scholarly journals But Is It Art? Female Performers in the Café-Concert

1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (20) ◽  
pp. 334-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geraldine Harris

The Café-Concert as an object of study has tended to attract the interest of art rather than theatre historians, despite the fact that it was the major form of popular entertainment in France during the nineteenth century. Similar but not identical to the English music hall of the same period, the Café-Concert produced a number of stars of national importance, a large majority of whom were women. Through the writings of journalists and commentators of the period, this article explores how these female performers were perceived and constructed as objects of the public gaze. The author, Geraldine Harris, is a Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Lancaster, with interests in both popular and feminist theatre.

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Janice Norwood

Lucia Elizabeth Vestris (1797–1856) and Sara Lane (1822–99) were two pioneering women in nineteenth-century theatre history. Both were accomplished singers who made their names initially in comic and breeches roles and, during periods when theatrical management was almost exclusively confined to men, both ran successful theatre companies in London. Despite these parallels in their professional activities, there are substantial disparities in the scrutiny to which their personal lives were subjected and in how their contemporaries and posterity have memorialized them. In this article, Janice Norwood examines a range of portraits and cartoons of the two women, revealing how the images created and reflected the women's public identities, as well as recording changes in aesthetic practice and social attitudes. She argues that the women's iconology was fundamentally shaped by the contemporary discourse of gender difference. Janice Norwood is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Drama, and Theatre Studies at the University of Hertfordshire. She has published on various aspects of nineteenth-century theatre history and edited a volume on Vestris for the Lives of Shakespearian Actors series (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).


1988 ◽  
Vol 4 (14) ◽  
pp. 122-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Davis

In recent years, melodrama has increasingly been recognized not only as an important element in popular theatre studies, but for the intrinsic importance of the form itself. Less considered has been the relationship of the material of melodrama to the ‘real life’ it reflected in a highly conventionalized yet ultimately (for its audiences), recognizable fashion. Here, Jim Davis looks at one major category, nautical melodrama, setting the images of the navy and of sailors that it created alongside factual and critical accounts of life at sea in the first half of the nineteenth century. He conveys both the pressures that existed for redress of abuses, and the consequent balance between coercion and subversion in the melodramas themselves – drawing in particular on the memoirs of Douglas Jerrold to explore aspects of the ambiguity to be found in contemporary attitudes. Jim Davis, who is the author of several books and articles in the area of nineteenth century theatre history, is presently teaching in the School of Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales.


Author(s):  
Écio Portes

Estuda as trajetórias de estudantes pobres em cursos altamente seletivos da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, como Ciência da Computação, Comunicação Social, Direito, Engenharia Elétrica, Fisioterapia e Medicina. Explica o conjunto de circunstâncias que propiciaram esse sucesso escolar. Realiza esse intento investigando a história de estudantes pobres no ensino superior no século 20, nas Faculdades de Direito de Olinda/Recife e de São Paulo e a história do atendimento a estudantes pobres empreendido pela UFMG desde o momento de sua criação. Utiliza os trabalhos que lidam com trajetórias escolares, principalmente de sociólogos franceses, como Bourdieu, De Queiroz, Lahire, Laurens e Terrail, entre outros. Os resultados confirmam a existência de estudantes pobres no ensino superior desde a implantação deste, mesmo que pouco representativa; e, como conclusão, é afirmado que a inclusão e a permanência de estudantes pobres no ensino superior brasileiro são uma tarefa de difícil execução, que se deu sem a presença de ações desenvolvidas pelo Estado. No passado, esses estudantes desenvolveram estratégias próprias que se associariam, já no século 20, a estratégias filantrópicas e institucionais empreendidas no seio da própria instituição universitária, a exemplo do que vem fazendo a UFMG ao longo do tempo. Essas ações sustentaram um grupo de estudantes pobres no interior da universidade pública, mas não puseram fim às discriminações sofridas nem minimizaram os constrangimentos econômicos perpetuados historicamente e pelos quais outros vêm passando no cotidiano universitário. Palavras-chave: sociologia da educação; trajetórias escolares; estudantes pobres; ensino superior. Abstract This work gives priority to the historic and theoretical search necessary to the understanding of the object of study, the social and school trajectories of poor students, in the past and in the present. The new data and the proposed analyses lead us to believe that the fact of poor students being included in the Brazilian higher education and remaining at the University is not an easy task and took place without any government policies. In former times, these students developed their own strategies, which became associated, in the twentieth century, to institutional strategies, organised inside the University itself, following the example of what UFMG has been doing all this time. These actions supported a group of poor students in the public University but did not hinder prejudice nor diminished economical embarrassments, which they historically have been going through in their university routine. Keywords: sociology of education; school trajectories; university life; poor students; higher education.


