Narrating the Sex Trade

Examining a range of sex trade accounts from state documents, activist groups, folk narratives, and key figures in Polish, Ukrainian, and Yiddish literature, this book applies new materialist perspectives to cultural history, coloniality, and imperiality in the study of Europe's eastern borderlands. The text centers on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century contexts, with eastern Galicia and Lviv as its focal point. However, these narratives flow across time and space, stretching back to the early modern period and continuing to the present across cities in the Americas, in Asia, and along the Mediterranean Sea. The book addresses the convergence of sex trade stories with older narratives, including links to early modern abduction accounts and antisemitic tropes. It also examines the involvement of prominent activists whose personal lives contributed to modern research in psychology and sexuality such as Bertha Pappenheim ("Anna O.") and Karl M. Baer. Its groundbreaking approach, unsettling notions of center and periphery, is relevant to study of a myriad of geographic contexts worldwide and to both historical analysis and present-day situations. This volume is intended for undergraduates, postgraduates, specialists, and general readers interested in east-central Europe, gender, coloniality/imperiality, migration, technology and modernity, narrative and literary studies, and new materialist approaches.

Tracie L. Wilson is based in Leipzig and is a research associate at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. Her recent publications include "Untangling Invasive Narratives: Boundaries, Belonging, and Narrative Agency" (Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2023) and "Emotions of Contested Migrations: The Return of the Wolf across the Polish-German Border" (Arrivals and Departures: The Human Relationship with Changing Biodiversity, 2024).

Introduction 1. Imperial Authority, Migration, and Liminality 2. Tales of Innocents Abroad: Activist Agendas, Contested Identities, and Social Class 3. Stories with Legs: Reemerging Motifs and Transforming Narratives 4. Becoming-Criminal in the Narratives of Ivan Franko and Sholem Aleichem 5. Seduction in the Provincial City: Bodies and Places in the Works of Gabriela Zapolska. Epilogue