Here are the details:

10:00 – 11:15, Panel 1: Institution and Enterprise (19 University Place, Great Room)

1. Joey McGarvey, “‘The Good, the Great, and the Gifted’: An Introduction to the New York Fruit Festival”

McGarvey acquaints us with a spectacular event in New York City’s publishing history – the 1855 Fruit Festival at New York’s Crystal Palace. Sponsored by the city’s new Book Publishers’ Association, the Fruit Festival brought together for a feast of pears and apples some of the country’s most notable booksellers, publishers, and writers. Examining RSVPs to the event, contained in the papers of the Association’s secretary, McGarvey traces several generative themes: the uncertain place of successful female authors in mid-century professional print culture, the American investment in producing a national literature, the competition among New York, Philadelphia, and Boston to be considered the publishing capital of the U.S., and the struggle of publishers and authors to reconcile the demands of art and of commerce.

McGarvey is an M.A. student in the English Department at NYU, where she is completing her thesis on gender and genre in the Fruit Festival. In her time away from grad school, McGarvey is an editorial assistant at Knopf. She is also a founding member of the [tk] review.

2. Reed Gochberg, “Miniatures and Museums: Philanthropy, Cultural Institutions, and Edith Wharton’s Tableau Vivant”

Gochberg proposes a re-reading of the well-known tableau vivant scene in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), where Lily Bart recreates a painting by Joshua Reynolds. Although literary scholars have suggested that this moment represents the conspicuous consumption of the Gilded Age, Gochberg explores it in relation to the operation of the city’s art galleries and museums, arguing that Wharton’s scene inverts both their aesthetic and philanthropic concerns. As she demonstrates Wharton’s pessimism about the ability of these establishments to restore beauty and bring “high culture” to a city motivated by status and money, Gochberg offers new ways of thinking about contact and conflict among New York’s nouveau riche, its longstanding elite, and the city’s cultural institutions in the late nineteenth century.

Gochberg is a doctoral student in English at Boston University, where she studies late nineteenth-century American literature and culture. Her research interests include American intellectual history and urban cultural history.

3. Kristen Doyle Highland, “Finding New York City in the Bookstore”

Moving between the rise of the dedicated bookstore in nineteenth-century New York City to contemporary battles to save the independent bookstore, Highland’s presentation explores how the physical space of the bookstore has come to frame ideals of urban life and community.

Highland is a doctoral student in the English Department at NYU, specializing in Early American and antebellum literature. Her research interests include the print culture of early national America, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular culture, and the Atlantic world. She is currently working on a dissertation, titled, “At the Bookstore: Literary and Cultural Experience in Antebellum New York City.”

For the full program of Networked New York, visit the conference website.

An afternoon workshop organized by the Columbia Seminar in American Studies

Glenn Hendler and Elizabeth Hutchinson, co-chairs

Saturday, April 10, 2010 1-6pm

The Ella Weed Room (223 Milbank Hall), Barnard College

As the capstone to the Columbia American Studies Seminar’s year-long series of presentations of American Studies work on New York City topics, this afternoon workshop will explore how the field plays out here and how being here shapes the field. The first of our two roundtable discussions will center on the pleasures and challenges of doing American Studies research about New York City; the second will bring together scholars from various American Studies institutions in New York City to discuss their programs and the potential for developing a stronger local American Studies community.Each panel will open with very brief presentations by the panelists, followed by open discussion with one another and with others in attendance. The event is open to all, and is free; however, please RSVP to the seminar rapporteur, Christina Charuhas at cac2166@columbia.edu.

1:00pm: Welcome

1:15-3:00
Panel #1–“New York City in American Studies”
Pamela Cobrin (English, Barnard)
Ellen Gruber Garvey (English, New Jersey City University)
Oneka LaBennett (African and African American Studies, Fordham)
John Matteson (English, John Jay College, CUNY)
Thuy Linh Tu (Asian Pacific Am Stdy, Dept of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU)
Moderator: Elizabeth Hutchinson (Art History, Barnard/Columbia)

3:15-5:00
Panel #2–“American Studies in New York City”
Rachel Adams (English, Columbia)
Sarah Chinn (Hunter College, CUNY, and New York Metro Am Studies Association)
Arlene Davila (Anthropology and Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU)
Robert Fanuzzi, (English, St. John’s University)
Jennie Kassanoff  (Director of American Studies, Barnard)
Moderator: Glenn Hendler (Director of American Studies, Fordham)

I’m part of a panel that includes the intellectual historian David Hollinger (UC Berkeley), whom I quoted in Wednesday’s opening Writing New York lecture, and the cultural critic Walter Benn Michaels (University of Illinois at Chicago). The panel is called “Cosmopolitanism or Multiculturalism” and its part of an ongoing series called “The Cosmopolitan Idea.”

