Experiments in Eden: Mid-century artist voyages into the Mesopotamian marshlands

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rauh

Following the 1958 Revolution, many Iraqi artists were sent abroad to study in foreign art academies and train in the latest methods – especially printmaking. The popularity and necessity of print in transnational decolonial movements lent printing practices a popular edge while enhancing the artwork’s seeming accessibility and reproducibility. As artists navigated the regional contours of transnational modernism while exploring graphic artmaking methods in the 1960s, several turned to the country’s southern wetland landscapes as new sites and creative worlds. This contribution examines a few of these mid-century experiments with the Mesopotamian marshlands in order to explore how these works bloomed in the liquid nature of printmaking while simultaneously proliferating images of the southern marshlands increasingly under threat in rapidly modernizing twentieth-century Iraq.

This book is devoted to the life and academic legacy of Mustafa Badawi who transformed the study of modern Arabic literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Prior to the 1960s the study of Arabic literature, both classical and modern, had barely been emancipated from the academic approaches of orientalism. The appointment of Badawi as Oxford University's first lecturer in modern Arabic literature changed the face of this subject as Badawi showed, through his teaching and research, that Arabic literature was making vibrant contributions to global culture and thought. Part biography, part collection of critical essays, this book celebrates Badawi's immense contribution to the field and explores his role as a public intellectual in the Arab world and the west.


2019 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-77
Author(s):  
Nicolas G. Rosenthal

A vibrant American Indian art scene developed in California from the 1960s to the 1980s, with links to a broader indigenous arts movement. Native American artists working in the state produced and exhibited paintings, prints, sculptures, mixed media, and other art forms that validated and documented their cultures, interpreted their history, asserted their survival, and explored their experiences in modern society. Building on recent scholarship that examines American Indian migration, urbanization, and activism in the twentieth century, this article charts these developments and argues that American Indian artists in California challenged and rewrote dominant historical narratives by foregrounding Native American perspectives in their work.


Transfers ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Torma

This article deals with the history of underwater film and the role that increased mobility plays in the exploration of nature. Drawing on research on the exploration of the ocean, it analyzes the production of popular images of the sea. The entry of humans into the depths of the oceans in the twentieth century did not revitalize myths of mermaids but rather retold oceanic myths in a modern fashion. Three stages stand out in this evolution of diving mobility. In the 1920s and 1930s, scenes of divers walking under water were the dominant motif. From the 1940s to the 1960s, use of autonomous diving equipment led to a modern incarnation of the “mermen“ myth. From the 1950s to the 1970s, cinematic technology was able to create visions of entire oceanic ecosystems. Underwater films contributed to the period of machine-age exploration in a very particular way: they made virtual voyages of the ocean possible and thus helped to shape the current understanding of the oceans as part of Planet Earth.


2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Steven Ruggles

AbstractQuantitative historical analysis in the United States surged in three distinct waves. The first quantitative wave occurred as part of the “New History” that blossomed in the early twentieth century and disappeared in the 1940s and 1950s with the rise of consensus history. The second wave thrived from the 1960s to the 1980s during the ascendance of the New Economic History, the New Political History, and the New Social History, and died out during the “cultural turn” of the late twentieth century. The third wave of historical quantification—which I call the revival of quantification—emerged in the second decade of the twenty-first century and is still underway. I describe characteristics of each wave and discuss the historiographical context of the ebb and flow of quantification in history.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Russell White

