Coney Island Research Articles

"Artificial Mothers" on Display: How Public Exhibits Shaped the Development of Incubators.

For the first four decades of the twentieth century, premature babies in the United States were primarily treated in infant incubators not in hospitals, but in a public setting-at the Coney Island amusement park. Although incubators are now an indispensable medical device, their origins lie in public exhibitions rather than a professional medical environment. This article uncovers the longer history behind this unusual episode in neonatal care and technology. Offering the first comprehensive account of the early history of the infant incubator, it traces how these devices were first developed and showcased at exhibition sites across Europe in the 1890s. A comparative study of these exhibitions in Europe and the United States from 1890 to 1943 highlights significant differences in how industry, science, education, and spectacle interacted in each country. Moreover, it examines the changing relationship between public displays and professional medicine during this period, illustrating how technology developed in public spaces before transitioning into the professional medical domain.

Becoming Mermaid: Exploring Human and More-Than-Human Relationality

The mermaid is a hybrid being, a product of human imagination that has dual potentiality; she can either uphold or challenge heteropatriarchal and able-bodied norms. She also has the potential to highlight human relations with more-than-human life. This paper explores the process of becoming mermaid in four performances that reinforce and/or challenge normate embodiment to varying degrees. One, at Weeki Wachee Springs, remains firmly tied to normate white heteropatriarchal values. Another, the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, is a multivalent performance that both affirms and challenges dominant norms of embodiment. The others, solo performances by Amber DiPietra and Hanna Cormick, highlight the humanity of disabled people and the kinship among human animals and our more-than-human kin.

Coney Island Babies: Children's Aid Societies and Health Homes at Coney Island

Coney Island Babies: Children's Aid Societies and Health Homes at Coney Island

The Sun Rises on Coney Island

Abstract Japanese competitive eaters first arrived at the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest held annually on July 4 at Coney Island, New York, in the late 1990s, transforming the event from a local curiosity into a modern sport in the process. From 1997 to 2006, Hirofumi Nakajima, Kazutoyo Arai, Takeru Kobayashi, and other Japanese eaters redefined the quest for records in competitive eating and introduced new training and competition techniques to their American counterparts. By leaning into jingoistic rhetoric to market a series of regional qualifiers and form the International Federation of Competitive Eating, Nathan's organizers used the Japanese as a foreign rival around which to construct and expand the sport's bureaucracy. Japanese intervention at Coney Island catalyzed the popularity of competitive eating and sparked processes of sportification that transformed the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest from a boardwalk sideshow into a global spectacle.

Commemorating 100 years of beach nourishment on Coney Island, New York

Commemorating 100 years of beach nourishment on Coney Island, New York

Lorca’s New York Drawings: Fabulous Beasts, Leashed Wild Animals and the So-called Escena de domador

Ten drawings that Lorca produced in New York or shortly thereafter feature animales fabulosos. This article proposes that he found inspiration not only in the illuminations of the Beato de Liébana manuscript held at El Escorial but also in two others recently acquired by the Morgan Library. Furthermore, the exploration of other medieval images depicting leashed wild animals, alongside the elucidation of certain elements of circus culture observable at Coney Island—the sideshow strongman—lead to a significant reinterpretation of the relationship between figure and beast in one of those ten works, namely the Escena de domador con animal fabuloso.

A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now by Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis

Reviewed by: A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now by Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis Britt Halvorson Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis, A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now. Columbus: Trillium/The Ohio State University Press, 2021. 243 pp. $24.95 (paper). A central problem in critical whiteness studies has been what historian Kathleen Belew has identified as a perceived bifurcation between violent White nationalist groups and mainstream American life. A History of Hate in Ohio joins a variety of other recent works in challenging that division. Although it focuses mainly on White power groups, the book examines White supremacy broadly and gives attention to its many forms, from segregated [End Page 199] public schools to settler violence toward Native Americans. Collectively, these different manifestations paint a portrait of racism across different periods of Ohio history in legislative and everyday forms as well as among White mobs and White hate groups. While readers should be warned that the content is disturbing, the book's unflinching, detailed account of White racial violence in Ohio can serve as a valuable reference for not only experts but also anti-racist organizations and perhaps even movements toward reparations. One of the book's contentions is that, due to Ohio's well-documented abolitionist history, the state's longstanding White racial violence has been hidden behind a "mythology of Ohio as a racial utopia somehow free from the racism of the South" (65). The authors point repeatedly to Ohioans' ties with White hate groups and discriminatory legislation elsewhere in the U.S., questioning the state's exceptionalism in this regard. For instance, the author of the book's first half, historian Michael E. Brooks, describes how nineteenth-century Black Laws in Ohio restricted the movement of free Black individuals and were based directly on similar laws in Virginia and Kentucky that supported plantation owners' interests. The state required that, beginning in 1804, Black individuals carry a certificate of freedom. Employers could not hire people without this certificate and were subject to fines if they did so. Through a sleight of hand, the Ohio legislature even passed laws beginning in 1829 that ensured that public taxes went to the education of White but not Black children, because persons of color were not levied property taxes in support of schools. Combined with an 1861–1887 ban on interracial marriage, these laws created a far-reaching system of racial inequality, even though racial discrimination was officially banned in public spaces by a little-enforced 1884 civil rights act. Through its historical reach, the book also assembles a view of both White mob violence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as its relationship to the later terror campaigns of the Black Legion, Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, and other neo-Nazi groups. In one case, a White mob formed in 1862 when Black dock workers in Toledo began receiving the same wages as White laborers. In another, a White crowd of fifteen hundred gathered in Akron in 1900 when a Black man, Louis Peck, was accused and convicted of assaulting a White girl, even though Peck was later pardoned by the governor in 1916. Such mob violence eventually morphed, following the cultural rise of sympathetic portraits of White nationalism in Birth of a Nation and elsewhere, into public Klan rallies in the 1920s. These were major [End Page 200] spectacles, with one at the Wood County Fairgrounds numbering fifteen thousand people. Over the next century, White power organizations went through numerous re-groupings in Ohio, as leaders were sometimes tried for crimes or had ideological disagreements. Against this backdrop of the continued reorganization of White hate groups, the book shows that civil rights had to be legally and socially fought for by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Black activists at each step, from Black customers being refused service at a Yellow Springs barber shop to Black patrons being denied entry to Cincinnati's Coney Island theme park (which did not admit Black patrons until 1955). By offering a meticulous analysis of Ohio's White hate groups through the present, the book also gives scholars and activists...

The Selkie of the City Tells All

The Selkie of the City Tells All Jd Scott (bio) We meet at the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island three years in a row. We meet on a rooftop on the Fourth of July, the air smoky with bodega-bought salutes. We meet on a broken-down B3 bus on Avenue U. We meet in front of Macy’s between holidays, the arm of an animatronic elf waving in the window display. We meet over dollar pizza. We meet at a concert in an empty pool basin in McCarren Park. We meet in Marble Hill. We meet during intermission. We meet at a rent party. We meet over a rent boy. We meet at a LAN party in Fordham. We meet through the divorce. We meet over hotpot in Flushing, our hands gunning for the same ladle in a tub of sesame sauce. We meet through mutual friends. We meet when the body is discovered. We meet at a rave in an auto-something warehouse beneath the BQE. We meet on DMT. We meet at the Bowery Mission. We meet on the same ferry for forty years. We meet at the Diptyque sample sale: your nose down by a candle, its name spelled in elongated French. You are a classically trained painter who makes do drawing sidewalk signs. You are an electrician with nine fingers. You are on the lam. You are a Slavic Studies major at Columbia. You sell nutcrackers every July at Jacob Riis. You are a piragüero perched up in El Barrio. You make a 524 on your MCAT. You are half-retired, playing dice on the sidewalk in summer, playing a temporary snow laborer in winter. You are a deaf waiter at Tavern on the Green. You read tarot on Grand. You are an absentminded dog walker. You have a stutter. You have the cutest button dimples. You are fighting for your life on Rikers Island. You own a beautiful home in Astoria. You rent a basement beneath a bakery in Sunset Park and break in at night to steal cháng zĭ bāo. You make the best chicken mandi rice in Morris Park. You were born (and will die) in Queens. You are twins who don’t know how to share. I remind you of a dentist, of a doorman, of a brother. I remind you of a son, somebody’s ex-best friend. We make small talk. I play it shy. I play it tough. I get real sweet when we get close enough. [End Page 126] Then I take my skin off. I am the city, and my skin is cigarette butts and piss-summer scent. It’s the same magazine sample of Santal 33 from Le Labo coated onto my pulse. My skin is neon and concrete and sakura blossoming at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden each May. My skin is high rise with all the lights on. It’s Times Square. It’s this is a Howard Beach bound A train, the next stop is Broadway Junction. It’s a warm cup of broth in a blizzard, a margarita in a Styrofoam to-go cup in June. My skin is sweat. My hair is kinky, slick, tight, loose, long, buzzed, gone. When you see me, you see the part you need. That’s when I stop being the city and become something you can perceive. That’s when I grow hands and knees. You see the twenty-three-minute affair at the Christopher Street’s westside piers. You see me for twenty-three years in your bedroom. When I take off my skin, you feel comforted. Most of you end up loving me. Sometimes I love you back. Always you see me until our end. Rarely do you see me until your end. It never gets easier, that part. I cannot give you eternity. I change for you, sure, but I change for myself, too. I compromise; I make amends. When I fold my skin like a coat in your closet, I become the only knowable part of me. When I give up my secret, it seldom goes well. Inevitably, you start plotting to keep me. You hide my...