David Hollinger is the author of Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, which has been important influence of my recent work on emergent U.S. literatures. His recent articles include:

“Money and Academic Freedom a Half-Century after McCarthyism, Universities Amid the Force Fields of Capital.” from Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity (Madison, 2006), 77-105, 202-204.
“Obama, the Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic Future” Callaloo 31.4 (2008), 1033-1037.“Religious Ideas: Should They be Critically Engaged or Given a Pass?” Representations #101 (2008), 144-154.
“Separation Anxiety,” London Review of Books, January 24, 2008, 15-18. [Review of Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God].
“Rethinking Diversity,”California Magazine (July/August 2006), 47-49.
“From Identity to Solidarity,”Daedalus (Fall 2006), 23-31.

Walter Benn Michaels is the author of a book that was de rigueur when I was in graduate school, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century. His most recent book is The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, which argues that multiculturalism has had the effect of reassuring neoliberals of their progressive politics, while masking the deepest problem within U.S. society: economic inequality. He’s written about this subject more recently in a bookforum piece on the failure of the contemporary U.S. novel to tackle the issue of social inequality and a London Review of Books article on a recent study sponsored by the Runnymede Trust called Who Cares About the White Working Class?

The panel takes pace at 19 Washington Square North, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with a reception to follow. Readers of this blog are warmly invited to attend.

Here’s a description of the session:

“After the “culture wars” of the 1980s, the triumph of multiculturalism had beneficial effects on educational policy and public discourse. In promoting the value of cultural diversity, multiculturalism led to the recovery of neglected histories, artistic traditions, and a greater sense of toleration for various kinds of difference.  But along with the gains came costs, including increasingly rigid ideas about identity politics and few critiques that crossed cultural boundaries.  Cosmopolitanism may offer an alternative approach to difference, in which difference is viewed as an opportunity, rather than a problem that needs to be solved.”

I suspect, however, given the nature of both Hollinger’s and Michaels’s recent work, that we’ll be talking a lot about class difference and inequality. And I’ll be trying to talk about why class difference is a different kind of difference that demands a different approach.

Meanwhile, you can find information about future “Cosmopolitan Ideal” sessions here.

While you’re there you can pick up the volume essays that accompanies the exhibit — not exactly a catalog, the volume takes both the exhibit and the conference theme as a point of departure.

If you aren’t able to visit before November 6, you can download a copy of the volume here in PDF format. (The download is approimately 28.5 MB.)

And, for a limited time, readers of this blog can request a complimentary copy of the book itself, which is printed on glossy stock and makes a handsome addition to any library of books about New York. Just send an e-mail with your mailing address to cyrus@ahistoryofnewyork.com.

Saturday, Oct. 10

NYU Tisch Performance Studies, 721 Broadway (at Waverly Pl.), Suite 612, NYC

9:30 – Coffee

10:00a-10:30 Keynote – Tim Lawrence, author of Hold on To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene

10:30-11:30 Panel 1: Musical Variations

Chair: Sukhdev Sandhu
Peter Zummo: “Pop and the Multi-Pentatonic, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Whole Steps and Minor Thirds”
Elodie Lauten: “Lesser-known Relationships: In the Singing Tractors Nexus, a Sense of Freedom and Exploration”
Ryan Dohoney: “The Experimental Assemblages of Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman”

11:45-1:15 Panel 2: Arthur Russell: Recording and Legacy

Chair: Peter Gordon
With Mustafa Ahmed, Bob Blank, Joyce Bowden, Gary Lucas, Bill Ruyle, Peter Zummo.

2:00-3:15 Panel 3: Arthur Russell and the World

Chair: Simon Reynolds
Joyce Bowden: “Impermanence and Non-Duality: Buddhist influence in the music of Arthur Russell”
James Thomas: “I’m Sorry, But This Is How I Learn” (Theme: repetition and language in Russell’s collaborations)
Ernie Brooks: “Arthur Russell: Creativity and the Business of Music, Resolving a Pursuit of the Ineffable with the Need for Recognition in Worldly Terms”
Daniel Portland: “I Touched You on the Arm: Cruising as Epistemology in the Life and Work of Arthur Russell

3:30-5:00 Wild Combination screening and Q&A with Matt Wolf

5:00-6:30 Panel 4: Remembering Arthur Russell

Chair: Steve Knutson
With Alan Abrams, Ernie Brooks, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Elodie Lauten, Tom Lee

6:30-6:45 Wrap-up ¾ Sukhdev Sandhu

EVENING EVENTS

7:00-9:00 Solo and duo performances of Arthur Russell music plus book launch

Reception & book launch at Housing Works Café, 126 Crosby Street, NYC, with performances by Mira Billotte, Alex Waterman, Nick Hallett, Rachel Henry, Peter Gordon, Peter Zummo, Joyce Bowden, Steven Hall and others. Tim Lawrence will read from his new biography of Arthur Russell, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene. $10 admission to benefit Housing Works, a nonprofit AIDS-service organization.

