Dr. Stephen Robertson, Professor and Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

Tuesday, April 1, 2014
4:30 pm
209 College Hall

Digital Mapping, like the use of other digital tools, raises questions rather than provides answers. In the case of Digital Harlem, some of those questions concern the character of the neighborhood’s nightlife and residences, and where individuals spent their time. The answers to those questions reveal that homes provided more privacy than reformers recognized, allowing residents to engage in a wide range of sexualities. At the same time, outside the home, black residents regularly encountered whites, whose presence throughout the neighborhood made interracial encounters and conflicts an everyday feature of life in the nation’s most famous ‘black metropolis.’
Stephen Robertson is Professor of History and Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He is one of the creators of the acclaimed digital history project, Digital Harlem. His publications include Crimes against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960 (2005) and the co-authored Playing the Numbers: Gambling in Harlem Between the Wars (2010).