For my final paper, I am going to use the pamphlets on the Contagious Diseases Act.
I am going to use the Pall Mall Gazetteand W. T. Stead's Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (on childhood prostitution). Stead's document was instrumental to the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act and to the creation of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (raising the age of consent to 16). This is the refernce that Dr. Graban advised would be beneficial for the CDA.
I am going to look at the role of prostitution and how it was viewed fom all standpoints of the authors of each passage. I was going to look at the readings that Dr. Graban suggested and the 3 pamphlets from the contagious disease acts and compare their views on it. I also wanted to bring in Tompkins as a lens because it seems as if this will go well with the CDA topic.
Does this sound like a good idea to anyone else or am I way off? I haven't completely found or done all of my research that I will need to complete the proposal because the description of this final paper is still very unclear for me, so once again if anyone can help that would be awsome!
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I think that looking at prostitution from the perspectives of different authors is a good idea. Who are the different authors of each passage? Do you have texts from male and female writers? It might be interesting to compare their views.
ReplyDeleteDo you know how you want to use Tompkins as a lens? I'm not sure what the CDA texts are like, so it's not clear to me how Tompkins would apply. Perhaps you could use some of Killingsworth's ideas. Do the writers use prostitution or another aspect of this issue as a trope? Do the writers present prostitution as the fault of the prostitutes, their customers, the society that allows it to occur, or a combination? Perhaps Killingsworth's chapter on appeals to time could also be relevant. What is the exigence that made these writers feel that this was an important issue? How does time influence the style of their writing?
These are just some ideas. Like I said, I'm not very familiar with this topic, but I hope at least one of my ideas is helpful!
Thanks Nicole..actually a couple of those are pretty helpful! Those are some good questions as well!
ReplyDeleteRa'Quell, to help you find your footing, I'd be interested in knowing your motivation for this topic and these texts? Sometimes reflecting on why we're drawn to something--for personal, moral, ethical, literary, or other platonic reasons--helps us arrive at a question we can ask that is unique to us, to our collection, and to the combination of documents we want to put together. Since the paper doesn't have to be an analysis or use a source as a lens, what's the deeper question you think needs to be answered about the CDA? How does this relate to or resonate with something you're interested in as a future health and hospital administrator?
ReplyDelete-Dr. Graban
As Nicole said, I'm not the most informed on this topic, but I think that it sounds like a very interesting topic for you to be working on!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this will be helpful or not (as it pertains to the UK) but there is an online database for the Old Bailey jail in London with the background of every inmate ever held there until it was closed. When I studied there my professors made reference to it all the time to give examples of death, crime, disease, etc. which was rampant...and if I remember correctly I'm pretty positive that there are quite a few entries about prostitutes, what they were charged for, motivations, and their sentence (there are also insane details about each person with names, backgrounds, etc.). Again, not sure if this is helpful or not, but might give you further exposure of other cases outside the U.S.?
Good Luck and I would love to read more about your paper later on!
The online database that Lauren mentioned sounds fascinating, especially given that the CDA's were passed in Britian.
ReplyDeleteI think Killingsworth's Appeals to Time might be a good source as a lens - perhaps it could bring to light some of the arguments that have to do with the political urgency and maybe even time as a trope.
It might also be interesting to look at the arguments about prostitution from the perspective of what motivated a particular author to write about it - was it a public health concern, a political concern, religious, personal? How did the writer's motivation affect the style and tropes they employed?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rebekah that Killingsworth's Appeals to Time might be a good lens. I also think you might have something interesting when you talk about prostitution, child prostitution, and the age of consent. I am particularly thinking about how all of these things relate to children (who women were the caretakers of) and perhaps about how these things helped to create what we now consider to be childhood innocence.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if that is a place you would want to go with this, but it might be interesting to look at the effect on children to help narrow your question a bit. Of course as Professor Graban mentioned in her comments to me, we don't want to limit our topics too much at the beginning. So keep exploring, but a focus on children could be very interesting and might help define your paper better in the end.
My new and improved question, thanks to the help of Dr. Graban is how could the representation as either a social ill or a moral ill in the 3 Contagious Disease Acts texts contribute to the develpoment of a sense of chilhood innonence, moreover, my paper will focus on how each text's moral or social reference to prostitution affects our attitudes about chilhood innoncence.
ReplyDeleteI will analyze these texts by looking to see if their arguement was more for social or moral stance. I will look at scriptuure references, appeals to pathos (emotion)and time (rhetoric of crisis or urgency)by Killingsworth.I will look at who was blamed, and whether there is a discussion about if prostitution should/shouldn't be okay, or be banned, in order to catogorize each text as social or moral. I will also be using other text such as Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (on childhood prostitution). Stead's document was instrumental to the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act and to the creation of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (raising the age of consent to 16)and a book entitled, Harmful to Minors, by Judith Levine which references the Pall Mall Gazette and the CDA personally in that time period.