10:00-late Dance party with Arthur’s Landing at Public Assembly

Play It Loud presents Arthur’s Landing (with Jerry Harrison) at Public Assembly at 70 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Live dance music! $10 admission to benefit Gods Love We Deliver.

BIOGRAPHIES

Alan J. Abrams is an independent producer, director, and writer with film credits including The Rook, Paradise Falls, Charles Bukowski’s, 900 Pounds, and Larry Brown’s Leaving Town. During more than 20 years in the industry has also produced Tibet, A Culture In Exile with Richard Gere and Professor Robert Thurman. His editorial credits include Academy Award nominees Never Cry Wolf, Blue Velvet, and The Mosquito Coast.

Mustafa Ahmed is a multi-faceted percussionist. Since the 1980′s he has performed in concert throughout the United States and Europe with an eclectic group of composers, vocalists, musicians and dancers. He currently performs and records with the critically acclaimed gospel choir Total Praise, the jazz group The Phibes and Arthur’s Landing. www.myspace.com/drumsongcollaborations www.myspace.com/thisisthephibes

Bob Blank has been part of the New York music scene since 1973, and from 1976 till 1987 owned and operated Blank Tapes Recording Studios, where he produced or engineered 19 gold records for artists as diverse as Sting and Instant Funk. Bob’s music production company, Blank Productions, makes music for TV and film, and has provided music for shows as diverse as American Idol and Dance Your Ass Off. Bob also dances, and he and his partner Martha Estevez have been US Over 45 Latin Champions twice. He was also a principal dancer in the Nicole Kidman film The Stepford Wives.

Joyce Bowden feels lucky to have known Arthur and to have worked with him in the 1980′s. Arthur was an unflinching mentor and wonderful friend. Working at Circle Sound in Raleigh, NC, turns out to be to be one aspect of a continuous connection. Recent musical involvement includes Arthur’s Landing as well as the Goodnight Graces and Recent Memory (both on Moon Caravan Records). www.mooncaravan.com www.myspace.com/goodnightgraces www.myspace.com/recentmemory

Ernie Brooks is a bass player and songwriter. A member of Boston band Modern Lovers, he met Arthur Russell at one the group’s last concerts in spring of 1974. Ernie collaborated with Arthur in various projects, including bands Flying Hearts and Necessaries. He currently plays in ensembles with Gary Lucas, Peter Zummo, and Rhys Chatham, and performs as much of Arthur’s work as possible in the band/collective Arthur’s Landing.

Ryan Dohoney is a music historian specializing in American music and culture since 1945. He received his PhD in musicology from Columbia University in 2009. He is currently at work two book projects; a critical history of the life and music of Morton Feldman and a study of the downtown music scene glimpsed through the work Julius Eastman and his collaborators.

Peter Gordon is a composer, musician and producer known for the Love of Life Orchestra (which featured Russell in the original lineup) as well as for music for performance and media. Gordon met Arthur Russell in 1975 and they developed a friendship through shared musical interests. Gordon’s performances and recordings with Russell include Instrumentals, “Clean on Your Bean”, “Tell You Today”, “Kiss Me Again”, and the legendary John Hammond sessions. Gordon and Russell co-wrote the LOLO track “That Hat”. Gordon is Associate Professor of Music at Bloomfield College. www.petergordon.com www.myspace.com/pglolo

Steven Hall was born in Scotland in 1957 and wore a kilt and played the bagpipes when he was a boy–he moved the the US at age 15–went to NYC where he met Allen Ginsberg and Arthur Russell at age 18–the rest is a blur… www.myspace.com/arthurslanding www.myspace.com/recentmemory

Nick Hallett is a New York-based composer, singer, and curator working across a broad range of disciplines and genres. His music has seen recent performances at Joe’s Pub, New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Stone, and ISSUE Project Room. He is composing the music for a theater collaboration with the artist Shana Moulton, playing at The Kitchen in April 2010.

