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Ancient Pantomime and the Rise of Ballet

Edith Hall

in New Directions in Ancient Pantomime

It was ancient pantomime's destiny to play a seminal role in the emergence of classical ballet, and subsequently, in the twentieth century, of avant‐garde Tanztheater. It is well known that the ... More

It was ancient pantomime's destiny to play a seminal role in the emergence of classical ballet, and subsequently, in the twentieth century, of avant‐garde Tanztheater. It is well known that the founding fathers of opera in the Florentine Camerata looked to ancient myth, and above all what they believed to have been the all‐sung form taken by ancient theatrical tragic performances, as the model for their new medium. But considerably less exposure has been given to the genealogy traced by the inventors of ballet in Enlightenment Italy, Spain, France and England, to the dancers described in the ancient texts on pantomime. The ancient dances, brought to such a high level of artistry and skill by the ancient star performers named Pylades or Bathyllus, Hylas, or Paris, fundamentally informed, many centuries later, the nature of modern dance theatre in Early Modern culture. The final chapter in this volume therefore briefly outlines some of the uses to which some late seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century dance theorists, such as Weaver and Noverre, put their knowledge of ancient pantomime in their treatises on dance.Less

Are Spin Glasses Complex Systems?

Daniel L. Stein and Charles M. Newman

in Spin Glasses and Complexity

This chapter considers how spin glass science fits into the larger area of complexity studies. It discusses three landmark papers in the field of complexity, by Warren Weaver, Herb Simon, and Phil ... More

This chapter considers how spin glass science fits into the larger area of complexity studies. It discusses three landmark papers in the field of complexity, by Warren Weaver, Herb Simon, and Phil Anderson, respectively, and examines how the ideas they introduced might relate to the current understanding of spin glasses. It also takes a brief look at recent developments, in particular various proposals for measures of complexity, and considers how they might illuminate some features of spin glasses. It concludes by asking whether spin glasses can still be thought of as “complex systems,” and in so doing introduces a proposal for a kind of “new complexity” as it relates to spin glasses.Less

Indian Passports

Robert Lawrence Gunn

in Ethnology and Empire: Languages, Literature, and the Making of the North American Borderlands

The epilogue considers the ad hoc 19th-Century system of “Indian passports”—official documents, letters, and testimonials often provided by U.S. agents to Native peoples in western borderlands ... More

The epilogue considers the ad hoc 19th-Century system of “Indian passports”—official documents, letters, and testimonials often provided by U.S. agents to Native peoples in western borderlands settings as quasi-official certifications of identity—as a means of reading Sarah Winnemucca’s Life among the Piutesand provoking more broadly questions about language, Native sovereignty, performance, and literary exchange in the western borderlands of Native North America. Arguing that Winnemucca incorporates the form of the “Indian passport” into the textual architecture of her book, this epilogue enlists Warrior, Weaver, Womack, Vizenor, and Taylor to locate questions of Native intellectual sovereignty within the performative scenarios of settler colonialism and conquest, in questions of translation and linguistic exchange, and in Winnemucca’s literary mode of audience address.Less

Spontaneous City: Jane Jacobs and the Critique of Planned Order

Anthony Fontenot

in Non-Design: Architecture, Liberalism, and the Market

This chapter explores Jane Jacobs’s pioneering theories of the city in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). It considers the influence that Warren Weaver’s groundbreaking work on the ... More

This chapter explores Jane Jacobs’s pioneering theories of the city in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). It considers the influence that Warren Weaver’s groundbreaking work on the science of complexity had in providing her with a scientific method to study “complex patterns” of social and economic phenomena as a form of “organized complexity.” It also considers Jacobs’s work as associate editor at Architectural Forum, along with that of Douglas Haskell, who served as the editor of the journal. It examines her engagement with Ian Nairn and Gordon Cullen and the influence that the townscape philosophy had on her approach. It considers various precedents, including the revolutionary critique of urban planning espoused by Alison and Peter Smithson and other Team 10 participants throughout the 1950s, in her critique of urban planning. This chapter also speculates on the role that the Austrian school critique of central planning played in helping to formulate the devastating critique of modern planning that Jacobs developed. It considers the revolutionary theory of spontaneous order, established in the 1940s by Friedrich Hayek and Michael Polanyi, as vital to the development of a critique of the planned order of socialism and modern planning.Less

Categories of Word Choice

Jeanne Fahnestock

in Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion

The set of words making up a text can be classified in different ways depending on an analyst's goals. Critics often intuitively select certain words for attention. This chapter covers explicit ... More