1987 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 474-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Scott Appleby

“Romanism and Evolution. Remarkable Advance. No Special Creation.” “Father Zahm on the Six Days of Creation.” “Father Zahm on Inspiration.” “Father Zahm Honored with a Private Audience by His Holiness.”1 During the final decade of the nineteenth century religious periodicals and secular newspapers alike chronicled the growing fascination of the American Catholic community with the public debate over the latest theories regarding the evolution of species. One figure in particular, John Augustine Zahm, a Holy Cross priest and professor of chemistry and physics in the University of Notre Dame, captured many of the headlines and captivated Catholic audiences with his sophisticated, clear expositions of the various theories in the post-Darwinian controversies and with his repeated assurances that the idea of evolution, properly understood, posed no obstacle to the faith of the individual Catholic.


2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Arrighi ◽  
Victor Emeljanow

This article explores the conflict between the constructions of childhood and their political/legal implications in the context of the entertainment business, as related to the demands imposed upon children by parents and theatre managers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Once children could move freely both within and between countries, these conflicts and concerns assumed a global dimension. Through a number of case studies, the authors offer some fresh observations about how legal and social imperatives affected the transmission of values about children employed as entertainers between Britain and Australasia during the period from 1870 to the start of the First World War – from the Education Acts of the 1870s to the legislation of 1910–1913 restricting the export of child entertainers. Gillian Arrighi is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has recently published articles in Theatre Journal (Dec 2008), Australasian Drama Studies (April 2009 and Oct 2010), and in Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s–1960s (Sydney, 2008). She is associate editor of the e-journal Popular Entertainment Studies. Victor Emeljanow is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and General Editor of the e-journal Popular Entertainment Studies. He has published widely on subjects ranging from the reception of Chekhov in Britain and the career of Theodore Kommisarjevsky, to Victorian popular dramatists. He co-wrote with Jim Davis the award-winning Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840–1880 in 2001, and his chapter on staging the pirate in the nineteenth century was included in Swashbucklers and Swindlers: Pirates and Mutineers in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, edited by Grace Moore (2011).


1923 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leonard Woolley

It was in the middle of the nineteenth century that the site of Ur was identified and the excavation of its ruins begun by G. E. Taylor, consul at Basra, acting on behalf of the British Museum. A number of antiquities was brought back to London, but the unsensational character of the finds in southern Mesopotamia caused them to be overshadowed by the striking discoveries then being made in the northern mounds, and work was abandoned, not to be resumed until the Great War put the British in temporary possession of the country and gave it a fresh interest in the eyes of the public. In the latter part of the war Mr. R. Campbell Thompson, working for the British Museum, made soundings at Ur, but did not carry out extensive excavations; in 1919 Dr. H. R. Hall was sent out by the Trustees and began a systematic investigation of the site, employing a considerable force of men for nearly three months, and obtaining important results. Dr. Hall's work made it evident that if the site of Ur was to be tackled seriously, a whole series of campaigns extending over many years and involving very heavy outlay would be required, campaigns to which the post-war finances of the British Museum were by no means adequate. Fortunately the Trustees were at this juncture able to join forces with the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, and it was decided that an expedition should take the field at the joint expense of the two institutions, which should also share with the Iraq Government in the material results of the work. Of this joint expedition I was asked to take charge. Mr. F. G. Newton came as architect of the party, Mr. Sidney Smith of the British Museum dealt with the inscriptions, and at the end of the year we were joined by Mr. A. W. Lawrence. Hamoudi, my Carchemish foreman, was put in charge of the men; the actual labourers were the Muntafik Arabs of the district. Digging started at the beginning of November and went on without interruption, owing to an unusually clement winter, until halfway through February.


