Arieh Bruce Saposnik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195331219
- eISBN:
- 9780199868100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331219.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter explains the book's central foci—the ways in which Zionism's vision of a new Hebrew nation was translated into the concrete institutions, practices, and rituals that generated a national ...
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This chapter explains the book's central foci—the ways in which Zionism's vision of a new Hebrew nation was translated into the concrete institutions, practices, and rituals that generated a national entity in Palestine. This is placed within the context of the existing literature on the history of Zionism and the Jewish community of Palestine and is framed in terms of the implications of this study for understanding nationalism, secularization, and Jewish modernity. In this context, the chapter sets out the three principal areas in which the book seeks to shed new light. These include chronology (an earlier dating of the formative years to the prewar decade); the relationship between the new Hebrew culture of Palestine and traditional Jewish cultures; and a thicker description of what that culture entailed, based in a methodology that incorporates discourse and imagery with praxis and ritual.Less
This chapter explains the book's central foci—the ways in which Zionism's vision of a new Hebrew nation was translated into the concrete institutions, practices, and rituals that generated a national entity in Palestine. This is placed within the context of the existing literature on the history of Zionism and the Jewish community of Palestine and is framed in terms of the implications of this study for understanding nationalism, secularization, and Jewish modernity. In this context, the chapter sets out the three principal areas in which the book seeks to shed new light. These include chronology (an earlier dating of the formative years to the prewar decade); the relationship between the new Hebrew culture of Palestine and traditional Jewish cultures; and a thicker description of what that culture entailed, based in a methodology that incorporates discourse and imagery with praxis and ritual.
Kerwin Lee Klein
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520268814
- eISBN:
- 9780520948297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520268814.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter begins with a discussion of the New Cultural History, a movement commonly described as history's response to the growing influence of radical, continental conceptions of language. It ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of the New Cultural History, a movement commonly described as history's response to the growing influence of radical, continental conceptions of language. It argues that cultural history's reception of French structural linguistics and post-structuralism was shaped by earlier linguistic turns in American anthropology and analytic philosophy. It notes that language, along with culture, perhaps the most important keyword of the human sciences in the twentieth century, had a lengthy history in North America, where academic and popular studies of linguistics were strongly formed by ethnographic encounters with racial difference. It discusses that some of the most radical renditions of language came not from the deconstructive inclinations of literary critics but from analytical philosophy's encounters with popular anthropology. As a result, when historians began to borrow idioms and phrases from anthropology, they entered a semantic field in which language, art, and racial difference had grown tightly together.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of the New Cultural History, a movement commonly described as history's response to the growing influence of radical, continental conceptions of language. It argues that cultural history's reception of French structural linguistics and post-structuralism was shaped by earlier linguistic turns in American anthropology and analytic philosophy. It notes that language, along with culture, perhaps the most important keyword of the human sciences in the twentieth century, had a lengthy history in North America, where academic and popular studies of linguistics were strongly formed by ethnographic encounters with racial difference. It discusses that some of the most radical renditions of language came not from the deconstructive inclinations of literary critics but from analytical philosophy's encounters with popular anthropology. As a result, when historians began to borrow idioms and phrases from anthropology, they entered a semantic field in which language, art, and racial difference had grown tightly together.
Arieh B. Saposnik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195331219
- eISBN:
- 9780199868100
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331219.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Becoming Hebrew is a study of the ways in which a Zionist national culture was generated in the Jewish Yishuv (prestate community) of Palestine between 1900 and 1914. The book addresses ...