The set of words making up a text can be classified in different ways depending on an analyst's goals. Critics often intuitively select certain words for attention. This chapter covers explicit categories of word analysis. Words can, for example, be grouped into lexical or semantic fields; these are large fuzzy sets of terms that collocate in the same area of meaning and are retrieved in word association tests. Decisions about the subject of a text depend on the frequency of words from the same lexical field, and the interspersion of terms from other fields can help or harm the persuasiveness of a text. Words can also be related, especially within lexical fields, according to whether they are more or less abstract or concrete, that is, distant or proximate from physical referents. Concrete words, contrary to the advice in many style books, are not critical in rhetorical effectiveness, and in fact rhetorical manuals advised arguers to switch levels and support both particular and general versions of the same claim. The words in a text can also be assigned to functional classes (parts of speech) as a way to inspect how speakers or writers use these available roles. This kind of analysis is performed on paired passages from early twentieth-century nature writing. The chapter closes by reviewing the categories for language analysis created by twentieth-century rhetoricians Kenneth Burke (positive, dialectical, and ultimate terms) and Richard Weaver (god, devil, and charismatic terms).Less

Blame Avoidance and Credit Claiming Revisited

Giuliano Bonoli

in The Politics of the New Welfare State

This chapter deals with some developments observed in European social polices over the last fifteen years that are not explained by prevailing theories of social policymaking. These can be considered ... More

This chapter deals with some developments observed in European social polices over the last fifteen years that are not explained by prevailing theories of social policymaking. These can be considered as ‘anomalies’ and include the expansion of new policies (childcare, active labour market policy) and the adoption of radical reforms in the field of old age pensions. In order to account for these developments, the chapter proposes a new reading of the twin notion of ‘blame avoidance’ and ‘credit claiming’ that allows us to make sense of the observed developments. It highlights the importance of the visibility of reform and introduces the notion of affordable credit claiming as an objective that is not incompatible with a climate of permanent austerity, but that can be fulfilled only within given policy fields.Less

Gettysburg: North Carolina’s Darkest Hour

Philip Gerard

in The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina

The three-day battle becomes a turning point for support of the war in North Carolina. The state’s most famous regiment-the 26th-is virtually wiped out. One in four of the 28,000 Confederate ... More

The three-day battle becomes a turning point for support of the war in North Carolina. The state’s most famous regiment-the 26th-is virtually wiped out. One in four of the 28,000 Confederate casualties is a Tar Heel. Samuel Weaver recovers the Union dead for burial in the national cemetery; his son Rufus takes over the task upon his death and ships the remains of more than 2,900 soldiers South for burial. Meanwhile in North Carolina, the Peace Movement sweeps the state, erupting in 100 rallies calling for the state to make a separate peace with the U.S. GovernmentLess

Beginnings, 1863–1893

in The Lancashire Giant: David Shackleton, Labour Leader and Civil Servant

This chapter examines David Shackleton personal life and his early career in the labour movement. It discusses his family background, his employment as a ‘halftime’ weaver in a cotton mill at the age ... More

This chapter examines David Shackleton personal life and his early career in the labour movement. It discusses his family background, his employment as a ‘halftime’ weaver in a cotton mill at the age of nine and highlights the influence of the cotton strike of 1878 on his views about the labour sector. It describes Shackleton's first participation in the labour movement after his marriage in 1883, his promotion to the management committee of the Accrington Power Loom Weavers' Friendly Association (APLWFA), and his selection to become a delegate to the Northern Counties Amalgamated Weavers' Association (NCAWA) in 1885.Less

Hillary Orbits an Alternative Universe Earth: Interpreting the USA Network’s Political Animals as Science Fiction

Marleen S. Barr

in The Woman Fantastic in Contemporary American Media Culture

Marleen S. Barr’s “Hillary Orbits an Alternative Universe Earth: Interpreting the USA Network’s Political Animals as Science Fiction” concludes the section with an exploration of Sigourney Weaver’s ... More

Marleen S. Barr’s “Hillary Orbits an Alternative Universe Earth: Interpreting the USA Network’s Political Animals as Science Fiction” concludes the section with an exploration of Sigourney Weaver’s character, Secretary of State Elaine Barrish Hammond, as a fantasy figure. Weaver resonates contextually through the science fictional heroines she portrayed in Aliens and Avatar while her character in Political Animals (2012) echoes the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Through such parallels, argues Barr, the series exemplifies a power fantasy, recasting Clinton as an alternative history superhero.Less

