The Bawdy Web: Mapping Primary Digital Resources for the Study of Sex Work in New Orleans

The Bawdy Web is an extension of an earlier project, The Bawdy Trade, a series of digital maps that identifies significant locations in New Orleans’ sex work industry from the antebellum period to World War II. Each map contains numerous pins, and each pin contains a text annotation, often accompanied by digitized photos, images, links, and other data. The Bawdy Web seeks to make a selection of the content from The Bawdy Trade available as an easily shared, web-based resource that can be distributed through a simple web link. This talk will cover the first of three web-based maps, which focuses on locations in downtown New Orleans associated with the city’s pre-Storyville sex trade. In particular, Dr. Elmwood will discuss the different stages of this digital humanities project, focusing not only on the digital archives that have made it possible but also on some of the freely available digital mapping technologies available for use on projects such as this one.