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Becoming Hebrew is a study of the ways in which a Zionist national culture was generated in the Jewish Yishuv (prestate community) of Palestine between 1900 and 1914. The book addresses three principal lacunae in the study of Zionist culture to date. The first of these is chronological. Much of the literature to date has assumed that a distinctive Zionist national culture began to appear in Palestine during the interwar period, whereas Becoming Hebrew argues that its formative period in fact predates the war. Out of this chronological claim emerge the two additional, more conceptually and theoretically substantive, correctives. In the first instance, the book shows that the relationship between the Zionist cultural undertaking and traditional Jewish culture is far more complicated and nuanced than has often been recognized. Joining a new and important historiographical trend, the book suggests further that the Zionist case sheds important light on nationalism generally, which itself emerges in a more complex and dialectical relationship with the religious cultures and traditional societies out of which it grows than has often been acknowledged in much of the now classical literature. Finally, in its conceptualization of “culture” as created in Zionist Palestine, the book synthesizes a literary‐like study of imageries and discourses and a more anthropological examination of observable cultural practices and tangible, public social processes to produce a history of culture as a broad interweaving of many aspects of human life.Less
Becoming Hebrew is a study of the ways in which a Zionist national culture was generated in the Jewish Yishuv (prestate community) of Palestine between 1900 and 1914. The book addresses three principal lacunae in the study of Zionist culture to date. The first of these is chronological. Much of the literature to date has assumed that a distinctive Zionist national culture began to appear in Palestine during the interwar period, whereas Becoming Hebrew argues that its formative period in fact predates the war. Out of this chronological claim emerge the two additional, more conceptually and theoretically substantive, correctives. In the first instance, the book shows that the relationship between the Zionist cultural undertaking and traditional Jewish culture is far more complicated and nuanced than has often been recognized. Joining a new and important historiographical trend, the book suggests further that the Zionist case sheds important light on nationalism generally, which itself emerges in a more complex and dialectical relationship with the religious cultures and traditional societies out of which it grows than has often been acknowledged in much of the now classical literature. Finally, in its conceptualization of “culture” as created in Zionist Palestine, the book synthesizes a literary‐like study of imageries and discourses and a more anthropological examination of observable cultural practices and tangible, public social processes to produce a history of culture as a broad interweaving of many aspects of human life.
John Nguyet Erni and Lisa Yuk-ming Leung
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9789888208340
- eISBN:
- 9789888268382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208340.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter aims to uncover the histories of the settlement of South Asians in Hong Kong. It aims to defy an essentialist notion of “History” (i.e. history with a capital letter “H”) by asserting ...
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This chapter aims to uncover the histories of the settlement of South Asians in Hong Kong. It aims to defy an essentialist notion of “History” (i.e. history with a capital letter “H”) by asserting (i) that the so-called “history” of the ethnic groups we focus on (i.e. Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese) is diverse; and (ii) that a myriad historical sources exist beyond ‘official historical records.’ Especially with regard to this second point, this chapter concentrates on other accounts such as institutional and personal histories to fill the gaps of official history and to enrich our understanding of the ways in which earlier South Asian settlers negotiated life in a foreign land, and of their subsequent contributions to a place their descendants now call “home.” It argues for a cultural history approach to retell the histories of Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese residing in Hong Kong. In the following section, we start with a brief history of these three ethnicities as told in the official literature.Less
This chapter aims to uncover the histories of the settlement of South Asians in Hong Kong. It aims to defy an essentialist notion of “History” (i.e. history with a capital letter “H”) by asserting (i) that the so-called “history” of the ethnic groups we focus on (i.e. Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese) is diverse; and (ii) that a myriad historical sources exist beyond ‘official historical records.’ Especially with regard to this second point, this chapter concentrates on other accounts such as institutional and personal histories to fill the gaps of official history and to enrich our understanding of the ways in which earlier South Asian settlers negotiated life in a foreign land, and of their subsequent contributions to a place their descendants now call “home.” It argues for a cultural history approach to retell the histories of Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese residing in Hong Kong. In the following section, we start with a brief history of these three ethnicities as told in the official literature.
Barry Crosbie and Mark Hampton (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097898
- eISBN:
- 9781526104403
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097898.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, ...
