Background
Peiss, Kathy Lee was born on January 25, 1953 in St. Louis. Daughter of Clarence W. and Evelyn (Schwartz) Peiss.
( What did young, independent women do for fun and how di...)
What did young, independent women do for fun and how did they pay their way into New York City's turn-of-the-century pleasure places? Cheap Amusements is a fascinating discussion of young working women whose meager wages often fell short of bare subsistence and rarely allowed for entertainment expenses. Kathy Peiss follows working women into saloons, dance halls, Coney Island amusement parks, social clubs, and nickelodeons to explore the culture of these young women between 1880 and 1920 as expressed in leisure activities. By examining the rituals and styles they adopted and placing that culture in the larger context of urban working-class life, she offers us a complex picture of the dynamics shaping a working woman's experience and consciousness at the turn-of-the-century. Not only does her analysis lead us to new insights into working-class culture, changing social relations between single men and women, and urban courtship, but it also gives us a fuller understanding of the cultural transformations that gave rise to the commercialization of leisure. The early twentieth century witnessed the emergence of "heterosocial companionship" as a dominant ideology of gender, affirming mixed-sex patterns of social interaction, in contrast to the nineteenth century's segregated spheres. Cheap Amusements argues that a crucial part of the "reorientation of American culture" originated from below, specifically in the subculture of working women to be found in urban dance halls and amusement resorts.
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Peiss, Kathy Lee was born on January 25, 1953 in St. Louis. Daughter of Clarence W. and Evelyn (Schwartz) Peiss.
Bachelor, Carleton College, 1975. Master of Arts, Brown University, 1977. Doctor of Philosophy, Brown University, 1982.
Instructor Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1980-1981. Assistant professor University Maryland, Baltimore, 1981-1986. Associate professor University Massachusetts, Amherst, 1986-1992.
Professor, since 1992.
( What did young, independent women do for fun and how di...)
(Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-th...)
Member American History Association (commission on committees since 1993), American Studies Association, Organisation American Historians.
Married Peter A. Agree, May 31, 1992.