Co-Sponsored by the History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, and the Labor and Working Class History Association

Friday, December 10, 2004
3:00pm-5:00pm, The Newberry Library

Sex and the Motor City: The Bachelor Culture of Detroit Auto Workers, 1910s-1930s
Steve Meyer, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

A work in progress, "Sex and the Motor City" will explore the "bachelor culture" as it emerged in the rapid growth of industrial Detroit from the 1900s through the 1930s. In the 1910s and 1920s especially, the motor city attracted large numbers of young and single men to staff the machines and the assembly lines of the new automobile industry. Upon their arrival in Detroit, these often single men of the "suitcase brigade" became involved with the social institutions of a male bachelor culture. "Sex and the Motor City" will specifically examine those sexualized spaces and places associated with this male culture.

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