Looking at the emergent industries of spectacle practices in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mass culture, "Spectacle Culture and American Identity" investigates the immersive energies of American landscape and history as a fluid scene space. The changing dynamics of the American experience are viewed in relation to the ways entertainment technologies flourishing in spectacle attractions communicate iconic sites and scenes. Arguing the ways in which spectacle immersion enacts an on-going civilian dialogue with landscape, Tenneriello uses a series of case studies featuring panoramas, multimedia performance, theatrical spectacles, exhibition sites, and museum dioramas to trace the country's movement from agrarian to multinational economies.

Scenic spectacles collapse the borders of graphic and visual arts, multimedia technology, spectatorship and architecture. Drawing upon various systems of commercial, institutional and public spectacle that intersect with scenic stages of the national landscape, Tenneriello examines how spectacle is entrenched in the formation of national identity.