Steve Knutson is the founder of Audika Records. A longtime admirer of Arthur Russell’s work, and a music veteran of over 25 years, Steve Knutson, through his collaboration with Tom Lee has worked to bring the wide breadth of Arthur’s musical imagination back to those that remember him, and introduce his music to a new audience.

Elodie Lauten, daughter of jazz composer Errol Parker, was born and educated in Paris. Moving to New York City, she graduated from NYU with a Master’s in composition. She developed into a full-fledged composer with Lincoln Center credits, chamber and symphonic commissions, several operas, and 29 releases on more than 15 major and independent labels. She is on the faculty at the New York City College of Technology.

Tim Lawrence is the author of Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92, ne
w out from Duke. His first book, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79, was also published by Duke. He runs the Music Culture: Theory and Practice degree at the University of East London and is a member of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research. www.timlawrence.info www.uel.ac.uk/ccsr/

Tom Lee is an elementary school teacher. He met Arthur Russell in the summer of 1978 and lives in the East Village, NYC apartment that he shared with Arthur since 1980. He is honored to be a participant in the enduring appreciation of Arthur’s musical legacy through the film, book, and articles and of course the songs that serve to remind him of a very special time in their lives together.

Gary Lucas is a guitarist, Grammy-nominated songwriter, composer and recording artist with over 20 acclaimed solo albums to date. He has been called “The Thinking Man’s Guitar Hero” (The New Yorker), and tours the world relentlessly both solo and with a variety of ensembles including his longtime band Gods and Monsters. He is responsible for bringing Arthur Russell to the attention of both Rough Trade Records and Upside Records and getting him signed to both labels. www.garylucas.com

Daniel Portland is a conceptual artist and writer. He holds a master’s
degree in arts politics from NYU and his research interests include queer time and space. http://www.ohrenoir.blogspot.com

London-born but New York-based, Simon Reynolds is a freelance journalist and author. His books include Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84, Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews, and Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip Hop. He operates a number of blogs clustered around http://blissout.blogspot.com/

Bill Ruyle has been a percussionist/composer/collaborator for new music, dance, and theater in NYC and abroad since 1974. He has performed with the ensembles of Peter Zummo, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Bill Obrecht, Scott Johnson, Phillip Johnston, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Bob Een, Naaz Hosseini, The Feetwarmers, The Manhattan Marimba Quartet, Last Forever with Dick Connette, Newband, Counter)induction, Arthur’s Landing, Compton Maddux and the Dirt Simple Band, and The Hudson Valley Philharmonic. He first met Arthur Russell while studying at the Manhattan School of Music.

Sukhdev Sandhu is the author of London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined A City (2003) and I’ll Get My Coat (2005). His latest book, Night Haunts: A Journey Through The London Night (2007), has been developed as a series of site-specific performances and soundworks in collaboration with Scanner. He is the Chief Film Critic for the London Daily Telegraph, and Director of Asian/Pacific/American Studies at NYU.

James Merle Thomas is a San Francisco-based curator, writer, and researcher. He is currently completing his PhD in contemporary aesthetics and politics at Stanford University. His most recent curatorial project, “I’m Sorry, But This is How I Learn” explores the relationships between repetition and pedagogy in art and performance, and is touring Europe and the United States throughout 2009-2010 (Kunstverein, Munich; Artist’s Space, New York City).

Matt Wolf is a filmmaker in New York. His documentary Wild Combination about Arthur Russell was released theatrically and on DVD by Plexifilm and is currently airing on the Sundance Channel. He is finishing a documentary in collaboration with New York City Ballet Dancers about the landmark 1958 ballet Opus Jazz by Jerome Robbins for PBS Great Performances.

Peter Zummo is a musician focusing on the trombone, a composer of works and processes for interactive ensemble, and a band-leader, engineer, and producer. His work is informed by four decades of performing for other composers and band-leaders. He also collaborates with artists in theatre, dance, poetry, film and television.

The conference organizers Peter Gordon (Bloomfield College), Tim Lawrence (University of East London), and Sukhdev Sandhu (New York University) would like to thank Toriono Gandy (technical director) and Kit Fitzgerald (video documentation) for their help. They would also like to acknowledge the English Department at NYU, Bloomfield College, the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of London, the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at NYU, the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at NYU, the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture at NYU, and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis for their help in sponsorship and space to support the conference. Thanks also go to the New Media Department at Concordia College, New York, as well as the Creative Arts and Technology Division at Bloomfield College for additional assistance. This brochure has been printed by Categrafica at Bloomfield College.