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This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia, as well as sites of informal British influence such as the Ottoman Empire and southern China. The book considers the ways in which British culture circulated within what John Darwin has called the British “world system”. In this, the book builds on existing imperial scholarship while innovating in several ways: it focuses on the movement of ideas and cultural praxis, whereas Darwin has focused mostly on imperial structures —financial, demographic, and military. The book examines the transmission, reception, and adaptation of British culture in the Metropole, the empire and informal colonial spaces, whereas many recent scholars have considered British imperial influence on the Metropole alone. It examines Britain's Atlantic and Asian imperial experiences from the eighteenth to the twentieth century together. Through focusing on political ideology, literary movements, material culture, marriage, and the construction of national identities, the essays demonstrate the salience of culture in making a “British World”.Less
This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia, as well as sites of informal British influence such as the Ottoman Empire and southern China. The book considers the ways in which British culture circulated within what John Darwin has called the British “world system”. In this, the book builds on existing imperial scholarship while innovating in several ways: it focuses on the movement of ideas and cultural praxis, whereas Darwin has focused mostly on imperial structures —financial, demographic, and military. The book examines the transmission, reception, and adaptation of British culture in the Metropole, the empire and informal colonial spaces, whereas many recent scholars have considered British imperial influence on the Metropole alone. It examines Britain's Atlantic and Asian imperial experiences from the eighteenth to the twentieth century together. Through focusing on political ideology, literary movements, material culture, marriage, and the construction of national identities, the essays demonstrate the salience of culture in making a “British World”.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226486956
- eISBN:
- 9780226486970
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226486970.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter criticizes cultural criticism in what can be called its high postmodernist forms: cultural anthropology, the New Cultural History, the New Historicism, the New Pragmatism, the new and/or ...
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This chapter criticizes cultural criticism in what can be called its high postmodernist forms: cultural anthropology, the New Cultural History, the New Historicism, the New Pragmatism, the new and/or post-Marxism, and, finally, that side of French theory—overlapping with post-Marxism—that may be labeled French pragmatism. These aggressively new forms of contextualism do not exhaust the field of postmodern cultural criticism, and a fuller study would need to include the different emphases of ethnic, gender, and area studies as well as of British cultural materialism. However, for now we can stay high. “High” distinguishes neither the theoretical from the practical, the high cultural from the populist, nor the neoconservative from the leftist. Rather, it indicates a shared mode of cultural engagement that undercuts all such polemics dividing the field to project an increasingly generic discourse of contextualism. This mode of engagement can be called detached immanence.Less
This chapter criticizes cultural criticism in what can be called its high postmodernist forms: cultural anthropology, the New Cultural History, the New Historicism, the New Pragmatism, the new and/or post-Marxism, and, finally, that side of French theory—overlapping with post-Marxism—that may be labeled French pragmatism. These aggressively new forms of contextualism do not exhaust the field of postmodern cultural criticism, and a fuller study would need to include the different emphases of ethnic, gender, and area studies as well as of British cultural materialism. However, for now we can stay high. “High” distinguishes neither the theoretical from the practical, the high cultural from the populist, nor the neoconservative from the leftist. Rather, it indicates a shared mode of cultural engagement that undercuts all such polemics dividing the field to project an increasingly generic discourse of contextualism. This mode of engagement can be called detached immanence.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226486956
- eISBN:
- 9780226486970
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226486970.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter, which undertakes a salutary critique of interdisciplinarity in the humanities, probes a particular cluster of interdisciplinary works: French Revolution studies in its recent postmodern ...
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This chapter, which undertakes a salutary critique of interdisciplinarity in the humanities, probes a particular cluster of interdisciplinary works: French Revolution studies in its recent postmodern historicist inflections. This first step of criticism has a satiric edge to it congruent with that of Stanley Fish's important 1989 essay in Professions. The chapter asks whether the interdisciplinary effort can, in fact, do more than project an überdiscipline of interdisciplinarity. It reviews some of the studies of the French Revolution period published at the zenith of the New Cultural History and the New Historicism, which it presents under a metaphor that is deliberately antithetical to the interdisciplinary ethos: martial discipline. The chapter explores a parade of quotations—almost military in their basic uniformity—to mark the New Historicist vanguard of inquiry into the French Revolution.Less
This chapter, which undertakes a salutary critique of interdisciplinarity in the humanities, probes a particular cluster of interdisciplinary works: French Revolution studies in its recent postmodern historicist inflections. This first step of criticism has a satiric edge to it congruent with that of Stanley Fish's important 1989 essay in Professions. The chapter asks whether the interdisciplinary effort can, in fact, do more than project an überdiscipline of interdisciplinarity. It reviews some of the studies of the French Revolution period published at the zenith of the New Cultural History and the New Historicism, which it presents under a metaphor that is deliberately antithetical to the interdisciplinary ethos: martial discipline. The chapter explores a parade of quotations—almost military in their basic uniformity—to mark the New Historicist vanguard of inquiry into the French Revolution.
