Feminist re-imaginings of a Victorian brothel: Using a dialogic method between practitioners and academics

Abstract

Miss Laura’s Social Club is a former Victorian brothel that is the Visitors Center for Fort Smith, Arkansas. While the building has been a popular tourist attraction for the city since the 1990s, the exhibits in the site portray an inaccurately sanitized image of prostitution. A recent change in city leadership prompted a re-evaluation of Miss Laura’s and opened an opportunity to re-imagine the space in ways that would continue to appeal to tourists yet reflect a realistic portrait of the lives of the women workers. Through semi-structured dialogue, two practitioners working at Miss Laura’s and two university researchers imagined the exhibit space in the Front Parlor into a restructured historically accurate narrative. Explorations of feminism, glamorization of prostitution, elitism and the conflict between heritage sites’ roles offer a model for other feminist researchers and practitioners to transform these sites by addressing critically their histories of whitewashing inconvenient gendered truths.