Marshall Berman has just finished reading from On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square, and now it’s David Freeland’s turn.

Freeland: I’d also like to read something related to a specific cultural site — Harlem — and I think this will give you an insight into my approach into writing this book. For those who have not read it, in Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure, I uncover remnants of still-existing but little-knownManhattan buildings in order to explore lost cultural histories and human stories. All the buildings are related to different facets of our entertainment culture.

So I’m going to read something from the epilogue, which is actually the first time since the introduction that I step back into the first person and engage readers in questions about the future of our city and preservation. I hope that by this point, after exploring all the stories in the earlier chapters, people will have had the chance to think about some questions of their own.

So here I’m turning to the scene of one of the sites that I’ve discussed earlier, the former Nest nightclub on 133rd Street in Harlem, which opened in the early 1920s and became a place that nurtured so much of what we’ve come to know as performance culture in the city — and in the country. The Nest Club and 133rd Street as a whole was a precursor to “Swing Street” — as 52nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues became known, beginning in the 1930s and lasting until the 1950s. (Ironically Billie Holliday and other musicians referred to [133rd Street] as the copy of 52nd Street.) . . . As some of you may know, aside from the old 21 Club, [52nd Street] is all  office towers now, while elements of the original 133rd Street have survived, even though there are no plaques or signs to mark the spot.

Berman: It was under the radar.

Freeland: That’s right.

Freeland then began his reading. Click the continuation link to read the passage that he chose. We’ll let the conversation between Berman and Freeland begin tomorrow.

It is a sweltering afternoon in August 2007. Armed with a flashlight, I
head toward 133rd Street, where I plan to tour what remains of the Nest
Club, now heavily damaged after a fire and On the market for sale. A
young man from the realty company meets me in front, beneath a rounded
canopy that still advertises “Browns Palace” (the last business to be
located here), and shakes my hand. He is probably less excited than I
at the prospect of crawling through an ancient jazz shrine without air
conditioning on One of the hottest days of the year. Given this, his
friendliness is admirable, especially conSidering that I am hardly a
likely buyer. He knows this
but offers to let me inside anyway.

My flashlight proves unnecessary for the building’s ground level, the
part that Once served as the Barbecue Club. Thin shafts of light dart
from two cross-barred windows in back, spotlighting a narrow walkway
made of wooden planks, laid in a zigzagging line down the center of the
room. The entire expanse of floor, save for the planks, is a sea of fallen
paint, thousands of blue shards that gather like creatures in a moat.
Above, giant sheets of pressed tin, rust-colored except for a few
patches still covered in blue, descend at 90-degree angles from the
ceiling.

Moving upstairs to what once was the kitchen we encounter an overturned
sofa resting against a wall, bottom up. In the middle of the room,
broken chairs, drawers, tin pots, and bottles of talcum powder have
been gathered in a tall pile. Set to the side like a bonfire survivor
is a paperback
copy of Call Her Miss Ross. I reflect upon the weird boomerang effect
of cultural influence: a germ of creation leaves the Nest and gives
birth to 133rd Street, which in turn nurtures Billie Holiday, who rises
to greatness, dies, and is portrayed in a movie by Diana Ross, who
eventually becomes the subject of a pulp biography, a copy of which
lands back at the Nest
like a mutated descendant.

Perspiring, we head to the basement, where the Nest itself was located.
Its walls now resemble the peeling frescoes of Domos Aurea} a faded
patchwork of color. Evidence of !looding persists in the green
outgrowth of mold creeping toward the ceiling, Still, it is possible to
stand within this tiny space and understand the close-fit nature of it
and, further, grasp just how revolutionary 1920s speakeasies and
nightclubs truly were, especially those in Harlem: men and women of
varying races and orientations, grouped together in a place no larger
than most living rooms. With Sam Wooding’s band thrust next to dancers
and guests, an evening at the Nest would have offered a communal
experience unmatched even by today’s cramped jazz clubs in the Village,
Inside these walls, protected by darkness and depth, New Yorkers who
ordinarily would not have spoken to one another in the daytime created,
temporarily, a new world through the negotiation of space. Herein lay
the magic of the Nest.

 ”You know, Mae West used to come here a lot,” I mention casually,
seeking, I guess, to impress my young guide. There is silence.

“Urn, do you know who that is?”

“Uh, no, actually, I don’t.” He is cheerful, and there is no reason to
expect that he spent his childhood watching old movies all his local
UHF station. Cultural reference points, I realize, have shifted.

“If someone buys this, what do you think it will be used for?” Until
now I have hesitated to ask this question, but always there is hope.
New Yorkers who grow attached to their buildings remain incautiously
optimistic.