Adrian May
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940438
- eISBN:
- 9781789629118
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940438.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book provides an exhaustive reading of the significant yet understudied intellectual review Lignes, from 1987 to 2017, to demonstrate how it has managed to preserve and develop the legacy of ...
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This book provides an exhaustive reading of the significant yet understudied intellectual review Lignes, from 1987 to 2017, to demonstrate how it has managed to preserve and develop the legacy of French radical thought often referred to as ‘French Theory’ or ‘la pensée 68’. Whilst many studies on intellectual reviews from the 1930s to the 1980s exist, this book crucially illuminates the shifting intellectual and political culture of France since the 1980s, filling a major gap in contemporary debates on the continued relevance of French intellectuals. This book provides a strong counter-narrative to the received account that, after the anti-totalitarian ‘liberal moment’ of the late 1970s, Marxism and structuralism were completely banished from the French intellectual sphere. It provides the historical context behind the rise of such internationally renowned thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière Jean-Luc Nancy, whilst placing them within an intellectual genealogy stretching back to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot in the 1930s. The book also introduces the reader to lesser known but nonetheless significant thinkers, including Lignes editor Michel Surya, Dionys Mascolo, Daniel Bensaïd, Fethi Benslama, Anselm Jappe and Robert Kurz. Through the review’s pages, a novel cultural history of France emerges as intellectuals respond to pressing contemporary issues, such as the fall of Communism, the European migrant crisis and rising nationalist tensions, the globalisation of financial capitalism and the 2008 economic crisis, scandals surrounding paedophilia and the return of religious thought to France, as well as debates on literature and the political value of art.Less
This book provides an exhaustive reading of the significant yet understudied intellectual review Lignes, from 1987 to 2017, to demonstrate how it has managed to preserve and develop the legacy of French radical thought often referred to as ‘French Theory’ or ‘la pensée 68’. Whilst many studies on intellectual reviews from the 1930s to the 1980s exist, this book crucially illuminates the shifting intellectual and political culture of France since the 1980s, filling a major gap in contemporary debates on the continued relevance of French intellectuals. This book provides a strong counter-narrative to the received account that, after the anti-totalitarian ‘liberal moment’ of the late 1970s, Marxism and structuralism were completely banished from the French intellectual sphere. It provides the historical context behind the rise of such internationally renowned thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière Jean-Luc Nancy, whilst placing them within an intellectual genealogy stretching back to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot in the 1930s. The book also introduces the reader to lesser known but nonetheless significant thinkers, including Lignes editor Michel Surya, Dionys Mascolo, Daniel Bensaïd, Fethi Benslama, Anselm Jappe and Robert Kurz. Through the review’s pages, a novel cultural history of France emerges as intellectuals respond to pressing contemporary issues, such as the fall of Communism, the European migrant crisis and rising nationalist tensions, the globalisation of financial capitalism and the 2008 economic crisis, scandals surrounding paedophilia and the return of religious thought to France, as well as debates on literature and the political value of art.
Daniel Maudlin and Bernard L. Herman (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469626826
- eISBN:
- 9781469628066
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469626826.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Building the British Atlantic World is the first book to articulate the shared architectural history of the British Atlantic world; the first to consider British, North American, Caribbean and ...
