Date of Award
Fall 12-2013
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Mary Niall Mitchell
Second Advisor
Connie Atkinson
Third Advisor
Michael Mizell-Nelson
Abstract
In the 1880s, two cycling clubs formed in New Orleans—the New Orleans Bicycle Club in 1881 and the Louisiana Cycling Club in 1887. These clubs were institutions of Victorian middle class culture that, like other athletic clubs, arose from the conditions of urban modernity and Victorian class anxieties. The NOBC, like other American cycling clubs, conformed to Victorian values of order and respectability. The attitudes and activities of the LCC, whose membership was younger, reflected instead a counter-Victorian ethos. This paper examines these two clubs in the context of late Victorian culture in New Orleans as it responded both to the conditions of urban modernity common to American cities in this period and to the particular cultural situation of New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century, including proximity to and amalgamation with the recently-dominant, non-Anglo culture of the Creoles.
Recommended Citation
Musgrove, Lacar E., "Knights, Dudes, and Shadow Steeds: Late Victorian Culture and the Early Cycling Clubs of New Orleans, 1881-1891" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1753.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1753
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.