Magazine History

2001 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-14
Author(s):  
David Carter

This article reflects on the methodological and theoretical issues raised in the process of conceiving a history of mid-twentieth century periodical publication in Australia (1920–1970). It argues for an ‘institutional history’ of magazines and defines such an approach through a number of overlapping themes and questions: an examination of the cultural significance of the periodical's ‘periodicity’; its shifting location in the print culture between the newspaper and the book; the relation of magazines to the marketplace and to professional journalism; the role of magazines in the formation of a modern intelligentsia; and magazines as belonging to a history of modernity in Australia, a ‘history of writing’ and a history of audiences.

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Snow ◽  
Shen Senyao ◽  
Zhou Xiayun

AbstractThe recent publication of the novelMagnificent Flowers(Fan Hua繁花) has attracted attention not only because of critical acclaim and market success, but also because of its use of Shanghainese. WhileMagnificent Flowersis the most notable recent book to make substantial use of Shanghainese, it is not alone, and the recent increase in the number of books that are written partially or even entirely in Shanghainese raises the question of whether written Shanghainese may develop a role in Chinese print culture, especially that of Shanghai and the surrounding region, similar to that attained by written Cantonese in and around Hong Kong.This study examines the history of written Shanghainese in print culture. Growing out of the older written Suzhounese tradition, during the early decades of the twentieth century a distinctly Shanghainese form of written Wu emerged in the print culture of Shanghai, and Shanghainese continued to play a role in Shanghai’s print culture through the twentieth century, albeit quite a modest one. In the first decade of the twenty-first century Shanghainese began to receive increased public attention and to play a greater role in Shanghai media, and since 2009 there has been an increase in the number of books and other kinds of texts that use Shanghainese and also the degree to which they use it.This study argues that in important ways this phenomenon does parallel the growing role played by written Cantonese in Hong Kong, but that it also differs in several critical regards. The most important difference is that, to date, written Shanghainese appears almost exclusively in texts that look back to “old Shanghai” and/or to traditional alley life in Shanghai, and that a role of the type written Cantonese has in Hong Kong is not likely to be attained unless or until Shanghainese texts that are associated with modern urban Shanghai life, especially youth culture, begin to appear.


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.


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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 582-585
Author(s):  
Leslie Hakim-Dowek

As in Marianne Hirsch’s (2008) notion of ‘devoir de memoire’, this poem-piece, from a new series, uses the role of creation and imagination to strive to ‘re-activate and re-embody’ distant family/historical transcultural spaces and memories within the perspective of a dispersed history of a Middle-Eastern minority, the Sephardi/Jewish community. There is little awareness that Sephardi/Jewish communities were an integral part of the Middle East and North Africa for many centuries before they were driven out of their homes in the second half of the twentieth century. Using a multi-modal approach combining photography and poetry, this photo-poem series has for focus my female lineage. This piece evokes in particular the memory of my grandmother, encapsulating many points in history where persecution and displacement occurred across many social, political and linguistic borders.


2020 ◽  
pp. 434-450
Author(s):  
Simon J. Potter

This chapter examines the twentieth-century British press in its imperial and transnational contexts. It demonstrates how Britain's imperial press system, which developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to allow news to flow around the British empire, increasingly failed to serve British geopolitical interests from the mid-twentieth century onwards. It considers the relationship between the British government and the news agency Reuters, and the role of the Empire Press Union. It argues that although contemporary journalists often emphasised the importance of the ideal of press freedom when talking about their profession, state intervention in the affairs of news agencies represents a significant thread in the history of the twentieth-century British press.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Vander Wel

This chapter offers new insights about the musical and cultural significance of singing styles in country music by contextualizing the details of predominant female vocal approaches within the rich and complex history of southern vernacular singing and by considering, the role of the performing body in relation to the singing voice. Specifically, it takes into account the vocal techniques of Loretta Lynn in relation to the musical conventions of honky tonk singing, the physiological and bodily components of vocal production, and the role of microphone and recording technology. With a chest-dominant vocal technique—amplified by the microphone—Lynn has projected a vocal identity of strength and conviction interpreted as the first working-class feminist voice in country music. This chapter demonstrates that singers such as Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard, and Rose Maddox helped to forge a distinct singing style that had a lasting influence on Lynn’s vocal performances.


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