Chin-Chun-Chan:Popular Sinophobia in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico City

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-318
Author(s):  
Robert M. Buffington
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Penny Press ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Symbol ◽  
Popular Language

AbstractThis article looks at popular responses to the zarzuela Chin-Chun-Chan and the issues that surfaced around its timely subject in early twentieth-century Mexico City. The principal source is the Mexico City satiric penny press for workers, supplemented by somewhat less polemical broadsides, both sold on the streets of the capital. Aimed mostly at working-class Mexicans, these sources offer a glimpse at popular attitudes circulating in a public sphere otherwise dominated by the perspective of educated elites. The article has four sections. First, it briefly reviews social commentary on the democratization of musical theater. Second, it examines Chin-Chun-Chan as a political symbol that crystalized around working-class complaints about the Porfirian regime, especially its alleged disregard for Mexican workers and Mexican national identity. Third, it analyzes the ways in which the phrase “Chin-Chun-Chan” entered popular language as a racial signifier for a range of things, some of which bore little relation to its theatrical origins. Finally, it links popular Sinophobia in late Porfirian Mexico City to the virulent anti-Chinese campaigns in northern Mexico, which played a key role in defining national identity after the 1910 Revolution, and to the “hemispheric orientalism” that has characterized anti-Asian sentiments throughout the Americas.

Faeries, Aliens, and Leviathans: Science and Fantasy in Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-303
Author(s):  
Richard Howard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Irish Studies ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Unexplored Area ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Cultural Movement

Irish science fiction is a relatively unexplored area for Irish Studies, a situation partially rectified by the publication of Jack Fennell's Irish Science Fiction in 2014. This article aims to continue the conversation begun by Fennell's intervention by analysing the work of Belfast science fiction author Ian McDonald, in particular King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991), the first novel in what McDonald calls his Irish trilogy. The article explores how McDonald's text interrogates the intersection between science, politics, and religion, as well as the cultural movement that was informing a growing sense of a continuous Irish national identity. It draws from the discipline of Science Studies, in particular the work of Nicholas Whyte, who writes of the ways in which science and colonialism interacted in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland.

Sweet Mystery

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Peck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Professional Theater ◽  
Standard Practices

Rida Johnson Young (ca. 1869–1926) was one of the most prolific female playwrights of her time, as well as a lyricist and librettist in the musical theater. She wrote more than thirty full-length plays, operettas, and musical comedies, five hundred songs, and four novels. Despite her extensive output, no significant study of her work has been produced. This book examines her musical theater works with in-depth analyses of her librettos and lyrics, as well as her working relationships with other writers, performers, and producers, particularly Lee and J. J. Shubert. Using archival materials such as original typescripts, correspondence, and reviews, the book contextualizes Young’s work within the milieu of the early-twentieth-century professional theater and provides a window into the standard practices of writing and production of the era. The works examined are Naughty Marietta, Lady Luxury, The Red Petticoat, When Love Is Young, His Little Widows, Her Soldier Boy, Maytime, Sometime, Little Simplicity, and The Dream Girl.

The Strange Radicalism of Thomas Carnduff and St John Ervine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connal Parr
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
First World War ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Unpublished Work ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

St John Ervine and Thomas Carnduff were born in working-class Protestant parts of Belfast in the 1880s, though Ervine would escape to an eventually prosperous existence in England. Orangeism, the politics of early twentieth-century Ireland, the militancy of the age—and the involvement of these writers in it—along with Ervine’s journey from ardent Fabian to reactionary Unionist, via his pivotal experiences managing the Abbey Theatre and losing a leg in the First World War, are all discussed. Carnduff’s own tumultuous life is reflected through his complicated Orange affiliation, gut class-consciousness, poetry, unpublished work, contempt for the local (and gentrified) Ulster artistic scene, and veneration of socially conscious United Irishman James Hope. It concludes with an assessment of their respective legacies and continuing import.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva: A Study of Its Philosophical Elements to Hindu Nationalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-160
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Hindu Nationalism ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Rhetorical Style ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
Extended Essay

In the early twentieth-century, the concepts of Hindutva, Samyavada or Nationalism and national identity, reconstructed amid currents of globalization and neo-colonialism. During this period, the calls for an independent India reached its height. While, Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru believed modern India’s strength depended on incorporating the solidarities of all Indians as they stood on the precipice of the postcolonial age, Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), an ethnocentric nationalist, held that a strong Hindu nation was the only way to guarantee India’s security against the Muslim other and the British imperialism. Being the philosopher of Hindutva, Savarkar represented the ethno-nationalistic component to Hindu nationalism and looked to cultural motifs in order to unify the “true” people of India. He, therefore, wrote glorified histories of India and its millennia-old cultural traditions in his essays. This article analyzes and historically contextualizes the timing and the rhetorical style of V. D. Savarkar’s infamous extended essay “Essentials of Hindutva”. Received 9th December 2020; Revised 2nd March 2021; Accepted 20th March 2021

Agnes de Mille on Broadway: 1943–1945

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-76
Author(s):  
Liza Gennaro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Men And Women

Examination of Agnes de Mille as a radical dance maker in her choreographic trifecta—Oklahoma! (1943), One Touch of Venus (1943), and Bloomer Girl (1944)—reveals an ideological shift in the production of dance on Broadway and the development of a paradigm for making dances in the musical theater. This chapter further explores de Mille’s ability to employ dance as a medium for presenting social commentary, developing character, and creating a space for female spectatorship. Her artistic project required dancers who were not merely technicians but rather actor-dancers capable of embodying character and expressing legible story through dance. Displacing the stable of Broadway chorus men and women, de Mille introduced the actor-dancer to the commercial stage, thereby developing some of the greatest dance talents of the twentieth century, including Joan McCracken, Bambi Linn, Sono Osato, and James Mitchell. Selected dances from One Touch of Venus (1943), Bloomer Girl (1944), and Carousel (1945) are analyzed.

The Women Who Wrote

Sweet Mystery ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Peck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press

This chapter introduces some of the female playwrights of the early twentieth century and examines some of the social conditions under which they worked. It argues that many of them represented a major cultural change for women of the period who were leaving the Victorian era behind and forging new paths in the young century. But the press frequently undermined their efforts by presenting them as wives instead of individuals, scrutinizing their physical attractiveness, and implying that playwriting was a hobby on the same level as gardening or homemaking. The chapter then shifts to the challenges of writing for the musical theater and collaborating with other writers. It concludes with examples of Young’s correspondence with the Shuberts and demonstrates her ability to navigate the business side of the theater.

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