Culture Makers: Urban Performance and Literature in the 1920s

In this multidisciplinary study, Amy Koritz examines the drama, dance, and literature of the 1920s, focusing on how artists used these different media to engage three major concurrent shifts in economic and social organization: the emergence of rationalized work processes and expert professionalism; the advent of mass markets and the consequent necessity of consumerism as a behavior and ideology; and the urbanization of the population, in concert with the invention of urban planning and the recognition of specifically urban subjectivities. Koritz analyzes plays by Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Sophie Treadwell, and Rachel Crothers; popular dance forms of the 1920s and the modern dance and choreography of Martha Graham; and literature by Anzia Yezierska, John Dos Passos, and Lewis Mumford.