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Building the British Atlantic World is the first book to articulate the shared architectural history of the British Atlantic world; the first to consider British, North American, Caribbean and African colonial architectures, spaces and places together as the products of a common British Atlantic culture. Atlantic History is a well-established field, however, of the numerous studies available buildings and their fundamental role in framing and maintaining public and private space are rarely considered. Building the British Atlantic World is architecture’s overdue contribution to Atlantic History. From the pioneer colonists of the early seventeenth-century through to American Independence and the maintenance of a very different, much smaller, disparate British Atlantic in the nineteenth century, this book introduces a shared history of building and buildings that transcends national narratives in order to outline a set of complex cultural exchanges between Britain (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales), America (the North, Mid and Southern Atlantic states), Canada, the Caribbean, Bermuda and West Africa. The ‘British Atlantic World’ and ‘transatlanticism’ are relatively new terms to architectural history but are well-established fields/approaches within social and political History and Literary Studies. Therefore, a further aim of the book is to set out these concepts and, through case studies, demonstrate their value to architectural history.Less
Building the British Atlantic World is the first book to articulate the shared architectural history of the British Atlantic world; the first to consider British, North American, Caribbean and African colonial architectures, spaces and places together as the products of a common British Atlantic culture. Atlantic History is a well-established field, however, of the numerous studies available buildings and their fundamental role in framing and maintaining public and private space are rarely considered. Building the British Atlantic World is architecture’s overdue contribution to Atlantic History. From the pioneer colonists of the early seventeenth-century through to American Independence and the maintenance of a very different, much smaller, disparate British Atlantic in the nineteenth century, this book introduces a shared history of building and buildings that transcends national narratives in order to outline a set of complex cultural exchanges between Britain (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales), America (the North, Mid and Southern Atlantic states), Canada, the Caribbean, Bermuda and West Africa. The ‘British Atlantic World’ and ‘transatlanticism’ are relatively new terms to architectural history but are well-established fields/approaches within social and political History and Literary Studies. Therefore, a further aim of the book is to set out these concepts and, through case studies, demonstrate their value to architectural history.
Lisa C. Robertson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526123503
- eISBN:
- 9781526141972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526123503.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter evaluates the writing Harkness produced during her time living in the countries that are now India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Placing Harkness’s work in a nineteenth-century tradition of ...
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This chapter evaluates the writing Harkness produced during her time living in the countries that are now India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Placing Harkness’s work in a nineteenth-century tradition of British historiographical writing about India that begins with James Mill’s History of British India (1817), the chapter argues that her work during this period consciously eschews conventional historical methodology and offers an important counter-narrative to colonial history. It suggests that in her attention to the ways that social movements and political institutions shape people’s daily lives, which is set within a broad foundation of personal knowledge, Harkness’s writing engages more ardently with the conventions of cultural history than it does with those of travel writing.Less
This chapter evaluates the writing Harkness produced during her time living in the countries that are now India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Placing Harkness’s work in a nineteenth-century tradition of British historiographical writing about India that begins with James Mill’s History of British India (1817), the chapter argues that her work during this period consciously eschews conventional historical methodology and offers an important counter-narrative to colonial history. It suggests that in her attention to the ways that social movements and political institutions shape people’s daily lives, which is set within a broad foundation of personal knowledge, Harkness’s writing engages more ardently with the conventions of cultural history than it does with those of travel writing.
Imani Perry
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469638607
- eISBN:
- 9781469638621
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469638607.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, tells an essential yet understudied part of that ...
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Singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, tells an essential yet understudied part of that story. Lift Every Voice and Sing, penned by James Weldon Johnson and composed by his brother Rosamond in 1900, was embraced as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of Black Americans almost immediately. This book shares the story of that song, as it traveled from South to North, from churches to schools, and from civil rights to Black power, and beyond. Because it is an anthem, the story of this song is also a social and cultural history. Readers will learn of the institutions and organizations, as well as the lessons and the emotions shared by those who sang together. Drawing on a wide array of materials including: letters, newspaper articles, essays, poems, novels, school curricula, speeches and the programs of hundreds of organizations, readers have a window into the robust social, cultural and political world that African Americans organized in the face of an unequal society, and how that world produced people who were capable of transforming the nation and world.Less
Singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, tells an essential yet understudied part of that story. Lift Every Voice and Sing, penned by James Weldon Johnson and composed by his brother Rosamond in 1900, was embraced as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of Black Americans almost immediately. This book shares the story of that song, as it traveled from South to North, from churches to schools, and from civil rights to Black power, and beyond. Because it is an anthem, the story of this song is also a social and cultural history. Readers will learn of the institutions and organizations, as well as the lessons and the emotions shared by those who sang together. Drawing on a wide array of materials including: letters, newspaper articles, essays, poems, novels, school curricula, speeches and the programs of hundreds of organizations, readers have a window into the robust social, cultural and political world that African Americans organized in the face of an unequal society, and how that world produced people who were capable of transforming the nation and world.
