WELCOME

to the (mostly) professional website of Jonathan Ezra Goldman, literature/cultural history professor by day, sometime musician by night. I created this site as a one-stop portal for the various projects I've had going on over the past few years, some completed, some in progress.

NEW BOOK

My new book, Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York from the Suppressed to the Strange (SUNY Press, 2026) is out! Email me for a discount code.

This book is a culmination of years of research about 1920s NYC, some of which you can find on the website New York 1920s: One Hundred Years Ago Today, When We Became Modern.

Updates, Fall 2026:

New article! I am honored to have published a piece in Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts, called "A Black Coney Island, Cancelled," about the strange and maddening history of Solomon Riley's attempt to build an amusement park for Black customers at a time when other facilities in NYC operated under Jim Crow practices. The article elaborates on work I did for my book. However, it is also a personal piece; spurred by editor Kyla Kupferstein Torres, I combine historical narrative with some autobiographical material about my privileged ability to move through NYC, and a moment when that was stymied.

Launch Events! I am thrilled to be launching Hidden Histories at the New York Public Library’s “7 Stories Up” series on September 25th, with Robert Snyder, recent official Manhattan Borough Historian, as my conversation partner! Details here! And click below for more event listings.

Explore a playlist of songs discussed in Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York