H. L. Mencken and American Cultural Masculinism

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-398
Author(s):  
Melita Schaum
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Opinion Seeking ◽  
Definition Of

H. L. Mencken's antagonism to women's issues seems paradoxical in a man so committed to emancipation and the reexamination of conventional social roles — the very goals for which the women's movement was fighting during the early decades of the twentieth century. The apparent discord of Mencken's attacks on suffragettes, his deprecating depictions of womanhood, and his thinly veiled vilification of women as a source of cultural mediocrity have spurred critics to explain, reformulate, or deny Mencken's disturbing prejudice. Edward A. Martin quixotically suggests that Mencken only “posed as an antifeminist,” while Charles A. Fecher wonders why “today's advocates of ‘women's liberation’ have not resurrected In Defense of Women” — Mencken's lashing satire on the female in America, grossly misread by Fecher as a tribute to women's “intelligence.” But Mencken was not “posing” as an antifeminist any more than he was pretending to be anti-Philistine. His views of women were not only consistent with his own cultural philosophy but joined a paradigm of masculinism underlying the definition of American culture during these years.This essay does not deny Mencken's considerable contributions to the scene of American letters in the early twentieth century. Alarm at the recently published diaries — which illustrate Mencken's disposition to be “careless of the decencies” in his random remarks on African-Americans and Jews — while justified, often de-contextualizes his opinions from the wider cultural atmosphere. Regarding his views on women as well, I argue that metaphoric and broadly philosophical foundations place many of his views within a larger climate of opinion seeking to link the rise of the feminine with intellectual mediocrity.

The Mystery of American Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-175
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Wall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Culture ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Invisible Man ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The Individual

Although best known for his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s essays, and the array of cultural and political agendas which prompt their conception, are integral to American literary theory and criticism. His essays defined the terms for ongoing debates around nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction, modernist aesthetics, and American culture. This chapter charts the various cultural, literary, and political interventions made by Ellison’s essays. Like James Baldwin (chapter 4), Ellison confronts the question of American identity, but he recasts it in terms of culture rather than of the individual. Through Ellison’s use of the vernacular process, which blends high and low styles, he maps cultural concerns onto the political stage. By emphasizing the cultural contributions made by African Americans, Ellison’s work complicates, reworks, and redefines our understanding of American culture.

As Natural as Eating, Drinking, and Sleeping

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Leng
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
The Self ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Independent Source ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
Sex Drive ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores debates regarding the “true nature” of the female sex drive in the early twentieth century. It focuses on the ideas of Henriette Fürth, Grete Meisel-Hess, Ruth Bré, and Johanna Elberskirchen, who drew upon cutting-edge scientific knowledge to assert that women possessed an innate sex drive that was distinct from the maternal drive and constituted an authentic and independent source of sexual desire. With this new definition of the female sex drive, these authors positioned women as sexual agents, demanded the reform of institutions that governed heterosexuality—above all marriage—and challenged the sexual double standard, which required women (but not men) to remain celibate outside of marriage. This chapter also examines the disagreements these ideas engendered among male and female sexual theorists, and among women sexologists and feminists from the self-defined moderate wing of the German women’s movement.

Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Presbyterianism in North America

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Sean Michael Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
New World ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Old World ◽  
Theological Debate ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Trying to account for the growth of Presbyterianism in North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is not simply a matter of demographics. Rather, Presbyterianism’s expansion was the result of a developing sense of identity, centering on robust theological debate as shaped by the process of Americanization. Starting in the eighteenth century, this New World faith drew from Old World precedents and personalities, but transformed them in the new North American context. Not every Presbyterian participated in this mainstream development; African Americans, Scots Covenanters, and Canadians all found themselves to be outsiders to this developing American faith. These outsiders actually highlight the larger trend: Presbyterians more than any other denominational tradition would become a “church with the soul of the nation.” This commitment, and perhaps captivity, to American culture accounts for Presbyterian success during this period, but it would also set the stage for the fierce battles over Presbyterian identity in the twentieth century and beyond.

The Changing Face of Irish Ireland: Séamus Ó Grianna's and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's Fictions of the Donegal Gaeltacht

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-380
Author(s):  
Ríona Nic Congáil
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Shared Interest ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Insight Into

Séamus Ó Grianna and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, whose lifespans overlapped only briefly, rank among the most prolific Irish writers of the twentieth century. Their bilingualism, moreover, offers them access to two languages, cultures, and viewpoints. Their shared interest in the Donegal Gaeltacht during the revivalist period, and their use of fiction to explore and represent it, provide their readers with a remarkable insight into the changing ideologies of twentieth-century Ireland, and particularly Irish-Ireland, touching on broad issues that are linguistic, cultural, political, gendered, and spatial. This essay begins by analyzing the narrative similarities between Ó Grianna's Mo Dhá Róisín and Ní Dhuibhne's Hiring Fair Trilogy, and proceeds to examine how both writers negotiate historical fact, the Irish language, the performance of Gaelic culture, the burgeoning women's movement, and the chasm between rural and urban Ireland of the revival. Through this approach, the essay demonstrates that the fictions of these two writers reveal as much about their own agendas and the dominant ideas of the epoch in which they were writing, as they do about life in the Donegal Gaeltacht in the early twentieth century.

