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Peter Graff Dissertation (2018).pdf (32.23 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Music, Entertainment, and the Negotiation of Ethnic Identity in Cleveland’s Neighborhood Theaters, 1914–1924

Graff, Peter
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522858050676766

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Musicology.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cleveland, Ohio became an increasingly important destination for European immigrants and African American migrants from the rural South. The blossoming industrial metropolis promised newcomers job opportunities, upward social and economic mobility, and a thriving arts culture. By 1920, the city was checkered with ethnic neighborhoods that tempered local and national assimilation efforts with vibrant cultural institutions, including parochial schools, churches, ethnic newspapers, and sites of entertainment. For new arrivals, the music and drama of neighborhood theaters aided in their negotiation of individual, communal, and national identities at a time when assimilatory pressures were increasingly prevalent. In this dissertation, I examine Cleveland’s diasporic music theater traditions— namely German, Yiddish, African American, and Slovenian—and their connection to issues of ethnicity and immigration. As a diverse, multi-ethnic city, Cleveland hosted a variety of theatrical traditions, but these four stand out due to their ties to prominent communities in the city and their rise in popularity in the early twentieth century. Surveying the commercial culture of these groups, their texts and practices, I offer evidence of how the theater constructed, represented, and reflected the identities of its audience. As I argue, the theater afforded immigrants and migrants the opportunity to witness and even participate in the construction of an ethnic-American identity. While the ethnic groups I study used the theater as a way to celebrate, preserve, and instruct—and, of course, entertain—they each navigated issues of identity in unique ways. For Slovenians facing the disappearance of their homeland after the 1918 formation of Yugoslavia, they sought to maintain cultural distinctiveness; peasant Jews from Eastern Europe worked to adopt American customs and adapt to their new urban environment; African Americans in the North negotiated contested definitions of racial identity during the Great Migration; and Germans shaped and expressed their divided loyalties to America and Germany throughout World War I. Despite having different languages, stagings, and meanings, all of these groups were working toward shared underlying goals and their efforts were all carried out on the musical stage.
Daniel Goldmark (Committee Chair)
Georgia Cowart (Committee Member)
Susan McClary (Committee Member)
John Grabowski (Committee Member)
428 p.
African American Studies; American Studies; Black Studies; Ethnic Studies; History; Judaic Studies; Music; Slavic Studies; Theater History; Theater Studies
musical theater; immigrant theater; immigrant musical theater; ethnic theater; ethnic musical theater; identity; immigration; assimilation; Americanization; Cleveland; diaspora; German Theater; Yiddish Theater; African American Theater; Slovenian Theater

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Graff, P. (2018). Music, Entertainment, and the Negotiation of Ethnic Identity in Cleveland’s Neighborhood Theaters, 1914–1924 [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522858050676766

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Graff, Peter. Music, Entertainment, and the Negotiation of Ethnic Identity in Cleveland’s Neighborhood Theaters, 1914–1924. 2018. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522858050676766.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Graff, Peter. "Music, Entertainment, and the Negotiation of Ethnic Identity in Cleveland’s Neighborhood Theaters, 1914–1924." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522858050676766

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1522858050676766
203
© 2018, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.