Chinese Uhuru

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 569-595
Author(s):  
Alexander C. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Word ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Subjugated Knowledge ◽  
Congo Crisis ◽  
The 1960S

Mao’s most famous statement about postcolonial struggle came in response to the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, yet China’s understanding of and involvement in that conflict has been largely ignored. Based on briefly declassified archival sources and long-forgotten cultural works, this essay examines the significance of China’s engagement in the heart of Africa. A close reading of the spoken-word drama War Drums on the Equator (1965) reveals the importance of mobilizing “subjugated knowledge” in asymmetrical conflict.

‘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.

Majimaji and the Millennium: Abrahamic Sources and the Creation of a Tanzanian Resistance Tradition

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 365-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Sunseri
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
German Colonialism ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Resistance Movement

Writing thirty years ago the historian of the Majimaji rebellion, Gilbert Gwassa, emphasized the purely Tanzanian nature of the uprising, as seen in the ideology which he believed was the inspiration for the widespread war against German colonialism. To Gwassa, southern Tanzanians created an innovative, secular ideology after the turn of the twentieth century which enabled Africans to resist German colonialism supra-ethnically rather than locally. Gwassa was adamant that the Majimaji ideology owed nothing to outside influences.Gwassa's contention has been largely unchallenged despite obvious paradoxes. Majimaji emerged in a region widely permeated with Islamic influences by 1905, the time of the rebellion. Moreover, the Christian colonial power structure had been present in the outbreak region for some twenty years by 1905, while Christian missionaries had been active in Tanzania for almost forty years. By the time the Majimaji historical tradition was being written in Tanzania in the 1960s, the nation included many Muslims and Christians, including many of Gwassa's research informants, who helped shape his interpretation of Majimaji. Aside from these circumstantial suggestions of the possibility of an externally-influenced Majimaji tradition, a close reading of archival sources from the German period, including several documents which have not been considered in the historiographical tradition, suggest that Christian and Islamic influences helped to shape the writing of Majimaji, if not the resistance movement itself. This paper will examine some of these “Abrahamic” sources of the Majimaji tradition, and consider how they might have been used to formulate a Majimaji epic which has become a standard icon of early African colonial history.

Broadway Dance

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-181
Author(s):  
Liza Gennaro
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Early Exposure ◽  
Commercial Theater ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Katherine Dunham ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The move away from modern dance and ballet to jazz dance as the prominent movement lexicon employed on Broadway is explored. I examine Katherine Dunham and Jack Cole’s influence on a generation of choreographers and Bob Fosse’s fusion of the dominant paradigms established by de Mille and Robbins. I give special attention to Fosse’s choreographic influences, including his early exposure to nightclubs and strip joints, comic/eccentric dancer Joe Frisco, Fred Astaire, and Jack Cole. Beginning with his work in The Pajama Game (1954) under the mentorship of Robbins and examining selected works from Damn Yankees (1955) and Sweet Charity (1966), I study Fosse’s choreographic development. My close reading of the musical number “Big Spender” reveals Fosse’s dramaturgical process. I examine the number in relation to the 1960s sexual revolution; representations of the female dancing body in both commercial theater and concert venues; and in relation to de Mille’s “Postcard Girls” from her Oklahoma! dream ballet, “Laurey Makes Up Her Mind.” I also consider Fosse’s post-Sweet Charity objectification of the female body; his late career disregard for the precepts of time and place in relation to character, and his formulation of a distinctly identifiable movement lexicon—the “Fosse Style.” The chapter closes with three more influential director-choreographers: Gower Champion, with his innovative cinematic approach to stage musicals and his standard use of showbiz dance lexicons undisturbed by modernist methods; Michael Bennett, a strict proponent of Robbins methods and the inheritor of the Robbins’ mantle; and Donald McKayle, one of the only African American director-choreographers working in the late twentieth-century Broadway arena.

scholarly journals Hamlet, Performance and Chaotic Cultural Networks

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Emil Rybczak ◽  
Emil Rybczak
Keyword(s):  
Complex Networks ◽  
Chaos Theory ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Cinematic Adaptation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Cultural Networks

Since the 1960s, chaos theory has become an important but controversial tool used by scientists and mathematicians to describe physical or theoretical systems or networks. It explains how the simple can generate the complex. Its central tenets can also provide an alternative language and means of literary interpretation. This article will explore how the principles of chaos theory can be used to close read and systematise various aspects of the language and performance of Shakespeare. The argument is built upon an analysis of Hamlet, in an effort to understand the play and its reproduction as the evolution of interconnected complex networks. Various aspects of the text will be discussed, including its language, structural and character patterning, and its reproduction through performance and cinematic adaptation. Each of these topics, and the characters, devices or ideas they discuss, constitute nodes of the complex network of Hamlet as both text and idea.Responding to the cultural analysis of other scholars, this article uses Hamlet as an ideal example of how the appropriation of scientific language can defamiliarise a particular literary or dramatic artefact. This allows fresh interpretation and understanding of its location within the broader networks of theatre and culture. I suggest the possibilities of close reading literary works through the lens of chaos and suggest how they might be applied and developed in conjunction with other texts, media or performances.

scholarly journals Leedu draama retseptsioon Eestis

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-240
Author(s):  
Anneli Saro
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S