Rachel McBride Lindsey
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469633725
- eISBN:
- 9781469633732
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469633725.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
When the revolutionary technology of photography erupted in American culture in 1839, it swiftly became, in the day’s parlance, a “mania.” This richly illustrated book positions vernacular ...
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When the revolutionary technology of photography erupted in American culture in 1839, it swiftly became, in the day’s parlance, a “mania.” This richly illustrated book positions vernacular photography at the center of the study of nineteenth-century American religious life. As an empirical tool, photography captured many of the signal scenes of American life, from the gold rush to the bloody battlefields of the Civil War. But photographs did not simply display neutral records of people, places, and things; rather, commonplace photographs became inscribed with spiritual meaning, disclosing, not merely signifying, a power that lay beyond.
Rachel McBride Lindsey demonstrates that what people beheld when they looked at a photograph had as much to do with what lay outside the frame--theological expectations, for example--as with what the camera had recorded. Whether studio portraits tucked into Bibles, postmortem portraits with locks of hair attached, “spirit” photography, stereographs of the Holy Land, or magic lanterns used in biblical instruction, photographs were curated, beheld, displayed, and valued as physical artifacts that functioned both as relics and as icons of religious practice. Lindsey’s interpretation of “vernacular” as an analytic introduces a way to consider anew the cultural, social, and material reach of religion.Less
When the revolutionary technology of photography erupted in American culture in 1839, it swiftly became, in the day’s parlance, a “mania.” This richly illustrated book positions vernacular photography at the center of the study of nineteenth-century American religious life. As an empirical tool, photography captured many of the signal scenes of American life, from the gold rush to the bloody battlefields of the Civil War. But photographs did not simply display neutral records of people, places, and things; rather, commonplace photographs became inscribed with spiritual meaning, disclosing, not merely signifying, a power that lay beyond.
Rachel McBride Lindsey demonstrates that what people beheld when they looked at a photograph had as much to do with what lay outside the frame--theological expectations, for example--as with what the camera had recorded. Whether studio portraits tucked into Bibles, postmortem portraits with locks of hair attached, “spirit” photography, stereographs of the Holy Land, or magic lanterns used in biblical instruction, photographs were curated, beheld, displayed, and valued as physical artifacts that functioned both as relics and as icons of religious practice. Lindsey’s interpretation of “vernacular” as an analytic introduces a way to consider anew the cultural, social, and material reach of religion.
Craig Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816681051
- eISBN:
- 9781452948911
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816681051.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Agitating Images explores the early history of Communist organization among small dispersed groups of indigenous Evenki peoples of Central Siberia. It draws this history into an examination of the ...
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Agitating Images explores the early history of Communist organization among small dispersed groups of indigenous Evenki peoples of Central Siberia. It draws this history into an examination of the destabilizing role of photographs in the production of history. While documenting the development of Soviet Nationalities policy in context of people who were considered to be socially and technologically ‘backwards,’ the project is resolutely committed to the demonstration of what I call photographic agitation. It performs this agitation all the while presenting a ‘nervous’ history of the momentous encounter between Soviet socialism and indigenous peoples in the Siberian North. This book will have broad appeal. Not only is it the first book to present a comprehensive treatment of the remote soviet outpost called the Culture Base but it adds to a lively historical and ethnological discourse on the colonial experience of the indigenous minorities of the Siberian North. Scholars working on histories of soviet socialism will be interested in this book for its counter-narrative of socialist modernity. For scholars interested in photography’s colonial histories, Agitating Images demonstrates the muddy role of photography in producing coherent scopic regimes.Less
Agitating Images explores the early history of Communist organization among small dispersed groups of indigenous Evenki peoples of Central Siberia. It draws this history into an examination of the destabilizing role of photographs in the production of history. While documenting the development of Soviet Nationalities policy in context of people who were considered to be socially and technologically ‘backwards,’ the project is resolutely committed to the demonstration of what I call photographic agitation. It performs this agitation all the while presenting a ‘nervous’ history of the momentous encounter between Soviet socialism and indigenous peoples in the Siberian North. This book will have broad appeal. Not only is it the first book to present a comprehensive treatment of the remote soviet outpost called the Culture Base but it adds to a lively historical and ethnological discourse on the colonial experience of the indigenous minorities of the Siberian North. Scholars working on histories of soviet socialism will be interested in this book for its counter-narrative of socialist modernity. For scholars interested in photography’s colonial histories, Agitating Images demonstrates the muddy role of photography in producing coherent scopic regimes.
