as department store dressing rooms, school locker rooms, and public bathrooms that emerged during this era.

Rouleau argues that privacy was physically and socially constructed, as these sites were designed to segregate users by gender, class, race, and age. Creators of these spaces sought to impose their middle-class values regarding privacy through the physical regulation of users' bodies. Nonetheless, the creators' intentions did not always align with the lived reality of these spaces. By interrogating how people navigated these private spaces, this study offers an understanding of the actual historical experience of privacy at the turn of the twentieth century.
By:  
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 17mm
Weight:   340g
ISBN:   9781421449999
ISBN 10:   1421449994
Pages:   160
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
"Acknowledgments 1. Privacy in Public: How Did We Get Here? 2. Department Store Fitting Rooms: A Gendered Privacy 3. Public Baths: Cleansing the ""Classed"" Body 4. Creating Privacy in Public: Public Comfort Stations 5. Learning Privacy: Public School Locker Rooms Conclusion Notes Index"

Laura W. Rouleau is an associate teaching professor of history in the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. She received her PhD in the history of American civilization from the University of Delaware and a master's degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.

Reviews for Private Spaces in Public Places: Comfort Stations, Fitting Rooms, Public Baths, and Locker Rooms in America, 1880–1930

I made my way through Private Spaces in Public Places, a collection of 'spatial case studies' by Laura Walikainen Rouleau...I was curious about the history of our restrooms, yes (I love restrooms), but I also had a hunch that there was poetry somewhere in these pages...This is a poem. --Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine


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