Notes on the elogium of a benefactor at Pompeii

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 148-182
Author(s):  
John Bodel ◽  
Andreas Bendlin ◽  
Seth Bernard ◽  
Christer Bruun ◽  
Jonathan Edmondson
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Road ◽  
New Information ◽  
Present Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
Full Discussion ◽  
The Town

The rediscovery in the summer of 2017 of a large monumental tomb of unusual form outside the Stabian Gate at Pompeii caused an immediate sensation, and the swift initial publication by M. Osanna in JRA 31 (2018) of the long funerary inscription fronting the W side of the base, facing the road, has been welcomed gratefully by the scholarly community. The text — at 183 words, by far the longest funerary inscription yet found at Pompeii — records a series of extraordinary benefactions by an unnamed local worthy, beginning with a banquet held on the occasion of his coming-of-age ceremony and continuing, it seems, well into his adult life, up to the final years of the town when the monument was built. As Osanna and others have recognized, the inscription, which seems to allude to an historical event (Tac., Ann. 14.17), the riot between Nucerians and Pompeians around Pompeii’s amphitheater in A.D. 59, provides valuable if ambivalent new information relevant to the demographic, economic and social history of Pompeii that will require full discussion in a variety of contexts over time. The present collection of remarks, a collaborative effort, is offered in the spirit of debate and is intended as an interim contribution toward a more complete understanding of the text.1

The Short, Lascivious Lives of Two Venetian Theaters, 1580-85

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 936-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene J. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
New Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opera House ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

The teatro all'italiana, or Italian opera house with boxes, was one of the most successful building types invented during the Renaissance, but fragmentary and ambiguous evidence has made locating its origins difficult. This article proposes that those origins are to be found in two theaters for commedia dell'arte built in Venice in 1580 and destroyed by order of the Council of Ten in 1585 (m.v.). The history of these two theaters is sketched here for the first time by means of documents recently found in the Archivio di Stato, Venice, that also include new information related to Palladia's Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. The role the two Venetian theaters played in the economic, political and social history of the city is suggested.

‘One Can’t Help Shuddering at the Sight of the Ruin of This Thriving Town’: The Great Fire in Yeniseisk and Its Consequences. 1869-1870

2018 ◽  
pp. 483-494
Author(s):  
Natalia V. Gonina ◽  
◽  
Anna P. Dvoretskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Krasnoyarsk Krai ◽  
External Resources ◽  
Irkutsk Region ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

This archive draws on archival sources to study the Great Fire in Yeniseysk in 1869 and its consequences for development of this northern provincial town. The research derives its novelty from the first publication of documents of the State Archive of the Krasnoyarsk Krai and that of the Irkutsk Region, which describe measures of fire response and name benefactors. Historical approach allows to place specific patterns of local community in the context of social history of the 20th century. Anthropological approach allows to identify means and modes of surviving in a natural disaster. The fire clamed about 200 lives, destroyed all wooden buildings in the town, and disrupted daily activities of more than 7 thousand Yeniseysk citizens. At present, such disasters are considered as more than just local disasters. From the religious point of view, such natural disasters disrupt the balance and harmony of the God's world and require worldwide effort to set it to rights. The case-study of the Yeniseysk community concludes that actions of a person within the fire storm were determined not just by self-preservation, but also by responsibility for the lives of those around them. People appealed to church for help. Many Yeniseysk priests rose to the occasion as their vocation demanded. The archival documents show how rapidly the nation responded to the disaster. The case-study of Yeniseysk in 1869-1871 demonstrates an array of measures aiming to attract external resources. The activities were based on Christian principles of communal spirit and charity, community help and civic cooperation in joined efforts of state and public institutions, private and corporate donors. The article concludes that effective moneyed assistance and social support significantly decreased the severity of losses.

Oysteropolis: Animals in coastal gentrification

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110249
Author(s):  
Andrew Brooks ◽  
Phil Hubbard
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Coastal Ecosystem ◽  
Coastal Community ◽  
History Of ◽  
South East England ◽  
The Town ◽  
Animal Agency

Gentrification scholars have increasingly acknowledged the importance of socio-nature in encouraging the revaluation of place. Yet relatively little has been said about the role that non-human animals play in changing the material, sensory and affective qualities of place and the ways that they provoke capital investment. In this paper, we provide a corrective by exploring the role of the oyster in the ongoing gentrification of a coastal community (Whitstable in Kent, South East England). The complex natural and social history of oysters in Whitstable shows that how animal agency has contributed to processes of gentrification. Oysters are visceral objects whose affective qualities create hierarchies of taste and distaste through processes of desire and disgust. This animal is a marker of class change that positions the ‘local’ within wider circuits of consumption. Further, oysters are labouring bodies that reconstitute the coastal ecosystem on which the town depends. The arguments illustrate that non-human animals can be – economically, culturally and ecologically – vital and lively components within the dynamic material processes that support gentrification.

