“Light Filtering through Those Shutters”: Joyless Streets, Mnemic Symbols, and the Beginnings of Feminist Film Criticism

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-95
Author(s):  
Jenelle Troxell
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Origin Myth

This article examines the origin myth of the feminist film journal Close Up, namely, an excursion by its founders Bryher and H.D. to see G. W. Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street, 1925) in a small cinema in Montreux, Switzerland. Throughout the essay, I use Joyless Street as a case study to analyze the ways in which theories of trauma can be effectively brought to bear on melodramas of the post–World War I era and, in the process, demonstrate the appeal Pabst’s works held for the Close Up editors, who shared his interest in trauma, psychoanalysis, and healing. By analyzing Joyless Street through the lens of Close Up, I demonstrate how Bryher and H.D. anticipate the development of trauma theory, which emerged in the early 1990s. Unlike traditional, often totalizing, applications of psychoanalysis (which emphasize notions of spectator desire and lack), the Close Up writers’ engagement of psychoanalysis focuses on issues of history, memory, and the response of spectators to historically specific situations. Their theory further suggests that in addition to surrogate fantasy fulfillment, film—in its recurring representation of trauma—might aid in mastering shared cultural symptoms, which women often experienced in isolation. Through their sustained analysis of film melodrama, the Close Up writers demonstrate that the war, beyond its devastating effects on combatants, also impacted the (female) civilian population—resulting in Close Up’s call for a critical film culture that speaks to that experience.

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

Global Pests, National Pride, Local Problems, and the Crisis of Hungarian Wine, 1867–1914

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Robert Nemes
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Wine Production ◽  
National Imagination ◽  
Local Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Trade And Exchange ◽  
Rich History

Abstract Hungary has a long, rich history of wine production. Historians have emphasized wine's importance to the development of both the Hungarian economy and Hungarian nationalism. This article ties together these historiographical threads through a case study of a small village in one of Hungary's most famous wine regions. Tracing the village's history from the 1860s to World War I, the article makes three main claims. First, it demonstrates that from the start, this remote village belonged to wider networks of trade and exchange that stretched across the surrounding region, state, and continent. Second, it shows that even as Magyar elites celebrated the folk culture and peasant smallholders of this region, they also cheered the introduction of what they saw as scientific, rational agriculture. This leads to the last argument: wine achieved its place in the pantheon of Hungarian culture at a moment when the local communities that had grown up around its production and stirred the national imagination were undergoing dramatic and irreversible change.

Screening Europe in Australasia

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie K. Allen
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Sound Film ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Dramatic Shift

This book challenges the historical myopia that treats Hollywood films as always having dominated global film culture through a detailed study of the circulation of European silent film in Australasia in the early twentieth century. Before World War I, European silent feature films were ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, teaching Antipodean audiences about Continental cultures and familiarizing them with glamorous European stars, from Asta Nielsen to Emil Jannings. After the rise of Hollywood and then the shift to sound film, this history—and its implications for cross-cultural exchange—was lost. Julie K. Allen recovers that history, with its flamboyant participants, transnational currents, innovative genres, and geopolitical complications, and brings it vividly to life. She reveals the complexity and competitiveness of the early cinema market, in a region with high consumer demand and low domestic production, and frames the dramatic shift to almost exclusively American cinema programming during World War I, contextualizing the rise of the art film in the 1920s in competition with mainstream Hollywood productions.

The Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-110
Author(s):  
Gojko Barjamovic
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Fragmentation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Third Millennium Bce ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Empire

The history of empire begins in Western Asia. This chapter tracks developments in the second and first millennia BCE as imperial control in the region became increasingly common and progressively more pervasive. Oscillations between political fragmentation and imperial unification swung gradually toward the latter, from just a few documented examples in the third millennium BCE to the more-or-less permanent partition of Western Asia into successive imperial states from the seventh century BCE until the end of World War I. The chapter covers about a dozen empires and empire-like states, tracing developments of territoriality and notions of imperial universality using Assyria ca. 2004–605 BCE as a case study for how large and loose hegemonies became the normative political formation in the region.

Ostmark

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-287
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
Terrorist Activity ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Security Services ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich

