The Evolutions of Modernist Epic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Václav Paris
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Evolutionary Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolutionary Science ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Comparative Theory ◽  
Selection Of

Modernist epic is more interesting and diverse than we have supposed. As a radical form of national fiction, it appeared in many parts of the world in the early twentieth century. Reading a selection of works from the United States, England, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, and Brazil, The Evolutions of Modernist Epic develops a comparative theory of this genre and its global development. That development was, it argues, bound up with new ideas about biological evolution. During the first decades of the twentieth century—a period known, in the history of evolutionary science, as “the eclipse of Darwinism”—evolution’s significance was questioned, rethought, and ultimately confined to the Neo-Darwinist discourse with which we are familiar today. Epic fiction participated in, and was shaped by, this shift. Drawing on queer forms of sexuality to cultivate anti-heroic and non-progressive modes of telling the national story, the new epic contested reductive and reactionary forms of social Darwinism. The book describes how, in doing so, the genre asks us to revisit our assumptions about ethnolinguistics and organic nationalism. It also models how the history of evolutionary thought can provide a fresh basis for comparing diverse modernisms and their peculiar nativisms.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

Versatile and cheap: a global history of soy in the first half of the twentieth century

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ines Prodöhl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cash Crop ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Transnational Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

AbstractThis article traces the complex and shifting organization of soy's production and consumption from Northeast China to Europe and the United States. It focuses on a set of national and transnational actors with differing interests in the global and national spread of soybeans. The combination of these actors in certain spatiotemporal contexts enabled a fundamental change in soy from an Asian to an American cash crop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, soy rapidly became Northeast China's cash crop, owing to steadily increasing Western demand. However, the versatility of soy – and soy oil in particular – offered a highly successful response to the agricultural and industrial challenges that the United States faced during the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the end of the war, American farmers in the Midwest cultivated more soybeans than their Chinese counterparts.

The Cambridge History of America and the World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Power ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
The World ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of

The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.

Redefining Censorship

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
Esther B. Schupak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Choice ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Film Images ◽  
History Of

Abstract Because of its potential for fostering antisemitic stereotypes, in the twentieth century The Merchant of Venice has a history of being subject to censorship in secondary schools in the United States. While in the past it has often been argued that the play can be used to teach tolerance and to fight societal evils such as xenophobia, racism and antisemitism, I argue that this is no longer the case due to the proliferation of performance methods in the classroom, and the resultant emphasis on watching film and stage productions. Because images – particularly film images – carry such strong emotional valence, they have the capacity to subsume other pedagogical aspects of this drama in their emotional power and memorability. I therefore question whether the debate over teaching this play is truly a question of ‘censorship’, or simply educational choice.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Mary Augusta Brazelton
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Mass Immunization ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Concepts Of Disease ◽  
The Individual ◽  
A Site

This introductory chapter provides a background of how mass immunization programs made vaccination a cornerstone of Chinese public health and China a site of consummate biopower, or power over life. Over the twentieth century, through processes of increasing force, vaccines became medical technologies of governance that bound together the individual and the collective, authorities and citizens, and experts and the uneducated. These programs did not just transform public health in China—they helped shape the history of global health. The material and administrative systems of mass immunization on which these health campaigns relied had a longer history than the People's Republic of China itself. The Chinese Communist Party championed as its own invention and dramatically expanded immunization systems that largely predated 1949 and had originated with public health programs developed in southwestern China during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945. The nationwide implementation of these systems in the 1950s relied on transformations in research, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and concepts of disease that had begun in the first decades of the twentieth century. These processes spanned multiple regime changes, decades of war, and diverse forms of foreign intervention. Most important, they brought with them new ideas about what it meant to be a citizen of China.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Laura Harris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Artist

In Experiments in Exile, I explore and compare projects undertaken by two twentieth-century American intellectuals while they lived in voluntary exiles in the United States: the Trinidadian writer and revolutionary C. L. R. James and the Brazilian visual artist and counterculturalist Hélio Oiticica. James and Oiticica never met. They lived and worked in the United States at different moments. My focus is on James’s stay during the 1940s and on Oiticica’s stay during the 1970s. Given the significant differences between them—not just at the level of nationality but at the level of race (James was black, Oiticica was white), class (James was situated within a precarious middle class, Oiticica was firmly established within an upper middle class), sexuality (James was straight, Oiticica was gay), and disciplinary locations (James is generally situated in the history of radical social theory and practice, and Oiticica is generally situated in the history of avant-garde aesthetic theory and practice)—this is surely an unlikely combination. This study is itself an experiment, one that goes beyond the usual parameters of comparativist or transnational research, to identify, in the surprising resonances between the projects pursued by these two very disparate figures, a common project I believe they, together, bring into relief....

