“It Takes Two”

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olaf Jubin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’sSunday in the Park with Georgeis divided into two acts that take place in different centuries and feature two sets of seemingly different characters. A close reading of the musical demonstrates, however, that most of the characters in act 2 either present another facet of the parallel character in act 1 or reveal another side to these characters’ functions in the overall scheme of the show. Through the use of a system of doubling, whereby actors played parallel characters in acts 1 and 2, the original New York production enhanced the work’s exploration of the role art and the artist play in society and of how this role has changed in the century between 1884 and 1984.

Steadily Attached to His Majesty? Varieties of Loyalism in Revolutionary New York

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Sophie H. Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Geographic Regions ◽  
The City

This paper responds to most recent works on the complexity of loyalist identities during the American Revolution. It forms a close reading of over 400 claims submitted by self-identified loyalist claimants from the former colony of New York to the Loyalist Claims Commission. Through a case study of three New York counties (the city and county of New York, Albany County and Tryon County), the paper demonstrates that the loyalist experience differed greatly between the three distinct geographic regions; different counties entered the war at different stages, while demonstrations of loyalism and the range of services provided by loyalists to advance the British cause varied considerably. The paper also outlines (and justifies the use of) the potential of three broad categories by which to analyze loyalist claimants: namely, ‘active’, ‘reluctant’ and ‘passive’. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the varying nature of loyalism was largely the product of local contextual circumstance.

‘What is a mouth’: Joyce Wieland’s Pierre Vallières (1972) and the politics of the film portrait

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-23
Author(s):  
Bettina Brunner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
French Canadian ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Shirley Clarke

Focusing on Joyce Wieland’s film portrait Pierre Vallières (1972), this article follows the Canadian artist and filmmaker’s practice as it evolved through her engagement with the New York film avant-garde of the 1960s. Through an analysis of Wieland’s collaboration with Shirley Clarke, I will also discuss Pierre Vallières in relation to US-American documentary practices from the same period. Referring to Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967) with its focus on the spoken word as well as Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, I will place Wieland’s film within this line of film portraits engaging with identity and a performative notion of subjectivity. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze, this article concludes with a close reading of Wieland’s film, discussing her use of the close-up as a means of thwarting the linear narrative and logic of its subject’s political speech. Pierre Vallières’ politics thus emerges within an aesthetics that crosses the boundaries of documentary and avant-garde, communicating with audiences beyond the film’s original context of French-Canadian emancipation.

Klinghoffer in Brooklyn Heights

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT FINK
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
The Death Of Klinghoffer ◽  
Brooklyn Academy Of Music

Is The Death of Klinghoffer anti-Semitic? Performances of the opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September 1991 were at the epicentre of a controversy that continues to this day; the New York audience was – and remains – uniquely hostile to the work. A careful reception analysis shows that New York audiences reacted vehemently not so much to an ideological position on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but to specific nuances in the satirical portrayal of American Jewish characters in one controversial scene later cut from the opera, a scene that must be read closely and in relation to specifically American-Jewish questions of ethnic humour, assimilation, identity and multiculturalism in the mass media. I understand the opera's negative reception in the larger context of the increasingly severe crises that beset American Jewish self-identity during the Reagan-Bush era. Ultimately the historical ability of Jews to assimilate through comedy, to ‘enter the American culture on the stage laughing’, in Leslie Fiedler's famous formulation, will have to be reconsidered. A close reading of contested moments from the opera shows librettist Alice Goodman and composer John Adams avoiding the romance of historical self-consciousness as they attempt to construct a powerful yet subtle defence of the ordinary and unassuming.

scholarly journals TRANSLATING ITALO CALVINO: HOW CLOSE READING AND COMPARISONS CAN ILLUMINATE THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE TRANSLATION PROCESS

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paddy Twigg
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Italo Calvino ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
English Translations

I have chosen to translate passages from two works by Italo Calvino (1923-1985) into English. The first, a novel, was his first publication, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, Torino: Einaudi, October 1947. Two English translations of it have been published: the first, The Path to the Nest of Spiders by Archibald Colquhoun, London: Jonathan Cape, 1956, and the second, The Path to the Spiders’ Nests (including the author’s 1964 Preface, translated by William Weaver), by Martin McLaughlin, New York: Random House, 1998. It is the first of these that I have used as a comparison with my own translation. Interestingly, Colquhoun’s translation was re-published by Penguin in 2009 in a form revised by McLaughlin. Colquhoun (1912-1964) was a leading early translator of modern Italian literature into English. As well as those of Calvino, his translations of Manzoni and Lampedusa were highly successful. He was the first recipient of the PEN Translation prize.

scholarly journals One only needs an island/Alone in a vast sea

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa Coco Schinagl
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
York City ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Refugee Crisis

The article will demonstrate by a close reading of Hannah Arendt’s article “We Refugees” published 1943 in New York City that Germany in particular has a responsibility towards refugees seeking to reach Europe by boat. By listening to thevoice of a female refugee, the article will formulate four categories clarifying Arendt’s request to welcome newcomers. Furthermore, this article highlights how Arendt’s testimony can be transformed to act accordingly for today’s so-called refugee crisis and it challenges the concepts of “volk”, nations, and the efficiency of human rights.

American Hasidic Yiddish Pedagogical Materials: A Sociological and Sociolinguistic Survey of 50 Years of Post-War Publishing

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-88
Author(s):  
Jordan Kutzik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Linguistic Ideologies ◽  
Educational Publishing ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
Post War

Abstract After arriving in the United States after WWII, Hasidic Jews quickly established educational publishing houses in Yiddish in New York. How these publications developed and changed from the 1950s to the present day reveals a great deal about how Hasidim adjusted to American life, how their Yiddish changed during this period, and how competing linguistic ideologies emerged to address these changes. This article provides an overview of three generations of American Hasidic Yiddish pedagogical materials, using a sample of books, oral-medium games, and a family magazine’s children’s section. It uses close reading and sociolinguistic analysis to examine how the perception of Yiddish among Hasidim evolved into perceiving the language as a semi-holy tongue uniquely capable of transmitting religious and cultural values. This article will explore how this changing perception has caused Hasidic communities to reevaluate how they seek to transmit the language to future generations.

Steve Reich’s Dramatic Sound Collage for the Harlem Six

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-158
Author(s):  
John Pymm
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Town Hall ◽  
Steve Reich ◽  
Sound Collage ◽  
Miscarriage Of Justice

Steve Reich’s Come Out was produced for a benefit concert at Town Hall, New York, in April 1966, aimed at raising funds to pay for independent lawyers for a retrial of the Harlem Six following a miscarriage of justice. Come Out was one of two works by Reich performed on that occasion, the other being a much longer sound collage—Harlem’s Six Condemned—created as part of a dramatization of Truman Nelson’s The Torture of Mothers. The recording of Harlem’s Six Condemned—unheard publicly since 1966—is now available in the Steve Reich Collection at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel. This chapter argues that a close reading of Reich’s sound collage offers a perspective on Come Out that has been increasingly lost in the time since the benefit concert. A deeper understanding of Come Out will be gained by tracing its prehistory and setting a broader context for its appreciation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document