Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 10 - American Vertigo

  • from City Lives
  • Edited by Kevin R. McNamara, University of Houston-Clear Lake
  • Book:
    The City in American Literature and Culture
    Published online:
    06 August 2021
    Print publication:
    05 August 2021, pp 167-186

  • Summary

    Due to the confluence of diverse factors such as urban expansion, the unprecedented influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, new transportation and communication systems, the electrification of city streets, and the rise of skyscrapers, assembly-line factories and global markets, the American metropolis in particular witnessed an anthropological shift in human life at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although elusive, the energies enforcing this shift may best be condensed in the biopolitical metaphor of vertigo, which uniquely captures the multiple facets of metropolitan dwelling. Both bewildered immigrants and avant-garde artists and writers were ideally positioned to record the qualitative changes brought about by life in the big city. In the cultural sphere, these transformations are reflected in technological and technical revolutions ranging from the moving pictures to amusement parks such as Coney Island, with imagist poetry and Dadaist happenings in between.