“It’ll probably be a knockdown!” My heart wants to sink but I
understand that this is a building for sale, and it is the realtor’s
job to soil it. We are on struggling block of West 133rd Street, not in
landmarked Sugar Hill or some other neighborhood emblematic of New
York’s social elite, The former Nest represents a development
opportunity, and, like many Harlem buildings, it seems to face two
choices: it can remain and grow even more decayed or it can be
replaced. But there is a third possibility of adaptive reuse, one that
would preserve elements  of the structure — its
graceful facade, for example — so that some recognition can be given
to its specialness, its importance as a site where a quintessentially
New York institution, jazz performance, was fostered. That would be
something for Sam Wooding, for Luis Russell, for the “sepia” Gloria
Swanson, for all their contributions — and for us.

[And then just a couple of questions I'd like to end with.]

When future New Yorkers explore their neighborhoods, what will they
see? Will they be able to trace history the way we have done in this
book, by finding visual clues and investigating them? New Yorkers are
an inherently curious lot; once they make the city their own they want
to know
everything they can about it. The challenge they will face in the
future is that exploring history becomes mare difficult once the
physical markers themselves are gone. In Harlem, on old Doyers Street,
along Tin Pan Alley, even in chaotic Times Square, it is still possible
to discern small pockets lingering behind the advance of development,
as if to tell us their stories while they still can. With their
assistance it is possible to reconstruct a world, using the pieces they
have to offer as a foundation on which to create and build. By
contrast, who today Can truly imagine what the Astor Hotel bar might
have been like, or the theaters of Union Square, or the Haymarket dance
hall? So completely have they disappeared that to envision them now
would require an act of conjuring far beyond the powers ofliteral
observation. The resources of city archives and libraries provide our
only key. Though these collections are comprehensive, actually seeing a
building with one’s own eyes and understanding the physical context in
which it lives is tremendously gratifying.

But what is the purpose of exploring our history? How do we as New
Yorkers benefit from it? The answer, like so many of the contentious
issues affecting the world landscape, lies in the conceptual
understanding of home, of one’s own residence as a place of security
and order. We need to feel that we belong in our space, that we have a
right to it. Our struggle to define New York and shape it for ourselves
has led, as we have seen, to the creation of distinct zones,
characterized largely through the ways in which we choose to spend our
money and our leisure time. The boundaries have been contested, often
by those in charge of apportioning the city’s resources, and their
preservation has come as the result of struggle. In many cases we have
lost, and no doubt we will lose again in the future. Lurking behind the
current argument about Manhattan’s depletion of character is the fear
that somehow, through the accreted loss of physical space, the city as
a site of being will no longer be ours. Architecture grows and exists
largely outside our personal orbit of influence; we cannot always
control what is put up and taken down. But we continue to lobby for the
kind of city that reflects who we are as citizens of New York.

New York was not built upon the efforts of a few; it grew out of the
collective dreams and wishes of its multitudes. The people who have
made it great are not just Rockefellers and Vanderbilts; they are
chorus dancers, saloon owners; police, entertainers) workers,
visitors-all whose contributions,
however limited in immediate scope, have built Manhattan into a place
of cultural influence. Their presence can be felt still; they ask to be
remembered even as they evaporate before us.
 

Our final session featured a conversation between Marshall Berman, the author (most recently) of On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square, and David Freeland, author of the recently published Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure.

It began in unexpected fashion — with a screening of the closing scene from Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1935 — the fabulous “Lullaby of Broadway” number. Take a look below (the clip is split into two parts on You Tube):

When the lights came up, Berman began to dicsuss the genesis of his book On the Town, holding up a photocopy of an illustration from the book’s preface (shown below) and describing it to the audience:

“Hollywood has taken over. … ” During the
Depression, while Hollywood movies flourished as Broadway theater collapsed,
some people wondered why there should be any continuing need for Broadway to
exist at all. However, one of the outstanding things that Hollywood did all
through the Depression was to produce brilliant representations of Broadway:
42nd Street, Stage Door, the Busby Berkeley Gold Diggers series, and, at the
very end of the 1930s, Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance. Why should this be?
One reason may be that, at a time when the movies were on a roll of spectacular
prosperity, many people benefiting from it had begun their careers on the stage,
and still believed that the theater, so much more precarious and vulnerable, was
infinitely more “real,” more “authentic!” Another reason is that
these films are all about the backstage world, the world behind the world of illusion;
they are about how theatrical illusions are created by real people, members of
real hierarchies of power, men and women who are willing to sell themselves in
exchange for real money-but who usually can’t find buyers. The deuce in the
Depression is a street full of people who desperately need work; if the star
doesn’t shine, they can’t pay the rent.