Eesti teatril on ajaloolises plaanis kõige tihedamad sidemed olnud saksa- ja venekeelse ning angloameerika kultuuriruumiga, kuid sidemed lõunapoolsete lähinaabritega on olnud üsna sporaadilised. Käesolev uurimus käsitleb Leedu draama vastuvõttu Eestis ja Eesti teatris. Artikli eesmärgiks on (1) anda statistiline ajalooline ülevaade Eestis ilmunud ja lavastatud Leedu näitekirjandusest ning (2) uurida Leedu draama retseptsiooni Eestis, tuginedes näidendite lähilugemisele, audio- ja videosalvestustele ja ilmunud kriitikale ning tõlgendades nimetatud allikaid Eesti kultuurikontekstist lähtuvalt.Abstract. Anneli Saro: Reception of Lithuanian drama in Estonia. The article has two aims: (1) to give a statistical overview of Lithuanian drama published and staged in Estonia, and (2) to investigate the reception of Lithuanian drama in Estonia, relying on close reading of the plays and analysis of audiovisual recordings and criticism, and interpreting the sources in the Estonian cultural context. The term “reception” here covers the creative work of translators, directors, actors, scenographers, etc., as well as diverse mental activities of readers and spectators. The first part of the article tackles the historical development of cultural relations between Estonia and Lithuania in the field of theatre, listing the Lithuanian plays published and staged in Estonia during different epochs and contextualizing the reception. In the second part, the plays of four influential playwrights are analyzed: works by Juozas Grušas, Kazys Saja, Justinas Marcinkevičius and Marius Ivaškevičius. There are approximately forty Lithuanian plays translated into Estonian, most of them by Mihkel Loodus. Twenty plays have been staged in professional theatres, and twenty have been published, although some are still in manuscript. There are three groups of plays translated into Estonian: (1) plays depicting Soviet society, staged in Estonia in the second half of the 1950s and in the first half of the 1960s, 2) plays depicting Lithuanian history, mostly published as books, and 3) existential plays that form the majority of Lithuanian drama in Estonian.Keywords: Lithuanian drama; Estonian theatre; reception; cultural relations between Estonia and Lithuania

Decolonizing Diplomacy: Senghor, Kennedy, and the Practice of Ideological Resistance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Yohann C. Ripert
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
New Policies ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Ideological Resistance ◽  
Successful Change ◽  
First World ◽  
The U.S

Abstract At the turn of the 1960s, Léopold Sédar Senghor and John F. Kennedy vowed to radically transform African foreign policy. Through a close reading of a recently declassified correspondence and a historical analysis of two behind-the-scenes negotiations, Senghor’s first state visit to the U.S. and Kennedy’s support for the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Ripert examines the private and public concatenations that lead both statesmen to transform policymaking not by implementing new policies but by challenging inherited ideologies. Though their efforts did not always bring successful change in policymaking, the diplomatic correspondence between the two newly elected leaders reveals a more subtle and sustainable transformation: a decolonization of diplomacy.

“What We Think about the Object Is Far More Important Than Its Making”: Some Notes on Horia Bernea's Early Works

ARTMargins ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-86
Author(s):  
Magda Radu
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Early Activity ◽  
Made In

The text analyzes the early activity of the Romanian artist Horia Bernea (1938–2000), putting it in conjunction with various aspects of conceptual art. It emphasizes points of contact between Bernea's practice and the existing narratives of conceptual art (including the Eastern European ones) and it provides contextual information about the artistic and socio-political environment in Romania during the period of liberalization which debuted at the end of the 1960s and lasted for a few years. The text mainly focuses on a close reading of some Bernea's works which were made in this timeframe, namely the Production Charts series and his investigation of the “post-cognitive iconography” formed by a family of “Entities” with invented names and morphologies.

scholarly journals “Never Some Easy Flashback”

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (-) ◽  
pp. 6-26
Author(s):  
Charles Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Alter Ego

Abstract This paper provides a close reading of Paul Farley’s 160-line poem, “Thorns.” The poem is read in dialogue with William Wordsworth’s celebrated Romantic ballad “The Thorn.” Special attention is given to Farley’s treatment of memory and metaphor: It is shown how the first, exploratory part of the poem elaborates upon the interdependent nature of memory and metaphor, while the second part uses a more regulated form of imagery in its evocation of a generational memory linked to a particular place and time (the working-class Liverpool of the 1960s and 1970s). The tension between the two parts of the poem is reflected in the taut relationship between the poet and a confrontational alter ego. Wordsworth’s importance for Farley is shown to inhere not only in the Lake Poet’s use of personal memory, but also the close connection between his poetry and place, as well as a strongly self-reflective strain that results in an interminable process of self-determination. Farley’s independence as a poet also comes across, though, and is for instance in evidence in his desire to avoid the “booby trap” of too simple appropriation of the methods and motifs of his Romantic predecessor.

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

Improving x-ray map resolution with image restoration techniques

1996 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 598-599
Author(s):  
Richard B. Mott ◽  
John J. Friel ◽  
Charles G. Waldman
Keyword(s):  
Image Restoration ◽  
Hubble Space Telescope ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Small Object ◽  
X Rays ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Mapping Parameters ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Map Resolution

X-rays are emitted from a relatively large volume in bulk samples, limiting the smallest features which are visible in X-ray maps. Beam spreading also hampers attempts to make geometric measurements of features based on their boundaries in X-ray maps. This has prompted recent interest in using low voltages, and consequently mapping L or M lines, in order to minimize the blurring of the maps.An alternative strategy draws on the extensive work in image restoration (deblurring) developed in space science and astronomy since the 1960s. A recent example is the restoration of images from the Hubble Space Telescope prior to its new optics. Extensive literature exists on the theory of image restoration. The simplest case and its correspondence with X-ray mapping parameters is shown in Figures 1 and 2.Using pixels much smaller than the X-ray volume, a small object of differing composition from the matrix generates a broad, low response. This shape corresponds to the point spread function (PSF). The observed X-ray map can be modeled as an “ideal” map, with an X-ray volume of zero, convolved with the PSF. Figure 2a shows the 1-dimensional case of a line profile across a thin layer. Figure 2b shows an idealized noise-free profile which is then convolved with the PSF to give the blurred profile of Figure 2c.

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