For an Eco-Archive

2019 ◽  
pp. 29-68
Author(s):  
John Patrick Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Haitian Literature ◽  
Boat People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter continues to build the conceptual and historical frame of the eco-archive. It argues that contemporary Haitian literature records the transformation of the environment and accumulates and inscribes overlapping temporalities of past and present, like an archive. The first part reviews a range of Caribbean and Haitian thought on the environment, broadly understood, and considers key moments of Haitian literary history of the twentieth century. Earlier forms and paths of migration and refuge, from the sugar migration up to the journeys of “boat people,” inform and historicize literary representations of the earthquake and its aftermath. The chapter then carries out close readings of a selection of René Philoctète’s poetry and his novel, Le peuple des terres mêlées, a text that depicts the “Parsley Massacre” of 1937. It draws out Philoctète’s eco-archival writing and contends that the novel foregrounds the environmental ethos of the border in opposition to Trujillo’s genocidal nationalism.

Introduction

Mahjong ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Changing Roles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The Introduction provides an orientation to the book and its key questions: What did it mean to become “modern” in the early twentieth century? How did American ethnicities take shape in the years leading up to and after World War II? How did middle-class women experience and shape their changing roles in society, before the social revolutions of the late twentieth century? How are these things related? The Introduction also covers an overview of mahjong’s trajectory in the United States. It examines background related to the history of leisure, gender, and consumerism in addition to introducing key sources and methodologies. The introduction sets up the book to tell the story of mahjong’s role in the creation of identifiably ethnic communities, women’s access to respectable leisure, and how Americans used ideas of China to understand themselves.

Butter Sculpture: The History of an Unconventional Medium

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-59
Author(s):  
Pamela H. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Dairy Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Brands ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Food

With its roots in ancient food molds and table art for Renaissance banquets, butter sculpture in the United States debuted during the centennial and flourished in the first quarter of the twentieth century. As the dairy industry moved from farm to regional cooperative creameries and eventually to national brands, butter sculpture appeared at fairs and expositions. Both amateur and professional sculptors used this unusual medium for busts and portraits, dairy-related subjects, and models of buildings. The ephemeral nature of the medium and the novelty of food as art drew crowds to exhibits advertising butter as the natural, healthy alternative to oleomargarine.

Konstantin Stanislavsky Michael Chekhov Vsevolod Meyerhold Jacques Lecoq

2006 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-150
Author(s):  
Jerri Daboo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Actor Training ◽  
Konstantin Stanislavsky ◽  
Four Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
Complete Series ◽  
Performer Training ◽  
Selection Of

The Routledge Performance Practitioners series, edited by Franc Chamberlain, is a new set of introductory guides to a range of key figures in the development of twentieth-century performance practice. Each book focuses on a single practitioner, examining his or her life, historical context, key writings, and productions, and a selection of practical exercises. These concise volumes are intended to offer students an initial introduction to the practitioner and to “provide an inspiring spring-board for future study, unpacking and explaining what can initially seem daunting” (Merlin, ii). The list of practitioners in the complete series include Stanislavsky, Brecht, Boal, Lecoq, Grotowski, Anna Halprin, and Ariane Mnouchkine, thus examining a range of performance styles and practices, creating a valuable overview of the development of performer training through the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. Such interest in the history of specific approaches to training performers has been addressed in other volumes, such as Twentieth-Century Actor Training, edited by Alison Hodge (New York: Routledge, 2000), and Acting (Re)considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide, edited by Phillip Zarrilli (London: Routledge 2002). Both those collections contain in-depth chapters focusing on aspects of the selected practitioners' theoretical and practical approaches to the principles and concerns in their work. Where the books in the Routledge Performance Practitioners series differ is that they offer a more general overview of the practitioner in one volume, and in addition to the historical context, they provide a set of practical exercises that can be carried out by the student or teacher, as well as by the actor or director. The books are well presented, divided into clear sections, with relevant photographs and diagrams. There are also sidebars providing definitions and further information on key figures and terms mentioned in the main text. This review covers the first four books in the series, examining the work of Konstantin Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov, Vsevolod Meyerhold, and Jacques Lecoq.

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