Towards a Minor Poetry: Reading Twentieth-Century French Poetry with Deleuze–Guattari and Bakhtin

Paragraph ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-153
Author(s):  
Daisy Sainsbury
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
French Language ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Language System ◽  
Poetic Discourse ◽  
Poetry Reading ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Minor

Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of minor literature, deterritorialization and agrammaticality, this article explores the possibility of a ‘minor poetry’, considering various interpretations of the term, and interrogating the value of the distinction between minor poetry and minor literature. The article considers Bakhtin's work, which offers several parallels to Deleuze and Guattari's in its consideration of the language system and the place of literature within it, but which also addresses questions of genre. It pursues Christian Prigent's hypothesis, in contrast to Bakhtin's account of poetic discourse, that Deleuze and Guattari's notion of deterritorialization might offer a definition of poetic language. Considering the work of two French-language poets, Ghérasim Luca and Olivier Cadiot, the article argues that the term ‘minor poetry’ gains an additional relevance for experimental twentieth-century poetry which grapples with its own generic identity, deterritorializing established conceptions of poetry, and making ‘minor’ the major poetic discourses on which it is contingent.

The Concept of Nontraditional Student

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Treinienė Daiva
Keyword(s):  
Nontraditional Students ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Nontraditional Student ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Older Students ◽  
Learning Differences ◽  
Status Characteristics ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The University

Abstract Nontraditional student is understood as one of the older students enrolled in formal or informal studies. In the literature, there is no detailed generalisation of nontraditional student. This article aims to reveal the concept of this particular group of students. Analysing the definition of nontraditional students, researchers identify the main criteria that allow to provide a more comprehensive concept of the nontraditional student. The main one is the age of these atypical students coming to study at the university, their selected form of studies, adult social roles status characteristics, such as family, parenting and financial independence as well as the nature of work. The described features of the nontraditional student demonstrate how the unconventional nontraditional student is different from the traditional one, which features are characteristic for them and how they reflect the nontraditional student’s maturity and experience in comparison with younger, traditional students. Key features - independence, internal motivation, experience, responsibility, determination. They allow nontraditional students to pursue their life goals, learn and move towards their set goals. University student identity is determined on the basis of the three positions: on the age suitability by social norms, the learning outcomes incorporated with age, on the creation of student’s ideal image. There are four students’ biographical profiles distinguished: wandering type, seeking a degree, intergrative and emancipatory type. They allow to see the biographical origin of nontraditional students, their social status as well as educational features. Biographical profiles presented allow to comprise the nontraditional student’s portrait of different countries. Traditional and nontraditional students’ learning differences are revealed by analysing their need for knowledge, independence, experience, skill to learn, orientation and motivation aspects. To sum up, the analysis of the scientific literature can formulate the concept of the nontraditional student. Nontraditional student refers to the category of 20-65 years of age who enrolls into higher education studies in a nontraditional way, is financially independent, with several social roles of life, studying full-time or part-time, and working full-time or part-time, or not working at all.

The Contemporary Serbian Historiography on Women in the Independent Serbian State (1878–1918): An Overview

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 62-75
Author(s):  
Yulia V. Lobacheva
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
Biographical Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century ◽  
Current Stage

This article aims to consider how Serbian scholars/historians approach to the study of Serbian women in the history of the independent Serbian state and the Serbian society in 1878–1918 at the current stage of the research (from the beginning of 1990th until 2017). This paper will give an overview of some of the main areas of historical studies considering Serbian women’s “being and life”. For example the historiography on history of “women’s question” including women’s movement and/or feminism will be considered as well as biographical research, the study of women’s position through the lens of the modernization process in Serbia in the 19th and 20th Century, Serbian women’s issues in gender studies and through the history of everyday and private life and family, the analysis of the perception of Serbian woman by outside observers including the study of the image of Serbian woman created/constructed by “others”.

A Comparative Exploration of the Spiritual Authority of the Awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi Traditions

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Rebecca Masterton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Comparison ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Islamic Belief

This paper aims to engage in a critical comparison of the spiritual authority of the awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi traditions in order to examine an area of Islamic belief that remains unclearly defined. Similarities between Shi‘i and Sufi doctrine have long been noted, but little research has been conducted on how and why they developed. Taking a central tenet of both, walāyah, the paper discusses several of its key aspects as they appear recorded in Shi‘i ḥadīth collections and as they appear later in one of the earliest Sunni Sufi treatises. By extention, it seeks to explore the identity of the awliyā’ and their role in relation to the Twelve Imams. It also traces the reabsorption into Shi‘i culture of the Sufi definition of walāyah via two examples: the works of one branch of the Dhahabi order and those of Allamah Tabataba’i, a popular twentieth-century Iranian mystic and scholar.

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