Florian Freitag

Visiting scholar whose research interests include theme park studies

Interviewer:
Interviewee:
Florian Freitag
Interview Date:
June 25, 2016

Languages

A professor of American Studies at the University of Mainz in Germany, Florian Freitag recently spent a year as a visiting scholar at the New York City College of Technology. Officially here to do research on 19th-century magazines, his other main research interest is theme parks and he was thrilled to be able to visit Coney Island for the first time during his stay.  Freitag co-leads an interdisciplinary research group at his home university on "Time and Temporality in Theme Parks." In this interview conducted shortly before he left New York, he talks about the ways theme and amusement parks such as Disney's California Adventure and Coney Island depict their own history.