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Raising The Bar: Consumption, Gender, And The Birth Of A New Public Drinking Culture, Adam Blahut

History ETDs

This dissertation explores the history of public drinking extending a rich historiography of U.S. drinking establishments into the twentieth century by examining the creation of the heterosocial bar. It has only been socially acceptable for respectable men and women to drink alcohol together in public since approximately the 1930s. The transition from the saloon to the bar, from a single, undivided space that emphasized large groups, physical mobility, and homosociability to a compartmentalized space emphasizing small groups, privacy, and heterosociability, shows how public drinking and the places where it occurred were microcosms of society that reflected and constituted that society …