New Deal Politics and Regionalist Art: Thomas Hart Benton's A Social History of the State of Indiana

Prospects ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 353-378
Author(s):  
Erika Doss
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Henry Adams ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Information ◽  
American Artist ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The past two decades have seen a plethora of new information on American artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975). Matthew Baigell pioneered Benton studies with his monograph on the artist in 1974, and Karal Ann Marling enhanced the subject with her survey of the artist's drawings in 1985. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City developed and traveled an extensive show of Benton's paintings in the late 1980s and produced an extensive biography by curator Henry Adams. The centennial of Benton's birth generated even more material: exhibits of his prints and drawings, volumes of essays on his art and character, and a considerable number of magazine and journal articles assessing his importance in 20thcentury American culture. Even Prospects has done its part for Bentonia with essays by Marling (1981) and Barbara Ladner (1990).

scholarly journals Art. XV.—The History of the Mosque of Amr at Old Cairo

1890 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-800
Author(s):  
Eustace K. Corbett
Keyword(s):  
General View ◽  
The Road ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Left Front ◽  
The Town ◽  
High Dust

The traveller in Egypt who wishes to visit the Mosque of Amr may now leave Cairo either by train or carriage, and step out in the immediate neighbourhood. But he who prefers the most picturesque and interesting route will either ride or walk, and taking the street which runs parallel to the Khalīg, or Canal of Cairo, will pass out of the town by the gate of Sayyida Zeinab. Following the road past the picturesque little Mosque of Zein al Ābidin, he will pass under the Aqueduct, and proceed along the track which leads him through a country of mounds and dust-heaps past the Mosque of Abu-s-Suūd to the N. front of the building which he seeks (see Plan I.). Here let him ascend the mound which lies outside the huts by which the facade of the Mosque is shut in, and, facing towards them, take a general view of the scene. To his left he looks over a dusty space of comparatively low-lying ground, to the Aqueduct under which he passed twenty minutes ago; on his left front the citadel of Cairo stands out in the distance beyond a large expanse of high dust-mounds. Straight before him is the Mosque, but he can see little of it excepting the higher part of the two minarets, the mass of huts shutting out the view of the low walls; but behind the Mosque, at some two miles' distance, the limestone cliffs of Mukattam gleam in the sunshine: while further to the right the eye rests on a dusty height crowned by disused windmills.

scholarly journals Ukrainian Historography of Perestroika

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 975-989
Author(s):  
Yurii V. Latysh ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Road ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
Soviet Communism

The article deals with the main trends and debatable issues in the Ukrainian historiography of Perestroika. The author establishes a connection between the prevailing ideas about the place of Soviet statehood in the history of Ukraine and the role of Perestroika in it. The totalitarian paradigm dominant in Ukrainian historiography is analyzed, according to which: 1) the reforms were unable to correct the Soviet communism whose collapse was imminent; 2) as a result of the collapse of the Soviet empire the peoples were given the opportunity to create national states and return to the “road of civilization” — to a market economy based on private property. The concepts of the system crisis of the Soviet model of socialism and the transformation of perestroika as a “revolution from above” into the national revolution during the Ukrainian national revival are considered. The article pays a particular attention to the coverage of the role of Ukraine in the disintegration of the USSR in the historiography since the position of the situational union of sovereign communists and nationalists at the time of the conclusion of the Belovezhsky agreements rested on the will of the people — the AllUkrainian referendum. Russia and Belarus did not conduct referendums on independence. It has been established that Ukrainian historians have concentrated on studying certain aspects of Perestroika, mainly related to Ukraine. They concern the Ukrainian national, linguistic, cultural and ecclesiastical revival, the activities of the national-democratic opposition. Many aspects of Perestroika (economic reforms, foreign policy, social history, the history of everyday life) in Ukraine are almost not researched at all.

scholarly journals Choosing Death: Working-Class Coming of Age in Contemporary British Cinema

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 746-768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Dave
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The Individual

Starting with Franco Moretti's hypothesis of a relationship between the experience of modernity and the coming of age narrative in the European novel, this article explores representations of the working-class Bildung in contemporary British films that can be seen as responding to social and economic changes generally associated with neoliberalism. Contrasting the emphasis on the individual negotiation of social space in the films of Danny Boyle with work from a range of directors, including Ken Loach, Penny Woolcock, Shane Meadows and Anton Corbijn, along with recent production cycles such as the football film, the article seeks to identify representations of working-class experiences, both limiting and liberating, which mark the inherently problematic attempt to imagine a successful working-class coming of age. In doing so, the article considers the usefulness of Raymond Williams’ class-inflected account of traditions of the social bond, in particular his notion of a ‘common culture’. At the same time, it examines how such representations of working-class life often emphasise the experience of class conflict, distinguished here from class struggle, and how, formally, this emphasis can result in narratives which are marked less by what Moretti describes as the ‘novelistic’, temporising structures of the classical Bildungsroman and more by the sense of crisis and trauma found in the late Bildungsroman and modern tragedy. Ultimately, the article argues for the relevance of the long view of the social history of Britain, as a pioneer culture of capitalism, in understanding these aspects of the representation of class cultures in contemporary British film.

The Historiography of Early Modern Brazil

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Subaltern Agency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era

Scholarship on the early modern era in Brazil has been booming since the 1980s. This trend has been influenced theoretically by developments in the social sciences and by the cultural turn in history, by new information technologies of digitalization and the Internet, and by a series of centenaries that have generated institutional support for publications, conferences, and research. This article identifies a number of major themes and questions that have organized much of this historical production, notes the major writings that have moved the field in new directions, and discusses the shifts in emphasis in historical inquiry by concentrating on some of the works that have been seminal in the study of colonial Brazil. Five themes or trends are highlighted: the social history of the major groups within the colony (merchants, cane farmers and sugar barons, slaves, and the free population of color); a complementary cultural approach that has added attention to issues such as private life, public rituals, and subaltern agency; Afro-Brazilian life and culture; a surprisingly rich literature on the indigenous population; and studies of colonial governance.

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