The Immigrant Scene

The Immigrant Scene

Ethnic Amusements in New York, 1880–1920

Sabine Haenni
Table of Contents

$25.00 paper
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4982-2

$75.00 cloth
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4981-5

Explores the relationship between immigrant and national culture.

Yiddish melodramas about the tribulations of immigration. German plays about alpine tourism. Italian vaudeville performances. Rubbernecking tours of Chinatown. In the New York City of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these seemingly disparate leisure activities played similar roles: mediating the vast cultural, demographic, and social changes that were sweeping the nation’s largest city.

In The Immigrant Scene, Sabine Haenni reveals how theaters in New York created ethnic entertainment that shaped the culture of the United States in the early twentieth century. Considering the relationship between leisure and mass culture, The Immigrant Scene develops a new picture of the metropolis in which the movement of people, objects, and images on-screen and in the street helped residents negotiate the complexities of modern times.

In analyzing how communities engaged with immigrant theaters and the nascent film culture in New York City, Haenni traces the ways in which performance and cinema provided virtual mobility—ways of navigating the socially complex metropolis—and influenced national ideas of immigration, culture, and diversity in surprising and lasting ways.

Sabine Haenni is associate professor of film and American studies at Cornell University.

344 pages | 43 b&w photos | 6 x 9 | 2008

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Urban Space and Ethnic Entertainment

1. Mobile Metropolis: Urban Circulation, Modern Media, Moving Publics

2. A Community of Consumers: Legitimate Hybridity, German American Theater, and the American Public

3. The Drama of Performance: Early Italian and Yiddish Theatrical Cultures

4. Filming Chinatown: Fake Visions, Bodily Transformations, Narrative Crises

5. Alien Intimacies, Urban Crowds: Screening Immigrants on Broadway

Coda: From New York to California

Notes
Index

[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]



The Immigrant Scene *Ethnic Amusements in New York, 1880–1920* Sabine Haenni Table of Contents		$25.00 paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-4982-2 $75.00 cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-4981-5
Explores the relationship between immigrant and national culture. Yiddish melodramas about the tribulations of immigration. German plays about alpine tourism. Italian vaudeville performances. Rubbernecking tours of Chinatown. In the New York City of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these seemingly disparate leisure activities played similar roles: mediating the vast cultural, demographic, and social changes that were sweeping the nation’s largest city. In The Immigrant Scene, Sabine Haenni reveals how theaters in New York created ethnic entertainment that shaped the culture of the United States in the early twentieth century. Considering the relationship between leisure and mass culture, The Immigrant Scene develops a new picture of the metropolis in which the movement of people, objects, and images on-screen and in the street helped residents negotiate the complexities of modern times. In analyzing how communities engaged with immigrant theaters and the nascent film culture in New York City, Haenni traces the ways in which performance and cinema provided virtual mobility—ways of navigating the socially complex metropolis—and influenced national ideas of immigration, culture, and diversity in surprising and lasting ways. Sabine Haenni is associate professor of film and American studies at Cornell University. 344 pages \| 43 b&w photos \| 6 x 9 \| 2008 Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Urban Space and Ethnic Entertainment 1. Mobile Metropolis: Urban Circulation, Modern Media, Moving Publics 2. A Community of Consumers: Legitimate Hybridity, German American Theater, and the American Public 3. The Drama of Performance: Early Italian and Yiddish Theatrical Cultures 4. Filming Chinatown: Fake Visions, Bodily Transformations, Narrative Crises 5. Alien Intimacies, Urban Crowds: Screening Immigrants on Broadway Coda: From New York to California Notes Index