Dignified Retreat

Author(s):  
Robert A. Schneider

Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s first minister and the architect of French absolutism, is often celebrated for his role in reviving the arts and letters in the crucial period in the formation of French classicism. This book looks less at him than at the writers and intellectuals themselves in the creation of a new culture distinguished by the rise of the French language over Latin and the emergence of a literary field. The author argues that even the French Academy, founded by Richelieu in 1635, was more the result of an already established literary and linguistic movement that he merely managed to co-opt. Dignified Retreat examines the work and activities of over one hundred writers and intellectuals, focusing especially on their place in the urban context of a revived Paris after several generations of religious warfare in the sixteenth century. The theme of “retreat”—a withdrawal from public engagement and certain modes of public expression—runs throughout the book as a leitmotif that captures the ambivalent position of these men (and a few women) of letters as they tried to establish the legitimacy of their calling outside the established institutions of the Church, the law, and the university. Building on the work of such French literary scholars and historians as Marc Fumaroli, Alain Viala, Hélène-Merlin Kajman, Christian Jouhaud, and others, Schneider offers a novel approach to this important period in French cultural history.

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 159-181
Author(s):  
David Morrison

Diarmuid Downs was a one-company man. He started work at Ricardo in 1942, after graduation from the University of London, Northampton Polytechnic (now City University) with a first-class honours degree in engineering, and retired 45 years later. His early meticulously executed research concentrated on spark-ignition combustion phenomena—essentially knock, pre-ignition and the effects of fuel additives— an important understanding in those early days for the oil and additive companies. Later, in the 1970s, his attention moved to engine and vehicle exhaust emission control, a key emerging technology at that time. In his more senior years, he took a broader picture of the industry and technology, building on his detailed pioneering research as he continued to develop his vision and balanced technical judgement. Recognized and encouraged initially by Harry Ricardo, he rose quickly to senior positions in the company, becoming a board member at the age of 35 and managing director 10 years later. In 1976 he became joint chairman and managing director, ultimately to become chairman and finally to retire in 1987. He authored or co-authored some 46 technical papers in his working career. He has been described as a ‘gentleman engineer’ with strong support for his staff at all levels. In the broad spectrum of engineering disciplines, Diarmuid leaned more towards the intellectual/scientific end. He was a deep thinker, with a prodigious memory and love of the arts as well as biographical and historical literature. He inspired respect through his vision, balanced judgement and supreme confidence and was an articulate orator. He was awarded many honours in his lifetime, including a CBE in 1979, a knighthood in 1985 and in the same year Fellowship of the Royal Society. He held appointments in over 30 professional organizations, including four charities, to which he and his wife, Carmel, were dedicated, helping the vulnerable and homeless. He was a lifelong devout Catholic and active supporter of the church and related charities, recognized by a Papal knighthood in 1993.


1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-245
Author(s):  
Winton U. Solberg

For over two centuries, the College was the characteristic form of higher education in the United States, and the College was closely allied to the church in a predominantly Protestant land. The university became the characteristic form of American higher education starting in the late nineteenth Century, and universities long continued to reflect the nation's Protestant culture. By about 1900, however, Catholics and Jews began to enter universities in increasing numbers. What was the experience of Jewish students in these institutions, and how did authorities respond to their appearance? These questions will be addressed in this article by focusing on the Jewish presence at the University of Illinois in the early twentieth Century. Religion, like a red thread, is interwoven throughout the entire fabric of this story.


Author(s):  
Paul A. Bramadat

Is it possible for conservative Protestant groups to survive in secular institutional settings? Here, Bramadat offers an ethnographic study of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) at McMaster University, a group that espouses fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, women's roles, the age of the earth, alcohol consumption, and sexual ethics. In examining this group, Bramadat demonstrates how this tiny minority thrives within the overwhelmingly secular context of the University.


Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn ◽  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Irina Reyfman ◽  
Stephanie Sandler

The chapter contextualizes the literary developments of the second half of the seventeenth century, including the changes in education and print culture. A new vision of court culture, expanding administration, and ecclesiastical reforms provided new contexts for writing, as well as innovations in the theater and in poetry. The spaces represented in Russian literature were, as previously, the monastery and the church. The court moved into the limelight as a center of cultural production. The social reality of the period did not entirely foster the creation of civic spaces or an autonomous literary field, and writing had to adapt to the control of the authorities. Opportunities for the ritual performance of the liturgy and at court expanded considerably during the last decades of the seventeenth under the aegis of Tsar Aleksei. Orthodox proponents of neo-humanist culture who worked in Moscow succeeded in transforming the uses of rhetoric during ceremonial occasions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-201
Author(s):  
Sabine Hanke

This article examines the production and promotion of popular entertainments by the German Sarrasani Circus during the interwar period and how they were used to establish specific national narratives in Germany and Latin America. Focusing particularly on its engagement of Lakota performers, it argues that the Circus acted as an active negotiator of national concerns within and beyond Germany’s borders, and presented the group as ‘familiar natives’ in order to appeal to local and national ideas of Germanness. At the same time, it shows that the performers pursued their own interests in becoming international and cosmopolitan performers, thereby challenging the assimilation forced upon their traditions and culture by institutions in the United States. Finally, it demonstrates how foreign propaganda built on the Circus’s national image in Latin America to restore Germany’s international relations after the First World War. Sabine Hanke is a lecturer in Modern History at the University of Duisberg-Essen. Her research examines the German and British interwar circus. She was recently awarded her PhD in cultural history, from which this article has evolved, at the University of Sheffield. A chapter based on her research is scheduled for publication in Circus Histories and Theories, ed. Nisha P.R. and Melon Dilip (Oxford University Press).


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 5S-7S
Author(s):  
Jill Sonke ◽  
Lourdes Rodríguez ◽  
Melissa A. Valerio-Shewmaker

The arts—and the arts and culture sector—offer fertile ground for achieving a culture of health in the United States. The arts and artists are agents of change and can help enable this vision and also address the most critical public health issues we are contending with, including COVID-19 and racism. The arts provide means for engaging dialogue, influencing behaviors, disrupting paradigms and fueling social movements. The arts uncover and illuminate issues. They engage us emotionally and intellectually. They challenge assumptions. They call out injustice. They drive collective action. They heal—making arts + public health collaboration very relevant in this historic moment. In this special Health Promotion Practice supplement on arts in public health, you’ll find powerful examples and evidence of how cross-sector collaboration between public health and the arts can advance health promotion goals and impacts, and make health promotion programs not only more accessible to diverse populations but also more equitable and effective in addressing the upstream systems, policies, and structures that create health disparities. You will see how the arts can empower health communication, support health literacy, provide direct and measurable health benefits to individuals and communities, and support coping and resilience in response to COVID-19. This issue itself exemplifies cross-sector collaboration, as it was created through partnership between Health Promotion Practice, the Society for Public Health Education, ArtPlace America, and the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and presents voices from across the public health, arts, and community development sectors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 264
Author(s):  
Clara Ramirez

This is a study of the trajectory of a Jewish converso who had a brilliant career at the University of Mexico in the 16th century: he received degrees from the faculties of arts, theology and law and was a professor for more than 28 years. He gained prestige and earned the respect of his fellow citizens, participated in monarchical politics and was an active member of his society, becoming the elected bishop of Guatemala. However, when he tried to become a judge of the Inquisition, a thorough investigation revealed his Jewish ancestry back in the Iberian Peninsula, causing his career to come to a halt. Further inquiry revealed that his grandmother had been burned by the Inquisition and accused of being a Judaizer around 1481; his nephews and nieces managed, in 1625, to obtain a letter from the Inquisition vouching for the “cleanliness of blood” of the family. Furthermore, the nephews founded an entailed estate in Oaxaca and forbade the heir of the entail to marry into the Jewish community. The university was a factor that facilitated their integration, but the Inquisition reminded them of its limits. The nephews denied their ancestors and became part of the society of New Spain. We have here a well-documented case that represents the possible existence of many others.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Offord ◽  
Vladislav Rjéoutski ◽  
Gesine Argent

-- With support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK and the Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau -- The French Language in Russia provides the fullest examination and discussion to date of the adoption of the French language by the elites of imperial Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is interdisciplinary, approaching its subject from the angles of various kinds of history and historical sociolinguistics. Beyond its bearing on some of the grand narratives of Russian thought and literature, this book may afford more general insight into the social, political, cultural, and literary implications and effects of bilingualism in a speech community over a long period. It should also enlarge understanding of francophonie as a pan-European phenomenon. On the broadest plane, it has significance in an age of unprecedented global connectivity, for it invites us to look beyond the experience of a single nation and the social groups and individuals within it in order to discover how languages and the cultures and narratives associated with them have been shared across national boundaries.


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