Elizabeth Ewen was a scholar of women's history, immigration, and film. She was among the first feminist historians to write about early American cinema. Ewen was a professor of American Studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury (SUNY).
Noted film historian Robert Sklar described Ewen's 1980 article, “City Lights: Immigrant Women and the Rise of the Movies,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, as 'the first significant writing by a historian on early American cinema to follow the author's and Jowett's books.” Ewen's book, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars, examined the role of cinema in the lives of immigrant girls and women in New York City's Lower East Side. Filmmaker Ellen Noonan has explained that the book was the inspiration for the 1993 documentary Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl.
Elizabeth Ewen authored several books with her husband, media historian Stuart Ewen, and her colleague Rosalyn Baxandall, including Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness (1992), Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (2000), Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality (2006).
Ewen's work is frequently cited by contemporary historians.
Elizabeth Ewen died May 29, 2012, in Manhattan, New York.
Selected publications
- Elizabeth Ewen, “City Lights: Immigrant Women and the Rise of the Movies,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 5, no. 3, 1980.
- Elizabeth Ewen (4 January 2008). Picture Windows. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01178-0.
References
- Louise McReynolds (2003). Russia at Play: Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era. Cornell University Press. pp. 265–. ISBN 0-8014-4027-0.
- " No ____ Need Apply". New York Times. By DAVID BERREBY, February 4, 2007
- Robert Sklar, "Oh! Althusser!: Historiography and the Rise of Cinema Studies ," Radical History Review 41 (1988): 27,
- Susan L. Roberson (1998). Women, America, and Movement: Narratives of Relocation. University of Missouri Press. pp. 119–. ISBN 978-0-8262-1176-7.
- "Remembering Elizabeth Ewen | Now and then: An American Social History Project blog".
- Sammy Richard Danna (1992). Advertising and Popular Culture: Studies in Variety and Versatility. Popular Press. pp. 23–. ISBN 978-0-87972-528-0.
- Jean-Christophe Agnew; Roy Rosenzweig (15 April 2008). A Companion to Post-1945 America. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 250–. ISBN 978-1-4051-2319-8.
- "Picture Windows: Suburbs Happen".Journal of Urban Affairs Volume 24, Issue 2
- Steven J. Ross (1999). Working-class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America. Princeton University Press. pp. 287–. ISBN 0-691-02464-2.
- "ELIZABETH R. EWEN Obituary (2012) New York Times".
- Laura R. Prieto (2001). At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America. Harvard University Press. pp. 256–. ISBN 978-0-674-00486-3.
- Institute of Contemporary Jewry The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ezra Mendelsohn Professor of History; Institute of Contemporary Jewry The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Richard I. Cohen Professor of History (30 November 1990). Studies in Contemporary Jewry : Volume VI: Art and Its Uses. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 362–. ISBN 978-0-19-506188-8.
- http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?pid=157878129 "ELIZABETH R. EWEN - Obituary".