scholarly journals ‘From Zionism to Communism’: Emilio Sereni and the Consiglio di Gestione in postwar Italy

Modern Italy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Andrea Bonfanti

This essay demonstrates that it is impossible to appreciate the actions of the Italian communist Emilio Sereni without considering his Zionist background. Anyone who is interested in understanding the complexities of communism in the past century and to avoid simplistic conclusions about this ideology will benefit from the study. The problem at stake is that researchers often approach communism in a monolithic manner, which does not adequately explain the multiform manifestations (practical and theoretical) of that phenomenon. This ought to change and to this extent this essay hopes to contribute to that recent strand of historical research that challenges simplistic views on communism. More specifically, by analysing the Management Councils that Sereni created in postwar Italy, we can see that many of their features in fact derived from, or found their deepest origins in, his previous experience as a committed socialist Zionist. The study, then, also relates Sereni to and looks at the broader experiences of early twentieth-century Zionism and Italian communism in the early postwar years.

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-140
Author(s):  
Francis Robinson

Non-Muslims, perhaps blinded by the claims of their own faiths, have longunderestimated Muslim reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. By thesame token, they have paid relatively little attention to Muslim traditionsof praising the Prophet, whether it be the naths sung by Sufi qawwali musiciansin South Asia, the maulid lectures on the first twelve days of Rabi al-Awwal ‒ or the biographies of the Prophet, which have become so numerousover the past century. This is unfortunate because, intermingled withpraise for the Prophet, there are often other messages, which non-Muslimsneed to note if they are better to understand their Muslim neighbors.The Mantle Odes contains translations, and interpretations in their context,of three of the most highly prized poems in the Arab-Islamic traditionin praise of the Prophet. One poem dates from the time of the Prophet, thesecond from the thirteenth century AC under the Mamluks, and the thirdfrom Egypt under colonial rule in the early twentieth century. The author’saim is “to bring these Islamic devotional masterpieces into the purview ofcontemporary literary interpretation in a way that makes them culturallyrelevant and poetically effective for the modern reader, whether Muslim ornon-Muslim” (xi) ...


2021 ◽  
pp. 135918352110644
Author(s):  
Mark McConaghy

This paper examines the regional fiction of early twentieth century China in order to understand how such texts presented the object world of rural life. In doing so it addresses a gap in the historiography of material culture in modern China, which has emphasized urban commodity regimes and has paid far less attention to the ways in which pre-existing object practices endured into the time of the modern Republic. Building off of the methodological insights of scholars such as Bill Brownand Janet Poole regarding the contribution that literary study can make to historical understandings of material cultures, this paper argues that the regional texts of Lu Xun, Xu Qinwen, Ye Shengtao, and Yu Dafu were bewitched by overlapping life worlds: one represented by the secular rationalism of the text's narrators, and the other represented by the animistic practices of the rural others they encounter, which was expressed through objects such as joss sticks, temple doorsills, and ancestral alters. These literary works reflected upon how objects were used to make meaning in ways that were not reducible to urban commodity fetishism or remnant “superstition.” As presented in these works, spiritual objects remain powerfully active parts of the affective worlds of rural people, collapsing binary distinctions between living language and inanimate matter, the human and the ghostly, the past and the present. For the narrators of these texts, these object practices invoke a complicated mixture of modernizing critique and empathetic recognition. As such, these texts allow readers to witness the early expressions of a complex dialectic of rejection and recognition/accommodation that has marked the attitude modernizing states in China have taken in relation to animistic material cultures over the past century.


Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.


Author(s):  
Rachel Crossland

Chapter 1 explores Woolf’s writings up to the end of 1925 in relation to scientific ideas on wave-particle duality, providing the ‘retrospect of Woolf’s earlier novels’ which Michael Whitworth has suggested shows that she was working ‘in anticipation of the physicists’. The chapter as a whole challenges this idea of anticipation, showing that Woolf was actually working in parallel with physicists, philosophers, and artists in the early twentieth century, all of whom were starting to question dualistic models and instead beginning to develop complementary ones. A retrospect on wave-particle duality is also provided, making reference to Max Planck’s work on quanta and Albert Einstein’s development of light quanta. This chapter pays close attention to Woolf’s writing of light and her use of conjunctions, suggesting that Woolf was increasingly looking to write ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. Among other texts, it considers Night and Day, Mrs Dalloway, and ‘Sketch of the Past’.