Alan Kidd and Melanie Tebbutt
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719090356
- eISBN:
- 9781526124081
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090356.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
The editors introduce the volume and the chapter is in two parts. The first part summarises the themes of the book and the arguments of each of the essays and the second part is an appreciation of ...
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The editors introduce the volume and the chapter is in two parts. The first part summarises the themes of the book and the arguments of each of the essays and the second part is an appreciation of the life and work of the person in his whose honour the essays have been written.Less
The editors introduce the volume and the chapter is in two parts. The first part summarises the themes of the book and the arguments of each of the essays and the second part is an appreciation of the life and work of the person in his whose honour the essays have been written.
Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526125316
- eISBN:
- 9781526136213
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125316.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Intellectual disability is an unstable concept, and its fundamental instability is magnified when we track its history and relation to other concepts. This introductory chapter explores some of the ...
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Intellectual disability is an unstable concept, and its fundamental instability is magnified when we track its history and relation to other concepts. This introductory chapter explores some of the challenges of investigating the forces shaping the concept of intellectual disability in Europe and Britain across the centuries: not only those generated by shifting language and terminology, but also the demands imposed by the interdisciplinary nature of this project, which takes us through histories of literature, religion, law, education, philosophy, psychology and medicine, in addition to engaging with cultural and social history. Further, the fundamental slipperiness of the idea of intellectual disability raises the question of whether it could even be said to exist in forms similar to that which it assumes today. This introduction also includes a review of literature exploring the history of intellectual disability, and an overview of the chapters to follow.Less
Intellectual disability is an unstable concept, and its fundamental instability is magnified when we track its history and relation to other concepts. This introductory chapter explores some of the challenges of investigating the forces shaping the concept of intellectual disability in Europe and Britain across the centuries: not only those generated by shifting language and terminology, but also the demands imposed by the interdisciplinary nature of this project, which takes us through histories of literature, religion, law, education, philosophy, psychology and medicine, in addition to engaging with cultural and social history. Further, the fundamental slipperiness of the idea of intellectual disability raises the question of whether it could even be said to exist in forms similar to that which it assumes today. This introduction also includes a review of literature exploring the history of intellectual disability, and an overview of the chapters to follow.
Jeremy Rosen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231177443
- eISBN:
- 9780231542401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231177443.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Derives a general theory of genre from analysis of the genre I call “minor-character elaboration.” It argues that genre should be studied and understood along three intersecting axes: as a practice ...
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Derives a general theory of genre from analysis of the genre I call “minor-character elaboration.” It argues that genre should be studied and understood along three intersecting axes: as a practice of formal reiteration and variation, as a shared social practice that conveys the cultural logic of a particular historical moment, and as a technology that is deployed to serve the strategic needs of producers and consumers.Less
Derives a general theory of genre from analysis of the genre I call “minor-character elaboration.” It argues that genre should be studied and understood along three intersecting axes: as a practice of formal reiteration and variation, as a shared social practice that conveys the cultural logic of a particular historical moment, and as a technology that is deployed to serve the strategic needs of producers and consumers.
Jason Thompson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9789774165993
- eISBN:
- 9781617976520
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774165993.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, ...
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The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the first of a three-volume survey of the history of Egyptology, follows the fascination with ancient Egypt from antiquity until 1881, tracing the recovery of ancient Egypt and its impact on the human imagination in a saga filled with intriguing mysteries, great discoveries, and scholarly creativity. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.Less
The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the first of a three-volume survey of the history of Egyptology, follows the fascination with ancient Egypt from antiquity until 1881, tracing the recovery of ancient Egypt and its impact on the human imagination in a saga filled with intriguing mysteries, great discoveries, and scholarly creativity. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.
