Faculty Lecture Series- “Poverty & Place: ...Urban Homelessness in 20th-Century America”

When:	March 21, 2012 Noon
Where:	Student Union’s Ogeechee Theatre on the Armstrong campus, 11935 Abercorn Street
Admission:	Free and open to the public!
About this event:

Ella Howard, assistant professor of history, will present “Poverty and Place: The Spatial Concentration of Urban Homelessness in 20th-Century America.”

From approximately 1900 until 1980, many homeless Americans lived on skid rows. This lecture surveys the nature and function of American skid rows, focusing on New York City’s Bowery. On one level, skid rows were simply historically specific urban poverty zones, demonstrating the ways in which poverty defines certain places. But in the case of modern homelessness, the lack of a place of belonging, caused most often by poverty, serves also to define and delimit individuals. Skid rows defined the homeless, narrowing both the ways in which they were understood and the solutions offered to their problems.

Lauren Mason, assistant professor of English, will respond by discussing the phenomenon of “extreme marginality” in 21st century black urban communities.