scholarly journals Culture, Entertainment, and Religion in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall J. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
New Media ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American History ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
The Masses

Throughout American history, religion and entertainment have influenced each other and have intersected in fascinating ways. Native American rituals and games entertained and inspired. Early white settlers like the Puritans, though defining their faith over and against profane pastimes, engaged in sport, play, and elaborate storytelling. Still, stark contrasts appeared in the 17th and 18th centuries when it came to how Catholics and Protestants in the New World thought of the theater, music, and performance. The evangelical surge in the 18th century brought with it a lively and riveting preaching style—represented by celebrity ministers like George Whitfield and Gilbert Tennent—that faced the ire of their more traditional foes for using “vulgar” methods to reach the masses. In the 19th century, African Americans, in slavery and freedom, expressed their faith in ways that combined religious systems, dancing, and music traditions from Africa and the Americas. Evangelical churches and prominent figures used entertainment to proselytize, illustrate the drama of salvation and damnation, and to enliven services. Temperance, anti-slavery, and other reformist groups employed music, novels, and theater to spread their earnest message. Pentecostals and other evangelicals took up new forms in the 20th century. They eagerly made use of radio, film, and later, television. The well-known evangelist Billy Graham was a skillful pioneer of new media. In the 20th century, Hollywood films drew on Jewish and Catholic themes, as Jewish and Catholic writers, directors, and actors put their stamp on the silver screen. Late 20th and early 21st century combinations of religion and entertainment included Muslim rap music, Christian rock, Jewish folk music, and much more. A great deal of this innovation coincided with the rise of the performance-driven megachurch and the proliferation of religious organizations that catered to athletes and drew on sports imagery and symbols for the cause. In the long sweep of American history, the devout have found new, elaborate ways to draw on popular culture and to entertain as well as enlighten the faithful.

scholarly journals Особенности иконографии в калмыцкой вышивке: традиционные и современные практики

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-336
Author(s):  
Tatyana I. Sharaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Spiritual Guidance ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Religious Cult ◽  
Private And Public

Introduction. The Kalmyks are a Mongolic Buddhist people that arrived in the Volga region in the 17th century. The specific ethnic features of Buddhism professed by the Kalmyks took shape over centuries of Russian suzerainty and were determined by various historical factors, including prolonged remoteness from Buddhist centers, the total eradication of Buddhist monasteries and centuries-long ban on spiritual guidance experienced in the 20th century, and the official Buddhist restoration by the early 21st century. Goals. The work aims at identifying and comparing traditional and contemporary Buddhist thangka patterns as elements to mirror particular features of Kalmyk iconography, as essential objects of religious cult and cultural heritage at large. Results. The paper shows that in the pre-20th century period Kalmyks used different techniques for producing thangkas — painting, embroidery, and applique ones. In the late 18th century onwards, imports of religious attributes from Tibet and Mongolia were restricted, and the role of art workshops affiliated to local Buddhist temples increased. That resulted in further development of thangka painting schools and the shaping of somewhat ethnic style in depicting Buddhist deities characterized by certain differences from canonical images. The old thangkas from private and public collections have served a basis for the restoration of ethnic painting traditions integral to Kalmykia’s Buddhism proper. The contemporary practices of producing divine images are closely related to stages in the regional development of Buddhism from the late 20th century to the present, lay Buddhist experiences, women’s leisure-time activities, and ethnic entrepreneurship. The study concludes contemporary Kalmyk needlewomen are guided by traditional rules of religious craftsmanship.

LITERARY ROMANTICISM AS A THEORETICAL ISSUE

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Vera V. Serdechnaia ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Theoretical Issue ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of literary romanticism. The research aims at a refinement of the “romanticism” concept in relation to the history of the literary process. The main research methods include conceptual analysis, textual analysis, comparative historical research. The author analyzes the semantic genesis of the term “romanticism”, various interpretations of the concept, compares the definitions of different periods and cultures. The main results of the study are as follows. The history of the term “romanticism” shows a change in a number of definitions for the same concept in relation to the same literary phenomena. By the end of the 20th century, realizing the existence of significant contradictions in the content of the term “romanticism”, researchers often come to abandon it. At the same time, the steady use of the term “romanticism” testifies to the subject-conceptual component that exists in it, which does not lose its relevance, but just needs a theoretical refinement. Conclusion: one have to revise an approach to romanticism as a theoretical concept, based on the change in the concept of an individual in Europe at the end of the 18th century. It is the newly discovered freedom of an individual predetermines the rethinking for the image of the author as a creator and determines the artistic features of literary romanticism.