The photography of the Argentinian photographer Francisco ‘Tito’ Caula tracked some of the key social and physical changes that Caracas underwent during the middle decades of the twentieth century. This period saw the country transition from dictatorship to democracy. Caula’s advertising photographs together with his images of spectacular spaces and buildings such as the Sabana Grande and the Centro Simón Bolívar presented Caracas as a mecca of mid-century ‘petro-modernity’ (LeMenager 2014). In contrast to late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernity, which was predominantly European in influence, Caraqueño modernity at mid-century was more cosmopolitan, taking particular inspiration from the United States. Caula’s photographs speak to the process of Americanization, defined as the adoption of North American cultural products, urban forms and patterns of living that Venezuela underwent during the years Caula spent in the country. Venezuela witnessed an economic boom in the 1960s and 70s, which was fuelled by the US acquisition of Venezuelan oil. In Venezuela, the boom facilitated the growth of a consumer society as well as the development of such quintessentially North American urban forms as freeways, shopping malls, drive-in movie theatres, suburbs and skyscrapers. It was also accompanied by the adoption of violent security tactics by the state’s security apparatus and the political marginalization of the radical left. Given that Caula held left-wing views, it is perhaps surprising that his photographs (at least those that have been published) do not explore the tensions at the heart of the Pacto de Punto Fijo, instituted to ensure that the transition from dictatorship to democracy would hold following elections in 1958. The celebration of North American influence within Caula’s photographs puts them in dialogue with critical perspectives that have seen US cultural influence rather more negatively. Moreover, their celebration of prosperity and their presentation of Caracas as an exciting city means that, for some, they have taken on a nostalgic hue.


2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo

Thailand's ‘southern border provinces’ of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – along with four districts of neighbouring Songkhla – are the site of fiery political violence characterised by daily killings. The area was historically a Malay sultanate, and was only loosely under Thai suzerainty until the early twentieth century. During the twentieth century there was periodic resistance to Bangkok's attempts to suppress local identity and to incorporate this largely Malay-speaking, Muslim-majority area into a predominantly Buddhist nation-state. This resistance proved most intense during the 1960s and 1970s, when various armed groups (notably PULO [Patani United Liberation Organization] and BRN [Barisan Revolusi Nasional]) waged war on the Thai state, primarily targeting government officials and the security forces. In the early 1980s, the Prem Tinsulanond government brokered a deal with these armed groups and proceeded to co-opt the Malay-Muslim elite. By crafting mutually beneficial governance, security and financial arrangements, the Thai state was able largely to placate local political demands.


1995 ◽  
Vol 177 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas R. Powell ◽  
Karen E. Diamond

The nature of parent-teacher relationships in early childhood programs, including interventions for children with disabilities, is examined within a sociopolitical context across five eras of the twentieth century. Two general approaches are discerned: practices that view parents as learners in need of expert information and advice about child rearing, prevalent through the 1950s, and strategies involving parents as partners with educators in program decision-making, which began to surface in the 1960s. Attention is given to the influence of the Parent Teacher Association in the early 1900s as a response to societal changes stemming from the Industrial Revolution; contributions of the child study movement of the 1920s to parent education activities; effects of the Great Depression on ideas and practices related to individuals with disabilities; the growth of parent advocacy on behalf of children with disabilities; and the influence of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and widespread demographic changes of the 1970s on parent-teacher relationships. Current issues in forming and sustaining parent-teacher partnerships in early childhood programs are identified.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Dudy Syafruddin

Literature is a product of culture keeping abreast of human mind. Literary works is a means for the authors to express the social phenomenon in his life. The discourses about postmodernism in the second half of twentieth century, as a part of the story of human mind, was a profound interest for the Authors. In Indonesia, the postmodern discourse has come up in the 1960s. This paper involves the elements of Postmodernism in the short story “Abacadabra” written by Danarto. The dominant elements in this short story are parody, fragmentary, and historiographic metafiction.


Author(s):  
Jelena Dobbels

The turn of the twentieth century was a tuming point for the Belgian construction sector.The emergence of general contractors enacted a re-examination of job responsibilitiesamong general contractors, architects and engineers. This paper analyses how Belgiangeneral contractors claimed their new position as organisers and executors ofconstruction, and how they interacted with other construction actors. The analysis showsit took a long time to capture the gradual shift of tasks legally, started in the 1890s yetonly finalized by the 1960s. This slow legislative adaptation gave rise to many conflictson job responsibilities, yet also collaborative actions were undertaken. This allows us toconclude that general contractors, architects and engineers mainly engaged in conversationwith each other in order to identify and outline their changing functions andresponsibilities.


Author(s):  
Vernon Bogdanor

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of the British constitution in the twentieth century. The findings reveal that while there was widespread confidence in the virtues of the constitution at the beginning of the twentieth century, that confidence seemed to have evaporated. This loss of confidence coincided with a collapse of national self-confidence that had begun in the 1960s when British political and intellectual elites began to come to terms with the fact that Great Britain was falling economically behind her continental competitors.


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