Tellings of an Encounter: A Meeting between Muḥammad ʿAbduh, Herbert Spencer and Wilfrid Blunt (1903)

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Ammeke Kateman

AbstractIn 1903, the Islamic reformist Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849-1905), the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) and the English writer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922) met in Spencer’s home in Brighton. This article focuses on the history of the various tellings of this encounter that brought together three intellectuals from a globalizing and colonial world. It shows that the various renditions were creative negotiations of the encounter’s meaning across times, places and languages in the twentieth century. Specifically, this article’s comparison of the content, form and role of the accounts in Rashīd Riḍā’sAl-Manār(1915 and 1922), Blunt’sMy Diaries(1920), Riḍā’s biography of ʿAbduh (theTārīkh, 1931) and ʿImārah’s collection of ʿAbduh’s works (Al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmilah, 1972), and the way these accounts relate to each other through creative borrowing and translation, demonstrate the way European dominance in the global political and intellectual realm was confronted, negotiated and reiterated in the various tellings of the encounter.

Author(s):  
Andrea Harris

The Conclusion briefly examines the current state of the New York City Ballet under the auspices of industrial billionaire David H. Koch at Lincoln Center. In so doing, it to introduces a series of questions, warranting still more exploration, about the rapid and profound evolution of the structure, funding, and role of the arts in America through the course of the twentieth century. It revisits the historiographical problem that drives Making Ballet American: the narrative that George Balanchine was the sole creative genius who finally created an “American” ballet. In contrast to that hagiography, the Conclusion reiterates the book’s major contribution: illuminating the historical construction of our received idea of American neoclassical ballet within a specific set of social, political, and cultural circumstances. The Conclusion stresses that the history of American neoclassicism must be seen as a complex narrative involving several authors and discourses and crossing national and disciplinary borders: a history in which Balanchine was not the driving force, but rather the outcome.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.


Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Alicja Piechucka

The article focuses on an analysis of Hart Crane’s essay “Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros.” One of Crane’s few art-historical texts, the critical piece in question is first of all a tribute to the American poet’s friend, the Mexican painter David Siqueiros. The author of a portrait of Crane, Siqueiros is a major artist, one of the leading figures that marked the history of Mexican painting in the first half of the twentieth century. While it is interesting to delve into the way Crane approaches painting in general and Siqueiros’ oeuvre in particular, an analysis of the essay with which the present article is concerned is also worthwhile for another reason. Like many examples of art criticism—and literary criticism, for that matter—“Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros” reveals a lot not only about the artist it revolves around, but also about its author, an artist in his own right. In a text written in the last year of his life, Hart Crane therefore voices concerns which have preoccupied him as a poet and which, more importantly, are central to modernist art and literature.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Piitz

This applied thesis is focused on the full cataloguing and contextualizing of a collection of one hundred and sixteen postcards at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) depicting scenes of Toronto a the beginning of the twentieth century. Twenty-seven publishers representing international, national and regional manufacturers are identified with their imprint on the verso of the postcard. The applied thesis includes a literature survey discussing a rationale for the cataloguing of postcards, as well as a brief overview of the history of postcards and the history of the urbanization of the City of Toronto. A description and analysis of the AGO postcards provides information about the production cycle of postcards, the scope of commercial photography and the dissemination of photographic imagery in Toronto. The thesis also examines the way images were altered in the production cycle and the manner in which photographers and publishers exchanged photographs intended for postcard production.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Piitz

This applied thesis is focused on the full cataloguing and contextualizing of a collection of one hundred and sixteen postcards at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) depicting scenes of Toronto a the beginning of the twentieth century. Twenty-seven publishers representing international, national and regional manufacturers are identified with their imprint on the verso of the postcard. The applied thesis includes a literature survey discussing a rationale for the cataloguing of postcards, as well as a brief overview of the history of postcards and the history of the urbanization of the City of Toronto. A description and analysis of the AGO postcards provides information about the production cycle of postcards, the scope of commercial photography and the dissemination of photographic imagery in Toronto. The thesis also examines the way images were altered in the production cycle and the manner in which photographers and publishers exchanged photographs intended for postcard production.


Religions ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Ahmed Abou El Zalaf

Existing scholarship has largely focused on the role of Sayyid Qutb’s ideas when analyzing the Muslim Brotherhood’s violent history. Perceiving Qutb’s ideas as paving the way for radical interpretations of jihad, many studies linked the Brotherhood’s violent history with this key ideologue. Yet, in so doing, many studies overlooked the importance of the Special Apparatus in shaping this violent history of the Brotherhood, long before Qutb joined the organization. Through an in-depth study of memoires and accounts penned by Brotherhood members and leaders, and a systematic study of British and American intelligence sources, I attempt to shed light on this understudied formation of the Brotherhood, the Special Apparatus. This paper looks at the development of anti-colonial militancy in Egypt, particularly the part played by the Brotherhood until 1954. It contends that political violence, in the context of British colonization, antedated the Brotherhood’s foundation, and was in some instances considered as a legitimate and even distinguished duty among anti-colonial factions. The application of violence was on no account a part of the Brotherhood’s core strategy, but the organization, nevertheless, established an armed and secret wing tasked with the fulfillment of what a segment of its members perceived as the duty of anti-colonial jihad.


1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 398-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flora Samuel

In the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris there is a little guide for pilgrims that was given to the architect when he began work on the pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame du Haut Ronchamp (1955), probably the most influential yet contentious building of the twentieth century (fig. 1). Within the guide, the section on the cult of Mary has been heavily underlined and in the margin is the word “feminism,” written by Le Corbusier, a very unusual departure for a man of his times. In this article I will examine the role of Mary in the work of Le Corbusier and discuss the way in which she is interpreted in the architecture of Ronchamp.


Author(s):  
Rodney Brazier

This chapter examines the role of the monarchy in the history of the British constitution during the twentieth century, investigating how the constitutional power enjoyed by the sovereign gave way to constitutional influence and describing the changes the Parliament made to the law relevant to the Crown. It suggests that, for most of the twentieth century, sovereigns and their closest advisers recognised the continuing need to adapt the institution of monarchy so as to reflect changes in British society, and this involved further erosions in the sovereign's power.


2018 ◽  

This book reviews the role of British Foreign Secretaries in the formulation of British policy towards Japan from the re-opening of Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It also takes a critical look at the history of British relations with Japan over these years. Beginning with Lord John Russell (Foreign Secretary 1859-1865) and concluding with Geoffrey Howe (Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, 1983-1989), the volume also examines the critical roles of two British Prime Ministers in the latter part of the twentieth century, Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, who ensured that Britain recognized both the reality and the opportunities for Britain resulting from the Japanese economic and industrial phenomenon. Heath’s main emphasis was on opening the Japanese market to British exports. Thatcher’s was on Japanese investment. This volume is a valuable addition to the Japan Society’s series devoted to aspects of Anglo-Japanese relations which includes ten volumes of Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits as well as British Envoys in Japan.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Schechner

This essay by Richard Schechner dedicated to a mythical figure of the theater of the late twentieth century; a work of critical reconstruction that has contributed decisively to consolidating the legacy of Grotowski, just a few months after his death. In addition to fixing some essential terms of the vocabulary, together with the contents and the periodization of the Grotowskian work (aspects that Grotowski in life were entrusted exclusively to oral transmission), the essay retraces the formation of Grotowski, the aspects linked to his character, the specific forms of his research and his transmission of knowledge, the exercise of leadership, the role of his collaborators, the sources, the mystical side, his relationship with the spirit of time, the importance (and weakness) of his opera, in the history of twentieth century theater.


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