"HOW PUISSANT HIS MIRACLES ARE!" CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE AND THE FOLK STORIES ABOUT THE RIBNITZER REBBE

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-67
Author(s):  
Natalya M. Kireeva ◽  
◽  
Maria M. Kaspina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Folk Stories

The article focuses on legends about miracles in Judaism. Particular attention is paid to miracles in the context of the early Biblical period of the prophets and modern Hasidism; similarities in motives and plots are found between the narratives of different times. The authors analyze in detail two 20th-century plots about miracles related to Chaim Zanvl Abramovich, known as the Ribnitzer Rebbe (1902–1995). The miracles that are told about him have many parallels with the legends about miracles performed by the founder of the Hasidic movement, Israel Baal Shem Tov (BeShT), who lived in the middle of the 18th century. The article reveals a connection between the Biblical and Hasidic miracle stories not only at the level of how the miracle is functioning in Jewish culture in general.

The Native American Adoption of Chilies During the 18th Century in Arizona

KIVA ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Michael W. Diehl ◽  
Deil Lundin ◽  
Robert B. Ciaccio ◽  
J. Homer Thiel
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
18Th Century

Origine et diffusion des expressions romanes du type jaune paille

2021 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Sara Matrisciano ◽  
Franz Rainer
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Short Discussion ◽  
Colour Term ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
And Diffusion

All major Romance languages have patterns of the type jaune paille for expressing shades of colour represented by some prototypical object. The first constituent of this pattern is a colour term, while the second one designates a prototypical representative of the colour shade. The present paper starts with a short discussion of the controversial grammatical status of this pattern and its constituents. Its main aim, however, concerns the origin and diffusion of this pattern. We have not found hard and fast evidence that Medieval Italian pigment compounds of the type verderame influenced the rise of the jaune paille pattern, which first appears in French in the 16th century. This pattern continued to be a minority solution during the 17th century, but established itself during the 18th century. In the 19th century, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese adopted the pattern jaune paille, while it did not reach Catalan and Romanian before the 20th century.

U.S. Immigration Policy in the Early 21st Century

2012 ◽  
pp. 93-102
Author(s):  
G. Nikol'skaya
Keyword(s):  
Immigration Policy ◽  
American History ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
Significant Movement ◽  
The Subject

U.S. immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached 40 millions in 2010, the highest number in American history. Nearly 14 millions of new immigrants settled in the country from 2000 to 2010, making it the highest decade of immigration in American history. For the United States, the immigration has always been both crucial to the economic growth and a source of serious conflicts. There has been no significant movement toward federal immigration reform since bipartisan project blocked in 2007. But it has been the subject of fever legislation at a state level, and President Obama made a decision to return to this question in the coming presidential campaign.

Orientalists and Missionaries

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Hindu Religion ◽  
Colonial Frontier

The best accounts of Hindu religious beliefs and practices to reach Europe before 1800 came overwhelmingly from the pens of missionaries. There are several reasons why this was so. Their missionary task obviously motivated them to attempt to understand Hindu religion even if they ultimately rejected it as a false religion. Beyond this, missionaries were more likely than other Europeans, such as travelers or colonial officials, to spend the bulk of their lives, often several decades, in India. They were more likely to be well-educated, to learn Indian languages, and, especially, to read Indian literature. Although many remained in European coastal enclaves, in the early period they were also much more likely than other Europeans to spend extended periods beyond the colonial frontier, living and working in the hinterland. They were also usually required to give an account of their activities to their superiors in Europe. Their letters and reports are also more likely than those produced by independent travelers (although not colonial officials) to have survived by being preserved in European archives. Although missionary scholarship has continued into the 20th century and even beyond, it was gradually eclipsed by colonial and later professional scholarship from the end of the 18th century. The emphasis here will be on works emerging from the earlier period. Scholarship on missionaries has, until quite recently, been very largely the domain of historians of mission, many of whom were missionaries themselves. This has begun to change as the value of missionary accounts have been more widely recognized, and there has been a welcome shift from the often frankly hagiographic character of earlier secondary scholarship.

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