Following Austria’s annexation by the Third Reich, the NPEA authorities were eager to pursue every opportunity to found new Napolas in the freshly acquired territories of the ‘Ostmark’. In the first instance, the Inspectorate took over the existing state boarding schools (Bundeserziehungsanstalten/Staatserziehungsanstalten) at Wien-Breitensee, Wien-Boerhavegasse, Traiskirchen, and the Theresianum. Secondly, beyond Vienna, numerous Napolas were also founded in the buildings of monastic foundations which had been requisitioned and expropriated by the Nazi security services. These included the abbey complexes at Göttweig, Lambach, Seckau, Vorau, and St. Paul (Spanheim), as well as the Catholic seminary at St. Veit (present-day Ljubljana-Šentvid, Slovenia). This chapter begins by charting the chequered history of the former imperial and royal (k.u.k.) cadet schools in Vienna, which were refashioned into civilian Bundeserziehungsanstalten by the Austrian socialist educational reformer Otto Glöckel immediately after World War I. During the reign of Dollfuß and Schuschnigg’s Austrofascist state, the schools were threatened from within by the terrorist activity of illegal Hitler Youth cells, and the Anschluss was ultimately welcomed by many pupils, staff, and administrators. August Heißmeyer and Otto Calliebe’s subsequent efforts to reform the schools into Napolas led to their being incorporated into the NPEA system on 13 March 1939. The chapter then treats the Inspectorate’s foundation of further Napolas in expropriated religious buildings, focusing on NPEA St. Veit as a case study. In conclusion, it outlines the ways in which both of these forms of Napolisation conformed to broader patterns of Nazification policy in Austria after the Anschluss.

Exploring the Concept of a “Legacy” Collection: A Study on German World War I Paper Textiles at the National Museum of American History

Collections ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Kathleen King
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
American History ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
Manufacturing Processes ◽  
National Museum ◽  
World War ◽  
Tough Question

Using a collection of surplus German military objects composed of woven paper from World War I in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History as a case study, this article questions the value of keeping objects that no longer support the current mission statement of a museum, or if they ever did. It does not aim to answer definitively such a tough question, as a multitude of factors and stakeholders are involved with such a decision, but rather it seeks to bring this subject matter to the fore of collections and curatorial management, to explore best practices, and to examine if such best practices are being readily followed. The objects’ history, manufacturing processes, materiality, conservation concerns, and significance are explored in an effort to build context around the objects and to determine the appropriateness of their occupancy within the museum.

Crises and Responses: Government Policies and the Machine-Building Cartels in Hungary, 1919–1949

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-131
Author(s):  
MÁRIA HIDVÉGI
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Machine Building ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Building Industry ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe

What impact have government policies had on the private sector’s response to economic crises, in particular on its decisions for restructuring and adaptation? The Hungarian machine-building industry from 1919 to 1949 provides an interesting case study for these interrelations between business and politics. The study focuses on the role of cartels in organizing responses to crises. The case study is based on a survey of the cartel agreements and investigates why cartels provided solutions only to short-term crises, if they provided solutions at all. The hypothesis is that government policies played a substantial part in the story, as they did not provide enough incentives for coordinated responses to structural change. The years 1919 to 1949 encompass the crises caused by the territorial and political change in East Central Europe after World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II and its aftermath. Depicting the responses of the machine-building industry through the experience of one of its key companies and its cartels—Ganz & Co.—this article analyzes the influence of the institutional framework on short- and long-term adaptation to crises.

scholarly journals Mixed Marriages in Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century: Comparing Russia and Norway

2020 ◽  
pp. 036319902094521
Author(s):  
Elena Glavatskaya ◽  
Gunnar Thorvaldsen ◽  
Iulia Borovik ◽  
Elizaveta Zabolotnykh
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Middle Urals ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Mixed Marriages ◽  
New Religions

This article compares interethnic and interreligious marriages in Russia and Norway during the decades around 1900. State churches dominated religious life in both countries with over 90 percent of the population but both were losing influence during the period we focus on—rapidly in Russia after the 1917 Revolution. The part on Norway employs nominative and aggregate census material which from 1865 asked questions about religious affiliation, while the Russian case study utilizes the database of church microdata being built for Ekaterinburg—a railway hub and an industrial city in the Middle Urals, in Asia—in addition to census aggregates. Our main conclusion is that religion was a stronger regulator of intermarriage than ethnicity. Religious intermarriage was unusual in Ekaterinburg, even if official regulations were softened by the State over time—the exception is during World War I, when there was a deficit of young, Russian men at home and influx of refugees and Austro-Hungarian Prisoners of War (mostly Catholics and Lutherans). The situation was also affected by the 1917 Revolution creating equal rights for all religious denominations. The relatively few religious intermarriages in Norway were mostly between members of different Protestant congregations—nonmembers being the only group who often outmarried. We conclude that representatives of ethnic minorities and new religions seldom outmarry when religion was important for maintaining their identity.

The Outlaw and No-Man’s Land: The International Circulation of Visual Repertoires in World War I

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
International Circulation ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Cultural Framework ◽  
No Man's Land ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper proposes a reevaluation of the relationship between Swedish feature films and World War I during the years 1914–18, suggesting that a widespread visual repertoire of war imagery circulating in Europe and Sweden through the illustrated weeklies and cinema newsreels created a production and exhibition context in which various visual tropes from the war formed a baseline, taken-for-granted cultural framework for the meaning of Swedish films, even though Sweden was not directly involved in the conflict. The paper chooses as its main case study Victor Sjöström’s 1917 film

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