Something Beautiful and Powerful: Politics, Art, and Bread and Puppet Theater

Something Beautiful and Powerful: Politics, Art, and Bread and Puppet Theater

Little Amal’s New York Journey: The Big Puppet in the Big Apple

Little Amal’s New York Journey: The Big Puppet in the Big Apple

The Lure of the Beach: A Global History by Robert C. Ritchie

Reviewed by: The Lure of the Beach: A Global History by Robert C. Ritchie Douglas Booth (bio) The Lure of the Beach: A Global History By Robert C. Ritchie. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. Pp. xiv + 321. The Lure of the Beach is a grand narrative of the development of beach resorts. Author Robert Ritchie begins his narrative on the English beach in the eighteenth century, where the upper classes, upon the advice of medical practitioners, immersed themselves in cold seawater as a general therapy. The beachbased health resorts that developed with this practice subsequently diffused to the British colonies, Europe, and the United States. As the demand for accommodations and bathing facilities grew, entrepreneurs and municipal officials welcomed the economic contributions of beach resorts. In the nineteenth century, promenades (or boardwalks in America) and piers with amusement centers helped transform the beach into "a bustling scene of noisy entertainment" (p. 107). Mechanical rides and amusement parks drew larger crowds: two million people visited Blackpool in 1893; twenty million people visited Coney Island in 1909. Sunbathing, the therapeutic tan, and functional—and briefer—bathing costumes broadened the appeal in the early twentieth century, and the beach increasingly signified "physical fitness, outdoor sports, and youthful appearance" (p. 170). Celebrities and sports stars visited beach resorts, which spread to Egypt, Mexico, the Philippines, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, and beyond. Today, beach resorts exist in myriad forms, from exclusive luxury resorts in the Caribbean and the Pacific to mega beaches exemplified by Australia's Gold Coast and Florida's Emerald Coast. In the final two chapters, Ritchie moves away from the narrative of development and turns to the problems confronting contemporary beach resorts. These include access, pollution, mining, sand replenishment, and rising sea levels. Predictions of sea level rises (3 feet by 2050, 10 feet by 2100, 15 feet by 2300) leave Ritchie pessimistic. He submits that governments and policy [End Page 1232] makers will prioritize the protection of urban infrastructure—"water supplies, roads, sewage facilities, power plants" and the like—over beach resorts and public beaches (p. 248). Ritchie builds his narrative around functional interrelationships between social and technological change and innovation. In this narrative form, the development of beach resorts depends upon overcoming mainly technical issues—notably access, accommodations, the presentation of bathing bodies, and pollution. In each case, technical/bureaucratic and technological solutions are readily at hand. Railways and steamships ensured access in the early days; today cars, highways, cheap airfares, and packaged holidays deliver people to beach resorts around the world, while paid holidays ensure beachgoers have the time and financial wherewithal to stay. Entrepreneurs saw, and continue to see, opportunities in providing beach accommodations. Horse-drawn bathing machines resolved public displays of immodesty before municipalities regulated and enforced bathing costumes. Legislation compelled municipal and regional authorities to close drains, thereby removing sewage from the sand and, increasingly, the sea. Even the cold-water therapy recommended by eighteenth-century medical practitioners has a contemporary technical equivalent with blue health researchers "measuring the physical and mental advantages to seawater" (p. 225). Ritchie does not ignore the social relationships that have been critical to the development of beach resorts, citing copious examples of class, gender, racial, and cultural divisions. Nonetheless, the form of the narrative privileges bureaucratic and technical solutions and technology over social relationships. The Lure of the Beach is a thoroughly researched, interesting social history. An international reach justifies the "global history" of the subtitle, and splashes of lightheartedness and wry humor add to the readability. Yet building a global narrative of beach resorts around functional interrelationships between social and technological change and innovation strikes me as passé. At the very least, this approach smooths over important nuances and details of the past and present. Should we really believe that the "decadent" French were more critical to shaping the beach as an erotic site than the "cold and puritanical" English (p. 59)? Can we continue to whitewash the influence on settlers of coastal Indigenous peoples and their relationships with beaches? What are the (unintended) consequences of simply describing the destruction of coastal boardwalks, piers, and resorts without reflecting on, or critically analyzing, how we conceptualize and relate to the...

