Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its ContextsPaperback, 5 April 2001

Looking back to the sensational or "blood and thunder" melodramas (e.g., The Perils of Pauline, The Hazards of Helen, etc.), Singer uncovers a fundamentally modern cultural expression, one reflecting transformations in the sensory environment of the metropolis, in the experience of capitalism, in the popular imagination of gender, and in the exploitation of the thrill in popular amusement.