This study of six early twentieth-century periodicals serves to refine the traditional image of the inter-war journal as the pre-eminent vehicle of artistic and intellectual renewal. Every periodical has its own history but general themes are clearly identified. Traces emerge of a common commitment to the internationalisation of the arts and we find early and unexpected discussion of Freud, Chaplin and Joyce in Brussels and Berlin, jazz in Vienna and Brussels, Ezra Pound in the Netherlands and Belgium. In contrast to this internationalisation are the ambitions of the various editors to play a significant role in their national cultures. This tension between national and international influences was in the first instance stimulating and innovative. Later, as a result of political and socio-economic developments, the newly achieved openness and exchange were gradually diminished and finally disappeared as did the periodicals themselves.

Forgotten Designers is a book that features the work of thirty American and international costume designers who designed musicals and revues on Broadway from 1900 to 1930. The book features over three hundred images of these designers' color renderings and sketches.

Today, vaudeville is imagined as a parade of slapstick comedians, blackface shouters, coyly revealed knees, and second-rate acrobats. But vaudeville was also America's most popular commercial amusement from the mid-1890s to the First World War; at its peak, 5 million Americans attended vaudeville shows every week. Telling the story of this pioneering art form's rise and decline, David Monod looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Although he acknowledges its quirkiness, Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle. Vaudeville acts celebrated sharp city styles and denigrated old-fashioned habits, showcased new music and dance moves, and promulgated a deeply influential vernacular modernism. The variety show's off-the-rack trendiness perfectly suited an era when goods and services were becoming more affordable and the mass market promised to democratize style, offering a clear vision of how the quintessential twentieth-century citizen should look, talk, move, feel, and act.

A History of the American Musical narrates the evolution of the film musical genre, discussing its influences and how it has come to be defined; the first text on this subject for over two decades, it employs the very latest concepts and research. The most up-to-date text on the subject, with uniquely comprehensive coverage and employing the very latest concepts and research Surveys centuries of music history from the music and dance of Native Americans to contemporary music performance in streaming media Examines the different ways the film musical genre has been defined, what gets counted as a musical, why, and who gets to make that decision The text is written in an accessible manner for general cinema and musical theatre buffs, whilst retaining theoretical rigour in research Describes the contributions made to the genre by marginalized or subordinated identity groups who have helped invent and shape the musical