The New Negro and the National-Popular: Randolph Bourne and Alain Locke

boundary 2 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-117
Author(s):  
Jay Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Randolph Bourne ◽  
Alain Locke ◽  
Key Terms

This essay argues that “New Negro” and “Young American” writings from the early twentieth century reward rereading in concert with Antonio Gramsci’s concept of a “national-popular” and as instances of theoretical production in themselves. Focusing on the work of Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) and Alain Locke (1889–1954), the essay returns to “New Negro” and “Young American” writings not only to identify the interplay among them but also to recast key terms from those corpora, especially the “trans-national” (Bourne) and the “American temperament” (Locke), as literary-theoretic vehicles for reckoning with patterns of racist social formation. Considered alongside Gramsci’s theorization of a “national-popular,” Bourne and Locke emerge as critics whose practices pivoted on the reading of existing national tendencies and the engendering of alternative conceptualizations of “Americanism.”

scholarly journals Applying Activity Theory in Multiagency Settings

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
H. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Activity Theory ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
Scientific Concepts ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Basil Bernstein ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
French School ◽  
Social Shaping

In this paper I explore the extent to which two approaches to the social formation of mind are compatible and may be used to enrich and extend each other. These are: Activity Theory (AT) as derived from the work of the early Russian psychologists, Vygotsky and Leontiev, and the work of the sociologist Basil Bernstein. The purpose is to show how Bernstein provides a language of description which allows Vygotsky’s account of social formation of mind to be extended and enhanced through an understanding of the sociological processes which form specific modalities of pedagogic practice and their specialized scientific concepts. The two approaches engage with a common theme namely the social shaping of consciousness, from different perspectives and yet as Bernstein acknowledges both develop many of their core assumptions from the work of Marx and the French school of early twentieth century sociology. The work of the Russian linguist is also be used to further nuance the argument applied in multiagency settings.

Colored No More

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Treva B. Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Expressive Culture ◽  
New Negro ◽  
American Women ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Public Cultures

Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. examines the expressive culture of African American women in Washington, D.C. during the early twentieth century. Honing in on the intellectual and cultural strivings of African American women communities in New Negro era Washington, I unveil a city in which African American women sought to configure themselves as authorial subjects. Between 1860 and 1930, the population of black women in Washington increased from 8.402 to 69,843. Over the course of seventy years of African American women’s migration to the nation’s capital, numerous institutions, organizations, and political, social, and cultural arenas emerged in Washington that catered to the specific needs, desires, and interests of a rapidly growing population of black women. African American women established spaces for contesting political, social and cultural currents and conventions that limited black women’s participation in the public sphere. Many of these women defiantly entered into public cultures such as higher education, literary activism, and local and interstate commerce. New Negro women challenged racial, gender, and sexual ideologies and norms that often relegated African American women to subordinate political, social, and cultural statuses. Colored No More reveals the significance of Washington, D.C. as a New Negro city. The African American women who inhabited the nation’s capital were integral to African American freedom and equality struggles of the early twentieth century.

The Little Art Colony and US Modernism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geneva M. Gano
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Robinson Jeffers ◽  
Art Colony ◽  
The City

U.S. Modernism at Continent’s End: Carmel, Provincetown, Taos historicizes and theorizes the significance of the early twentieth-century little arts colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production. Emphasizing communities rather than single artists, and modernist activity instead of products, this study considers modernism as social, aesthetic, and political processes that developed differentially in response to local and global pressures. In addition to offering a historical overview of the emergence of three critical sites of modernist activity—the little art colonies of Carmel, Provincetown, and Taos—this study offers new critical readings of major authors associated with those places: Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O’Neill, and D. H. Lawrence. Continent’s End tracks the radical thought and aesthetic innovation that emerged from these villages and reveals a surprisingly dynamic circulation of persons, objects, and ideas between the country and the city and back again, producing modernisms that were cosmopolitan in character yet also site-specific.

Madame Queen of Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaShawn Harris
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter maps out black women's participation in arguably one of New York's most profitable and contested social and cultural pastimes of the early twentieth century: the illegal numbers racket. It uses the mysterious and unique life of prominent Harlem numbers banker Madame Stephanie St. Clair—the “Numbers Queen”—as a window to illuminate how some black numbers entrepreneurs used the city's gambling enterprise to launch lucrative underground enterprises and as a way to cast a spotlight on black New Yorkers' individual and collective encounters with race, gender, and class prejudice and white supremacy. On one hand, she boldly and skillfully rejected and refashioned elite versions of propriety. On the other hand, St. Clair's proper outward attire of fashionable dresses, furs, and headdresses and her use of the moniker “Madame” reinforced conventional images of New Negro womanhood and material wealth.

Some Polish Composers of To-Day

Tempo ◽  
1948 ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Andrzej Panufnik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Group ◽  
Karol Szymanowski

It is ten years since KAROL SZYMANOWSKI died at fifty-four. He was the most prominent representative of the “radical progressive” group of early twentieth century composers, which we call “Young Poland.” In their manysided and pioneering efforts they prepared the fertile soil on which Poland's present day's music thrives.

V1214: Edward Loughborough Keyes: An Early Twentieth Century Leader In Urology

2004 ◽  
Vol 171 (4S) ◽  
pp. 320-320
Author(s):  
Peter J. Stahl ◽  
E. Darracott Vaughan ◽  
Edward S. Belt ◽  
David A. Bloom ◽  
Ann Arbor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

New insights into the controversy surrounding marine biological laboratory (Marine Station) facilities in the Firth of Clyde in the early twentieth century

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-170
Author(s):  
P. G. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Marine Biological Laboratory ◽  
Biological Station ◽  
Marine Biological ◽  
Biological Laboratory ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Marine Station ◽  
Regius Professor ◽  
Adjacent Island

Three letters from the Sheina Marshall archive at the former University Marine Biological Station Millport (UMBSM) reveal the pivotal significance of Sheina Marshall's father, Dr John Nairn Marshall, behind the scheme planned by Glasgow University's Regius Professor of Zoology, John Graham Kerr. He proposed to build an alternative marine station facility on Cumbrae's adjacent island of Bute in the Firth of Clyde in the early years of the twentieth century to cater predominantly for marine researchers.

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