An Imperial Compromise: The Calico Acts, the Company, and the Atlantic Colonies

Jonathan Eacott

in Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830

Between the 1690s and 1721, the East India Company, English woolen and silk spinners and weavers, English Atlantic pirates operating out of colonial ports, and Parliament debated the implications of ... More

Between the 1690s and 1721, the East India Company, English woolen and silk spinners and weavers, English Atlantic pirates operating out of colonial ports, and Parliament debated the implications of Indian calicoes, leading to new developments in the imperial structure. The government eventually united behind the Calico Acts, legal compromises which traded a prohibition on dyed, stained, and printed cottons in the domestic British market for a regulatory and enforcement system that expanded and entrenched the East India Company’s monopoly over the supply of Asian goods for the British Atlantic. The acts shifted the emphasis away from American colonists as cultivators of Indian raw materials such as silk and cotton wool and towards colonists as consumers of Indian goods.Less

U.S. Slavery’s Colonial Obligations

Zach Sell

in Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital

This chapter documents how U.S. slavery created expectations for British colonial projects to transform cotton production and exchange across colonial India. It further considers the impact that the ... More

This chapter documents how U.S. slavery created expectations for British colonial projects to transform cotton production and exchange across colonial India. It further considers the impact that the increased exportation of Surat cottons from Western India to Lancashire had upon weavers in the North-Western Provinces recovering from the impact of famine.Less

The Disappearing of “Hawaiian” from American Music

John W. Troutman

in Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Hawaiian steel guitar continued its ascendant popularity in the United States, with hundreds of thousands of students enrolling in Hawaiian guitar schools such as the ... More

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Hawaiian steel guitar continued its ascendant popularity in the United States, with hundreds of thousands of students enrolling in Hawaiian guitar schools such as the Honolulu Conservatory of Music, a national franchise that sold music and guitars licensed through the Oahu Publishing Company. Many Americans became increasingly devoted to Hawaiian music through radio programs by Eddie Alkire and others that broadcast throughout the country. Meanwhile, non-Hawaiian musicians began applying the instrument and its sounds to their own vernacular music. In the South, both the blues and the “hillbilly” or country music genres became sonically defined through adaptations of the Hawaiian guitar into new steel and “slide” guitar manifestations by musicians such as Robert Johnson, Sylvester Weaver, Cliff Carlisle, Beecher Oswald, Vernon Dalhart, Jimmie Tarlton, Jimmie Rodgers, Tampa Red, Jerry Byrd, Leon McAuliffe, Charley Patton, and Huddie Ledbetter. Chroniclers of these music traditions and developers of the pedal steel guitar, however, soon began to erase the influence of Hawaiians, thus masking the multicultural origins of the blues and country music genres, and, more broadly, the Hawaiian origins of the steel guitar.Less

Southern Palm, Northern Pine: Greenbackers and the Reconciliation of Class

Matthew E. Stanley

in Grand Army of Labor: Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War

This chapter examines how Civil War memories anchored farmer-labor radicalism during the 1870s and 1880s. The Greenback-Labor Party in particular used wartime tropes to submit that the popular ... More

This chapter examines how Civil War memories anchored farmer-labor radicalism during the 1870s and 1880s. The Greenback-Labor Party in particular used wartime tropes to submit that the popular commemoration of the war, as either a North-South or Black-white axis, was fatal to class and trade organization. Instead, party members advocated a “class reconciliation” of workingmen across both sections. Although such a reconciliation was thwarted by internal contradictions and external resistance, Greenback politics offered discrete opportunities for interracial remembrance after the decline of Reconstruction, with veterans bridging out of major parties and toward reformist and revolutionary politics.Less

The Blue-Gray Campaign: Populism and White Reunion

Matthew E. Stanley

in Grand Army of Labor: Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War

This chapter investigates how Civil War memory informed the currents and contradictions of Populist thought. Populists painted themselves as neo-abolitionists fighting economic enslavement and ... More

This chapter investigates how Civil War memory informed the currents and contradictions of Populist thought. Populists painted themselves as neo-abolitionists fighting economic enslavement and combined antislavery vernacular with conceptions of modernity. Populism largely repudiated the Lost Cause. At the same time, the movement was profoundly shaped by the popular reconciliatory trends. This was especially true of the party’s 1892 blue-gray presidential campaign. While Populists attempted to circumvent North-South issues through class or vocational solidarity, regional and racial divisions proved ruinous. Though an effective and permanent coalition required the complete partnership of fully equal nonwhite laborers, Populist-style reconciliation often reinforced the color line even as it defied the Solid South and created new possibilities for Black political engagement.Less