Since the year 2000, a theatrical revival of 42nd Street has
been playing on the deuce, in the newly reconstructed American Airlines
Theater. The current revival reproduces 1930s Broadway decoration very well.
But although the play is set in 1933, this production is totally insensitive to
the meaning of 1933, the worst year in the Depression, and the year that both
Roosevelt and Hitler came to power. It occludes the economic pressure, shared
by actors, directors, stagehands, and audiences-and even by the backers-that
gave the plot its human urgency, and gave the show’s triumph its big thrill.
The revival never even uses the word “Depression,” or any number of
other words it could have used instead, to convey that the whole country was in
trouble. But it was this trouble, so damaging to Depression Broadway, that made
Broadway qualified, maybe for the first time in its history, to represent a
real world. To get a bead on today’s vision of 42nd Street, try to imagine
South Pacific without World War Two.

One of the most poignant 1930s meditations on individuality
and collectivity is Busby Berkeley’s “Lullaby of Broadway” number
from Gold Diggers of 1935. The star of this number, playing Times Girl in the
1930s, is the actress and singer Wini Shaw. She is its star, not only in the
sense that she does more acting and singing and gets more screen time than
anybody else. She is the star in the sense that the whole number, with its cast
of hundreds, is about her, her Bildung, her inner life, her fantasies about
herself, her quest for identity. Everything is dramatized as if it is her
dream. So far as I know, this is the one place in Berkeley’s oeuvre where he
focuses on an individual and her inner life. Of course, he brings us his usual
Piranesian vistas and gargantuan choruses; but now they mean more than usual,
because, instead of just dropping these tropes on our heads from some Olympian
sky, he shows us how they can spring organically from a woman’s life, from her
desires and her dreams and “her yearning capacity.” People who don’t
like Berkeley’s work have always called his landscapes “Fascist,” but
Fascism is never at home with human inwardness, or with anyone’s struggle for
identity, certainly not a working girl’s. (Indeed, the seductiveness of Fascism
has always been its promise to deliver modern men and women from the struggle for
identity.)”

The most famous shot in this number comes at its dramatic
climax, when, pressed by a great crowd, to our horror, the heroine plunges over
a balcony-or does she fall, or is she pushed? (The uncertainty is as disturbing
today as it was to its first generation of viewers.) But the image that is richest
and most profound comes at the very start of her dream. First she sings the
“Lullaby” slowly, with only a faint accompaniment; her face is
luminous against a background of total blackness. She puts special stress on one
of the last lines: “Your baby goes home to her flat I to sleep all
day.” Then the camera zooms in, and settles on her face at close-up range.
She smiles up at us, her black hair curls over her face. Then she lights up,
and suddenly, magically, her face becomes the city: Her eyes, nose, mouth
metamorphose into a landscape of midtown New York. Now she sings the same song
again, but at a jazzy tempo, backed by an inner big band. Gradually her dream
unfolds; a metropolitan crowd surrounds and envelops her; she alternates between
merging with this crowd and emerging from it. She imagines herself in an
immense ballroom: Sometimes she is part of a huge chorus; then she is a
soloist, whirled through the air by a man whose moves suggest Fred Astaire;
then she is on a balcony having drinks and watching the action with a movie
star, who turns out to be Dick Powell. Powell plays a distinctive role in her
dream life, in fact the role he created in 42nd Street: an empathetic and
unselfish mentor who is happy to teach a woman all he knows and work to help
her become a star without making sexual or romantic demands of his own. In
American culture, this is a new form of “Mr. Right.” When Powell
urges her to join the crowd that is gathering just below them, his word carries
weight. She agrees, sings alluringly, “Why don’t you come and get
me?” and then instantly (remember this is a dream) becomes not just a face
in the crowd but its leader. She leads a mass dance up and up a grand spiral
staircase, till she reaches the roof of a penthouse with a spectacular view of
Times Square. She and Powell have a passionate kiss that somehow goes through
the terrace’s glass door. As they kiss, a great wave of people pours through
all around her. These are the people she led up the stairs, doesn’t she
remember? It looks as if she has forgotten, she looks confused and tries to tom
away, even if only for just a second. But as she turns, in the midst of this
crowd, their sheer momentum plunges her off the roof. Then comes the classic
horrific “plunge” shot, in which we see the roofs and streets getting
bigger and bigger, closer and closer. Just before the crash, we fade to black.
The narrative reverses itself, and the city becomes her face. Home again, she
climbs the stairs to her room. Her neighbors are all smiles. “Your baby
goes home to her flat I to sleep all day.” We know she will wake in time
for another night on the town.