Nuncius ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-211
Author(s):  
MARIO DE GREGORIO

Abstracttitle SUMMARY /title The inventory of Giorgio Santi's correspondance preserved in the Public Library of Siena shows the many relations of this tuscan chemist, botanist and naturalist, from 1776 to 1822. He grew in France in close contact with the new theories put forward by Buffon and Lavoisier. He was Professor at the University of Pisa and since 1782 director of the botanical gardens of this town. Santi is one of the most interesting italian scientific personalities between eighteenth and nineteenth century, an important representative of that Tuscan group that worked towards the achievement of the great program of the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, and then persued the goal under the new French administration.


2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Martina Lipton

This paper explores the differing levels of control over representations of Ada Reeve's mediated and ‘ghosted’ afterlife. Confessional memoirs that strategically frame the star persona for posterity provide her with the most immediate control. However, the star can become recruited to new assertions of cultural nationalism, which desire to claim coherent genealogies, public celebration, and commemoration of a star's afterlife. This, paired with nostalgic desires for past ‘golden ages’, also mediates strategic interests in her imbricated identity. Similarly, the star's mediated afterlife inevitably becomes susceptible to repositioning by theatre managements, the media, family, fans, and the public when their revisionist agendas make new assertions for the star's image after death in various immediate political and social contexts, and as communal encoded memory. Martina Lipton is Research Fellow (Australia) at the University of Warwick and Honorary Associate Lecturer at the University of Queensland. She has published several articles in Australasian Drama Studies, Contemporary Theatre Review, New Theatre Quarterly, and Popular Entertainment Studies on pantomime and popular theatre performers, and her paper ‘Localism and British Modern Pantomime’ is in A World of Popular Entertainments: an Edited Volume of Critical Essays (2012).


Author(s):  
Paula De La Cruz-Fernandez ◽  
Ivette Rodriguez

The George A. Smathers Libraries Graduate Internship Program Exploring the Work and Times of Cuban Intellectuals in the Nineteenth Century has published the digital resource Cuba, Pearl of the Caribbean (http://cubanthinkers.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/) to promote the rich and enlightening intellectual content of the Cuban Thinkers online collection of the University of Florida Digital Collections as well as to introduce and develop the skills of a UF graduate student in fundamental tools in Digital Humanities, including TimelineJS, Zotero, and the popular Content Management System WordPress. Through the bilingual website, the public can learn about the historical context of key Cuban thinkers of the nineteenth century and be encouraged to explore the extensive and freely accessible Cuban patrimony material of the Celebrating Cuba! Collaborative Digital Collections of Cuban Patrimony project.


2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Gelbier

The lack of professional qualifications was felt keenly by some nineteenth-century medical and dental practitioners. In 1860, the Lancet highlighted a scheme “to avoid the operation of the Medical Act, and to enable uneducated and unprincipled men to defraud the public”. It quoted an advertisement from a daily newspaper. Mr T Vary had announced that “Doctors, Druggists, Chemists, or Dentists, who have no Medical Diploma, can hear of an easy method of obtaining one” by writing to him at Jones's Coffee House in London's Tottenham Court Road. In response to an enquiry, Vary told the Lancet that he had just come from America where a friend “had graduated … in 1857, with all the honours”. However, the latter “had to leave America without his diploma” because of a lack of money for his graduation fees, and so had asked him to pay off the debt and bring back the diploma to Europe. Vary said: “I have done so; but have been detained longer than was anticipated, and now find my friend dead”. Indicating that he did not want to lose the money which he had paid on behalf of his friend, Vary continued: “Fortunately, as is common in America, the space for the name is left blank, to allow the graduate to have it filled up to suit his fancy by some writing master”. He proposed to sell the diploma and supporting papers for £23, which, he pointed out, was “as good as if five years' labour and 1500 dollars had been given to obtain it”. Later in the same year, the Lancet stressed that the practice of buying a Continental degree of MD, without examination or residence, was clearly a “fraud upon the public … repugnant to professional honour and destructive of professional character”. It published details of a proposition sent to Mr Pound, a surgeon in Odiham, to obtain a degree “by simple purchase”. Enclosed was a printed circular: “If you wish to become a M.D. without absenting yourself from your professional duties, I can procure you the degree from a Continental University of the highest reputation, on terms more moderate than any hitherto known in this country”. The circular was accompanied by a letter addressed personally to Pound by a Dr H A Caesar, MD, FRCSI. There is no way of knowing how many doctors or dentists actually bought copies of that or similar false diplomas.


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