2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 302-321
Author(s):  
Marion Bowman

This essay focuses upon a significant place, Glastonbury, at an important time during the early twentieth century, in order to shed light on a particular aspect of Christianity which is frequently overlooked: its internal plurality. This is not simply denominational diversity, but the considerable heterogeneity which exists at both institutional and individual level within denominations, and which often escapes articulation, awareness or comment. This is significant because failure to apprehend a more detailed, granular picture of religion can lead to an incomplete view of events in the past and, by extension, a partial understanding of later phenomena. This essay argues that by using the concept of vernacular religion a more nuanced picture of religion as it is – or has been – lived can be achieved.


2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 227-229
Author(s):  
Ruth Needleman

Richly descriptive and well documented, Steel and Steelworkers: Race and Class Struggle in Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh by John Hinshaw makes a significant contribution to the growing body of historical research on steel unionism in the twentieth century. Over the past few years, a number of new studies have broadened our understanding of unionization and work practices in the nation's steel mills, by examining in greater detail the patterns of organization in specific mills and mill towns.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Swart

The author endeavours, firstly, to present a vivid account of the reception that A.T. Robertson’s A grammar of the Greek New Testament in the light of historical research found in scholarly circles when first published (in 1914) and during the ensuing years; secondly, to probe the question whether, during the course of the past century, the renown of both the man and the book has outlasted the scientific value and the actual utilisation of ‘Robertson’ in New Testament commentaries and scholarly publications; and thirdly, to address a few grammatical points stated by Robertson that seem to have gone unchallenged despite major shifts affecting the study of language generally, and New Testament Greek specifically, since the publication of his Grammar.


Author(s):  
Inna Mokroguz

Background. This article studies the stages of formation of bandura fingering in the twentieth century, analyzes the scientific and methodological literature, that has been the basis for the professional growth of the first bandura performers. The paper highlights fundamental methodological principles that contributed to the technical development and professional skills improvement of the future bandura performer. The article defines the main components of the “bandura school” of the past century, analyzes the basic approaches of professional authors to fingering, fingering combinations and fingering inversions on the bandura and highlights the relevance of their application in modern bandura performance. The study defines the significant professional fingering variants from the past and their importance in the present performance. Methods. In the early twentieth century, there has been a need of professional bandura training and educational textbooks that would promote self-learning of the instrument. As a response to the request of M. V. Lysenko, the famous bandura player from Kharkiv Hnat Khotkevych published the first “Bandura textbook” (Lviv), which promotes the ten-finger performing system, the Kharkiv-type of playing and offers a large number of exercises and technical repertoire, paying special attention to various fingering combinations and position of fingers on the string. The activity of M. Opryshko played a significant role in Ukrainian kobzar art. The “Bandura School” by V. Kabachko and E. Yutsevich is a textbook for primary education. Zinovy Shtokalko, a well-known bandura player of his time, created the “Kobzar textbook”, in which he promotes the Kharkiv-way of playing and professional bandura performance. Notably, due to the transition from the Kharkiv-type to the Kyiv-type banduras, both the technical and artistic expressive capabilities of the instrument have significantly deteriorated. While selecting the educational material, there should be an organic link between the development of students’ musical hearing, new performance techniques and familiarity with musical literacy. Of particular importance, here is the work on improving the artistic quality of performances, the development of students’ artistry. Conclusions. The issue of technical development of the bandura instrumental performer is linked to the problem of fingering. During the twentieth century, many teachers and researchers developed the necessary methodological basis, which became the foundation for the gifted generation of bandura performers. That is why, bandura fingering issue requires deep analysis and thorough review of existing developments, the search for new approaches and their practical implementation.


Author(s):  
Rachel Hallote

When the artistic canon of the Southern Levant coalesced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars thought of the region, then Ottoman Palestine, as the locus of the Bible. The small-scale nature of the archaeological finds as well as their relative dearth reinforced a reliance on biblical narratives as a framework for understanding the culture of the region. Moreover, early scholarship did not recognize the complex regionalism of the Southern Levant or the diversity of its populations. Consequently, the artistic canon that developed did not represent the historical and archaeological realities of the region. This chapter examines the history of how the artistic canon of the Southern Levant formed over the past century of scholarship, why various scholars of the early and middle twentieth century included particular items in the canon, and why these now entrenched representations may or may not be helpful to the discipline’s future.


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