John Nguyet Erni and Lisa Yuk-ming Leung
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9789888208340
- eISBN:
- 9789888268382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208340.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter covers the international human rights framework to address racism and racial discrimination. It highlights the conventionally well-known treaties and international laws and declarations ...
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This chapter covers the international human rights framework to address racism and racial discrimination. It highlights the conventionally well-known treaties and international laws and declarations that continue to be the foundation for governments to build their own local laws and institutions. It also links the international framework directly to the development of Hong Kong’s post-1997 constitutions, namely the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights Ordinance, and to the anti-discrimination laws governed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC). The RDO is one such law administered by the EOC. The chapter is devoted to a critical discussion of the provisions of the RDO. We shall attempt to strip away the often difficult legal jargon, so as to render the ordinance intelligible and usable by ethnic minorities and the organizations working with them. We shall also focus our attention on the efforts made by local civil society groups and legal experts in their assessment of the effectiveness and shortcomings of the RDO.Less
This chapter covers the international human rights framework to address racism and racial discrimination. It highlights the conventionally well-known treaties and international laws and declarations that continue to be the foundation for governments to build their own local laws and institutions. It also links the international framework directly to the development of Hong Kong’s post-1997 constitutions, namely the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights Ordinance, and to the anti-discrimination laws governed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC). The RDO is one such law administered by the EOC. The chapter is devoted to a critical discussion of the provisions of the RDO. We shall attempt to strip away the often difficult legal jargon, so as to render the ordinance intelligible and usable by ethnic minorities and the organizations working with them. We shall also focus our attention on the efforts made by local civil society groups and legal experts in their assessment of the effectiveness and shortcomings of the RDO.
John Nguyet Erni and Lisa Yuk-ming Leung
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9789888208340
- eISBN:
- 9789888268382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208340.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
In this chapter late in the book, we turn our attention to the need for more ethnic minority research in Hong Kong. Here, we provide what we consider to be a fairly comprehensive review of the major ...
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In this chapter late in the book, we turn our attention to the need for more ethnic minority research in Hong Kong. Here, we provide what we consider to be a fairly comprehensive review of the major strands of existing knowledge on Hong Kong’s South Asian ethnic minorities. As far as we know, this attempt to consolidate and critically review existing academic research and policy reports has never been done before. Broadly speaking, existing research comprises three types: social scientific research, often performed by or in conjunction with non-governmental organizations and often entailing policy review, critique, and recommendations (henceforth “NGO and policy research”); academic research utilizing social scientific methods; and academic research shaped by a cultural studies approach (“cultural research”). In Hong Kong since the early 2000s, the first two types of research have been predominant, while the last type is only emerging. It is thus one of our goals in this book to strengthen the cultural research on ethnic minorities.Less
In this chapter late in the book, we turn our attention to the need for more ethnic minority research in Hong Kong. Here, we provide what we consider to be a fairly comprehensive review of the major strands of existing knowledge on Hong Kong’s South Asian ethnic minorities. As far as we know, this attempt to consolidate and critically review existing academic research and policy reports has never been done before. Broadly speaking, existing research comprises three types: social scientific research, often performed by or in conjunction with non-governmental organizations and often entailing policy review, critique, and recommendations (henceforth “NGO and policy research”); academic research utilizing social scientific methods; and academic research shaped by a cultural studies approach (“cultural research”). In Hong Kong since the early 2000s, the first two types of research have been predominant, while the last type is only emerging. It is thus one of our goals in this book to strengthen the cultural research on ethnic minorities.
Craig Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816681051
- eISBN:
- 9781452948911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816681051.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Wherein a nervous history of Soviet culture shaping in central Siberia in the years before the formation of the Evenki National Region on December 10, 1930 is presented amidst photo-fragments. It is ...
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Wherein a nervous history of Soviet culture shaping in central Siberia in the years before the formation of the Evenki National Region on December 10, 1930 is presented amidst photo-fragments. It is a nervous history, as all histories should be.Less
Wherein a nervous history of Soviet culture shaping in central Siberia in the years before the formation of the Evenki National Region on December 10, 1930 is presented amidst photo-fragments. It is a nervous history, as all histories should be.
