Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Lorenzkowski, Barbara, 1969-

Title Sounds of ethnicity : listening to German North America, 1850-1914 / Barbara Lorenzkowski
Published Winnipeg [Man.] : University of Manitoba Press, ©2010 (Saint-Lazare, Quebec : Canadian Electronic Library, 2010)

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 295 pages : illustrations, map, portraits
Series Studies in immigration and culture series, 1914-1459 ; 3
Studies in immigration and culture ; 3. 1914-1459
Contents Part I Language Matters -- 1 Territories of Translation: Language and Identity in the Popular Press -- 2 Languages of Ethnicity: Teaching German at Waterloo County's Schools -- 3 Speaking Modern: The Culture of the German-Language Classroom in Buffalo, New York -- Part II Music Matters -- 4 Tunes of Community, Melodies of Race: The Buffalo Singers' Festival, 1860 -- 5 Germania in Amerika: Nation and Ethnicity at the German Peace Jubilees, 1871 -- 6 Soundscapes of Identity: Singing Ethnicity in the Great Lakes Region, 1874-1912 -- 7 Making a Musical Public: Myth, Music, and Modernity, 1883-1901 -- Coda
Summary "Lorenzkowski's focus on language and sound provides a very creative approach to the history of immigration and identity in Canada. While her juxtaposition and linkage of German immigrants in the US and Canada make a major contribution to the field, the attention she pays to language and soundscapes makes this a serious advance in the art of research in the field "--Cecilia Morgan Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Sounds of Ethnicity takes us into the linguistic, cultural, and geographical borderlands of German North America in the Great Lakes region between 1850 and 1914. Drawing connections between immigrant groups in Buffalo, New York, and Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario, Barbara Lorenzkowski examines the interactions of language and music--specifically German-language education, choral groups, and music festivals--and their roles in creating both an ethnic sense of self and opportunities for cultural exchanges at the local, ethnic, and transnational levels. She exposes the tensions between the self-declared ethnic leadership that extolled the virtues of the German mother tongue as preserver of ethnic identity and gateway to scholarship and high culture, and the hybrid realities of German North America where the lives of migrants were shaped by two languages, English and German. Theirs was a song not of cultural purity, but of cultural fusion that gave meaning to the way German migrants made a home for themselves in North America. Written in lively and elegant prose, Sounds of Ethnicity is a new and exciting approach to the history of immigration and identity in North America. --Book Jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 270-288) and index
Subject German Americans -- Ethnic identity
German Americans -- North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- Social life and customs
German Canadians -- North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- Social life and customs
German Americans -- North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- Music
German Canadians -- North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- Languages
German Americans -- North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- Languages
German Canadians -- North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- Music
HISTORY -- Canada -- General.
German Americans
German Americans -- Ethnic identity
German Americans -- Social life and customs
Genre/Form Electronic books
Music
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780887553011
088755301X