Professor Joshua Sanborn: "Eastern Promises: The Sexualization of Ethnicity"

Race and Ethnicity in History Lecture Series

This is the second of five lectures by History Department faculty on the theme of "Race and Ethnicity in History." The series is cosponsored by the Dean of Intercultural Development and the Africana Studies Program.

In the 1890s, a generation (or less) after the abolition of "black" slavery in the United States and Brazil, North American and European social and political activists attacked a scourge they described as the "White Slave Traffic." This term referred to the international trade of (mostly East European) women for the purposes of prostitution. The campaign highlighted the intersection between sex and race present not only at the dawn of the twentieth century, but also during earlier phases of slavery. The lecture will also consider the sudden re-emergence of the ethnicized sex worker in public imagination since the end of the Cold War.