Modernism, Identity, and Spirituality in Joseph Stella’s Paintings of Christian Subjects

Abstract Joseph Stella is best known today as one of the first modernist painters in the United States. He created colorful Cubist-Futurist inspired paintings of modern urban structures and spaces, especially the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island. He occasionally did some paintings and drawings of Christian subjects, most often of the Virgin Mary and Jesus and more frequently in the late-1910s and 1920s, but these remain little-known and have received scant scholarly attention. Stylistically, they are rooted in a complex fusion of Symbolism, Cubism, and Futurism and often reflect the post-World War I return to greater verisimilitude and clear, solid forms and believable spaces. These works reveal Stella’s complex spirituality and how he reconnected to his Roman Catholic, Italian roots and reconciled them with American urban, industrial, and secular values. Most of them are complex syntheses of his Christian piety and sexual desires and needs. Although limited in quantity and scope, some writings by Stella and those who knew him suggest his sexual concerns were often intensely lustful and frenzied. Therefore his paintings of the Madonna usually show her as spiritually pure and sensuously arousing. A few paintings, particular from his last years and which do not depict female figures, are more introspective and tranquil in mood and attitude. Stella’s paintings of Christian subjects are an intriguing case study of how modernists returned to traditional religious themes and depicted them in ways that combined the old and the new, the modernist and the more traditionally representational, and the urban and industrial twentieth century with pre-modern life.

Alexandre Lion: The Forgotten Inventor of Incubator Shows.

Alexandre Lion: The Forgotten Inventor of Incubator Shows.

War against Prohibition: Italians and Booze in New York City, 1920–1933

War against Prohibition: Italians and Booze in New York City, 1920–1933

“On Performing Burlesque and Nakedness”: An Interview with Lefty Lucy, New York City, April 30th, 2021

Lefty Lucy recently premiered her burlesque play, A Peep Show Named Desire, in New Orleans. A Burlesque entertainer since 2009, she holds the title of Miss Coney Island in perpetuity and was featured in the Burlesque All-Stars in 2018 on the Fan2Sea Cruise, among other accolades. You can find her every other Wednesday hosting her original gameshow, Burlesque Bingo at the Allways Lounge & Cabaret, or online every other Tuesday @6pmCT modeling for her FREE costumed sketch night: Let’s Art! For more, follow @LeftyLucy on Instagram or visit ILoveLeftyLucy.com

Getting the Hell Over Manhattan

Getting the Hell Over Manhattan

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

How to Make Immersive Technologies More Equitable

Today, immersive technologies—like virtual reality—are celebrated as natural empathy machines, capable of fostering meaningful cross-cultural understanding. I interrogate this assumption through my case study of an early twentieth-century immersive, interactive ride: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1903). The elaborate travel simulation and multisensorial, live-action scenes that followed offered millions of visitors a thrilling glimpse of the electrified future promised by American imperialism. Through 20,000 Leagues, audiences climbed aboard a simulated submarine and traveled to the Arctic (a massive refrigerated warehouse on Coney Island at the height of summer, featuring live polar bears and “authentic” Native Alaskans). Though perhaps experienced simply as entertainment, the ride was a potent pedagogical tool; the amusement introduced visitors to the thrill of “discovery” first-hand while erasing the violence of colonialism. The impact of this ride, and others like it, was profound, contributing to mass support for imperial wars abroad and racial segregation at home. Drawing lessons from my case study, I argue that the early ride was a precursor to twenty-first-century immersive worlds. My work centers on the pressing need to reconnect immersive technology to its historical context or risk reinscribing the imperial gaze into contemporary experiences. To move toward this goal, I offer fellow makers and scholars terminology to articulate the manifestations of the medium’s colonial inheritance, critical questions to guide a more equitable cultural production process, and a contemporary case study of VR film, Traveling While Black (2019), directed by Roger Ross Williams, who is already engaged in this critical work.

A voice for elephants: Kirsten Tan’s Pop Aye and environmental dialogue in Southeast Asia

One of cinema’s foundational films, Thomas Edison’s 60-second actuality film Electrocuting an Elephant (1903) documents the tragic circumstances surrounding the first appearance of an elephant on screen. As the title makes explicit, the film records the killing of an Asian elephant named Topsy, a circus performer, in front of a small crowd at Coney Island. Topsy was fed poisoned carrots, electrocuted and strangled, with the electrocution ultimately killing her.1 The film was used to demonstrate the power of electricity, a new invention at the time, and was initially played on the Edison kinetoscopes. The ‘shock’ of the film, as Lesley Stern has described, functions like an electrical charge transferred to the body of the spectator, decentring human perception and knowledge.2 This early inscription of the human/animal/cinema interface has been reprised in contemporary Southeast Asian cinema to explore more recent human activities in the Anthropocene. Kirsten Tan’s Singapore-Thailand...

“The Incubator Babies of Coney Island: Science, Spectacle and Sentimentality in the American Amusement Park”

“The Incubator Babies of Coney Island: Science, Spectacle and Sentimentality in the American Amusement Park”