This is one of the most memorable scenes in American cinema.
But its star, Winifred “Wini” Shaw, was dropped almost as
dramatically as the girl she plays. She appeared in twenty-six films from 1934
to 1937, then nothing at all until her death in 1982.

[From On the Town, pp. 136-39.]

We want to take special notice this week of a rapidly approaching conference co-organized by our colleague Sukhdev Sandhu, also to be held at NYU: Kiss Me Again: The Life and Legacy of Arthur Russell. The conference will take place primarily at 721 Broadway, Ste. 612 — Tisch Performance Studies — with other events happening at Housing Works Cafe, Public Assembly, and Bar 169.

Russell lived and worked in New York from the early 1970s to his AIDS-related death in 1992. He was instrumental to a range of music scenes downtown, from his work as a curator at the Kitchen, to his recording of underground dance music under the names Loose Joints and Dinosaur L, to his performance with vocals and cello in the ghostly compositions known as the World of Echo. Although his work and influence was far-reaching, only recently has he begun to receive widespread public recognition, including the release of many long-lost songs and new interest in his biography by Matt Wolf, Tim Lawrence, and others.

The daylong conference on Saturday, beginning at 10 am, will feature Mustapha Ahmed, Bob Blank, Joyce Bowden, Ernie Brooks, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Steve Knutson, Elodie Lauten, Tim Lawrence, Tom Lee, Gary
Lucas, Simon Reynolds, Will Socolov, Peter Zummo & others, including a screening of the recent Arthur Russell documentary Wild Combination (filmmaker Matt Wolf will be on hand for Q&A). I can’t praise this movie enough and really encourage anyone who hasn’t yet been exposed to Russell to take advantage of this screening. (The movie’s also readily available on DVD.) The prior evening (Friday) at 9 pm Steven Hall and Joyce Bowden will perform Arthur Russell songs at Bar 169.

Saturday evening, from 7 to 10, Housing Works Cafe will host more performances of Russell’s music — by Mira Billotte, Joyce Bowden, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Nick Hallett, Rachel Henry, Alex Waterman, Peter Zummo and others — along with a booklaunch for Tim Lawrence’s  Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92, which will be officially released by Duke University Press next month. From 10 pm to 4 am, Public Assembly (70 N. 6th St. in Williamsburg) will host a dance party, with a $10 donation at the door to benefit the AIDS charity God’s Love We Deliver.

If you can make it to the 4:05 mark in this song and not spend the rest of the day smiling, I’d suggest you’ve got some work to do. Then again, who among us doesn’t?
 

For the full Lost New York program click here.

The session titles below link to extended descriptions of each session.

All sessions are free and open to the public.

FRIDAY, 2 OCT

4:00 PM — OPENING PLENARY: RECLAIMING THE DUTCH (Fales Library, 70 Wash Sq South, 3rd floor)

Joanne van der Woude (Harvard University)
Elizabeth Bradley (New York Public Library)
Lytle Shaw (New York University)

5:30 – 6:30 PM — RECEPTION AND EXHIBITION OPENING: “LOST NEW YORK” (Fales Library Gallery)

SATURDAY, 3 OCT. (13-19 University Place, room 102)

9:00 AM: Coffee and tea

9:15 AM – 10:45 AM: FROM ADRIAEN VAN DER DONCK TO RICHARD HELL: REFLECTIONS ON CURATING “LOST NEW YORK”

John Easterbrook (New York University)
Kristen Doyle Highland (New York University)
Jane Greenway Carr (New York University)
John Melillo (New York University)

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM: MORNING KEYNOTE ADDRESS: DAPHNE BROOKS ON MOMS MABLEY

Daphne Brooks (Princeton University)

12:30 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: BLOGGING THE APOCALYPSE: NEW MEDIA, NEW GENRES, AND THE LITERATURE OF A LOST CITY

Sukhdev Sandhu (New York University), moderator
Lost City
Ephemeral New York
Flaming Pablum: Vanishing Downtown
Bowery Boogie

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM: AFTERNOON KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: DAVID FREELAND AND MARSHALL BERMAN IN DIALOGUE

Marshall Berman (City College of New York and Graduate Center of the City University of New York)
David Freeland (independent writer, New York City)

Conference sponsored by the Department of English and Humanities Initiative at New York University. Organized by Cyrus R. K. Patell and Bryan Waterman.