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Storyville and the Archival Imagination by Nikolas Oscar Sparks

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Storyville and the Archival Imagination by Nikolas Oscar Sparks Lost Bodies/Found Objects: Storyville and the Archival Imagination by Nikolas Oscar Sparks Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Maurice O. Wallace, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Priscilla Wald, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Joseph Donahue ___________________________ Sharon P. Holland ___________________________ Frederick Moten Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 ABSTRACT “Lost Bodies/Found Objects: Storyville and the Archival Imagination” by Nikolas Oscar Sparks Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Maurice O. Wallace, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Priscilla Wald, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Joseph Donahue ___________________________ Sharon P. Holland ___________________________ Frederick Moten An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 Copyright by Nikolas Oscar Sparks 2017 Abstract In “Lost Bodies/Found Objects: Storyville and the Archival Imagination,” I engage the numerous collections and scattered ephemera that chronicle the famed New Orleans vice district of Storyville to show the ways in which black life is overwhelmingly criminalized, homogenized, and silenced in narratives of the district. Storyville, the city’s smallest and last vice district, existed from 1897-1917 under the protection of city ordinances. The laws attempted to confine specific vices and individuals within the geographic limits of the district to protect the sanctity of the white family and maintain private property values in the city. As a result, the district strictly managed the lives of women working in the sex trade through policing and residential segregation. While all women were subject to these restrictions, black women were often barred from the relative comforts of the district’s brothels and forced to live and work out of shared shacks called “cribs.” Similarly, though to a much lesser degree, black men who worked in and frequented the district faced their own forms of segregation and racial violence. Turning to a largely obscured set of archival objects discovered through primary research—housing records, biometric technologies such as Bertillon cards, travel literature, and Blue Book guides—I read how discourses of waywardness, domesticity, race, and sexuality at the turn of the twentieth century converge to illuminate the vexed social life of Storyville. I argue that when read alongside popular histories, literary interpretations of the district, and discourses on black social life at the turn of the twentieth century, the records of the district challenge the archival narratives iv imposed upon them and expand historical approaches to the archives of Storyville. v Dedication For my Mother and Father vi Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... ix List of Images ..................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... xii “Lost and Found: A Story for Storyville” ........................................................................... 1 What is a Storyville archive? ........................................................................................ 4 Lost Bodies/Found Objects, a Reading of the Archive ............................................... 13 Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................... 18 Lewd & Abandoned, or The Cartographies of Confinement ...................................... 22 Mansions and the Fantasy of Home ............................................................................ 43 Criminality and Home: Notes on Social Life and History .......................................... 56 Toward a Storyville Archive ....................................................................................... 65 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 68 Guidebooks to Sin ....................................................................................................... 72 Storyville as Open Secret ............................................................................................ 90 Opaque Topographies ............................................................................................... 101 Chapter 3 ......................................................................................................................... 104 Intimate Impressions ................................................................................................. 107 A History in Fragments ............................................................................................. 122 Poetics of the Gaze .................................................................................................... 138 Rethinking Photographic Capture ............................................................................. 147 Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................................... 149 Policing the Archive ................................................................................................. 154 vii Suspicious Movements ............................................................................................. 169 Bertillonage, or The Archive and the Flesh .............................................................. 180 In the Archive ........................................................................................................... 190 Coda ................................................................................................................................ 194 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 197 Biography ........................................................................................................................ 205 viii List of Tables Table 1: Available records concerning the Storyville vice district, New Orleans, LA, 1897-1917 ........................................................................................................................... 5 Table 2: Graphic of select information from the mugshot cards of Clara Oliver & Josephine Woods. ........................................................................................................... 173 ix List of Images Image 1: Map showing the shrinking vice district in New Orleans. ................................ 28 Image 2: Basin Street “Down the Line” Post Card .......................................................... 44 Image 3: Advertisement from Blue Book ca. 1912, (Courtesy of Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Durham, NC) ................................... 48 Image 4: Advertisement for The Arlington from Blue Book ca. 1912, (Courtesy of Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Durham, NC). ... 49 Image 5: “Interior of Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall,” by Ernest J. Bellocq (supposedly), date unknown. .................................................................................................................. 52 Image 6: Photograph of a row of condemned cribs on Robertson Street, Photograph by John W. “Knocky” Parker, Date Unknown ..................................................................... 58 Image 7: Introduction from Blue Book, 1900. ................................................................. 75 Image 8: Preface from Blue Book, 1905. ......................................................................... 77 Image 9: Preface from the Blue Book, circa 1911/12. (Courtesy of the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University) ............................................................ 81 Image 10: Sample from directory in Blue Book, 1903. .................................................... 84 Image 12: “Octoroon” section from the Blue Book, circa 1912. (Courtesy of the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University.) ............................... 92 Image 14: Untitled photograph by Ernest J. Bellocq, ca. 1912 (Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York). ........................................................................................... 110 Image 15: Still from the film Pretty Baby (1978, dir. Louis Malle) showing Hattie (Susan Sarandon) seated while Ernest J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) sets his backdrop. (Courtesy Paramount Pictures) ...................................................................................... 111 Image 16: Still from the film Pretty Baby (1978, dir. Louis Malle) showing 12-year-old Violet (Brooke Shields) standing next to Ernest J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) as he photographs a model. (Courtesy Paramount Pictures) ..................................................
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