Ascent to Power

William A. Link

in William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education

This chapter presents a comparison between Bill Friday and Fred Weaver, who were, in many ways, differing personalities. Raised in Aberdeen, North Carolina, Weaver attended Carolina, where he ... More

This chapter presents a comparison between Bill Friday and Fred Weaver, who were, in many ways, differing personalities. Raised in Aberdeen, North Carolina, Weaver attended Carolina, where he graduated in 1937 and where he came under the spell of Frank Porter Graham and the dean of students, Francis Bradshaw. Following graduation Weaver became a teaching fellow in the School of Commerce and then, from 1938 to 1941, an assistant dean of students. He served as a navy pilot in the war, and after his discharge in January 1946 he was appointed dean of men under Bradshaw's successor, Ernest L. Mackie. Weaver became dean of students in September 1948, several weeks before he hired Friday as his assistant. Tall, strikingly handsome, a tennis player, philosopher, and poet, Weaver struck some as “very Ivy League.” Friday, unassuming, modest, and humble, became Weaver's perfect complement, and the two made an effective team.Less

The Culture of Reprinting

Phillip H. Round

in Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663-1880

This chapter continues the previous chapter's exploration of the issues surrounding intellectual sovereignty, but from a slightly different perspective—by examining the dramatic increase in the ... More

This chapter continues the previous chapter's exploration of the issues surrounding intellectual sovereignty, but from a slightly different perspective—by examining the dramatic increase in the reprinting of Indian books during the nineteenth century. Following the lead of American Indian literary nationalists Jace Weaver (Cherokee), Craig Womack (Muskogee), and Robert Warrior (Osage), this chapter views “Native American literary output as separate and distinct from other national literatures.” It is considered as a body of literary expression that “proceeds from different assumptions and embodies different values from American literature” as a whole. This approach challenges Meredith McGill's claim that “the system of reprinting can be seen as a peculiar kind of advantage for writers who were marked by race and gender, providing access to print while suspending or deferring the question of authorial identity.”Less

Introduction

in Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

This introductory chapter discusses how Robert Clifton Weaver helped shape American racial and urban policy. A member of a privileged group of upper middle-class African Americans that scholar W. E. ... More

This introductory chapter discusses how Robert Clifton Weaver helped shape American racial and urban policy. A member of a privileged group of upper middle-class African Americans that scholar W. E. B. DuBois dubbed the “Talented Tenth,” Weaver was the first of the small number of black “New Dealers” hired by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his effort to bring the country out of the Great Depression. After World War II, Weaver developed a new approach to race relations known as racial liberalism, and he held a series of high-level positions in public and private agencies that were working to promote racial cooperation in American cities. In the field of civil rights, Weaver was a leader of the NAACP's endeavor to promote racial integration, and he played a crucial role in the organization's legal victory against restrictive covenants in the Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer. A prolific writer, Weaver wrote four books and dozens of articles for scholarly and popular journals, and he published two important studies on black America: Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946) and The Negro Ghetto (1948). Through these works, Weaver contributed greatly to the expanding sociology of black America, and his writings influenced a generation of scholars.Less

Preparing the Talented Tenth: The Weaver Family and the Black Elite

in Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

Robert Tanner Freeman was the son of a former slave and future grandfather of Robert Clifton Weaver. Freeman was a high school graduate who had taken a job as an assistant to a white dentist named ... More

Robert Tanner Freeman was the son of a former slave and future grandfather of Robert Clifton Weaver. Freeman was a high school graduate who had taken a job as an assistant to a white dentist named Noble in Washington. In the summer of 1867, when Harvard University opened its dental school, Freeman decided to present himself to the dean, Nathan Keep who then accepted him in the school's first class of six. Two years later, Freeman graduated, becoming the first professionally trained black dentist in the country. Freeman moved back to Washington, opened a practice, and established himself as a member of the black elite in the nation's foremost African American community, Washington, DC. When he was born in 1907, Weaver entered a world of both prejudice and privilege. Unlike the overwhelming majority of African Americans (and other Americans) at the time, Weaver grew up in a community that expected him to master the arts and letters, to excel at school, to attend an elite college, and to enter the professional world. It also expected him to be both a “credit to” and an advocate for his race. In this cultured, racially segregated world, Weaver interacted with other youth who would take their place among the group that W. E. B. DuBois named the “Talented Tenth.” Weaver's family and friends — refined, educated, aloof from the masses, and determined to advance by means of the methodical acquisition of economic and political power within the existing system — would profoundly influence him, shaping the personality traits that would carry him to academic and professional success throughout his career.Less