Exhibiting Antimodernism: History, Memory, and the Aestheticized Past in Mid-twentieth-century America

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart D. Hobbs
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
History Museum ◽  
House Museums ◽  
Cultural Renewal ◽  
Museum Professionals ◽  
Historic House ◽  
American Society ◽  
Twentieth Century America

In "Exhibiting Antimodernism: History, Memory and the Aestheticized Past in Mid-Twentieth-Century America," Stuart D. Hobbs explores the reasons why aesthetic concerns have trumped history and turned too many historic house museums into decorative arts museums. Hobbs uses the 1950s restoration of a house designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe as a case study. He argues that the painstaking research required for the restoration created a momentum of its own, and the story of the house as architecture and the story of the interior as decorative arts became the story at this and other historic sites. More fundamentally, though, he maintains that the antimodernism of many history museum professionals drew them to decorative arts interpretations. These antimodernists rejected twentieth century urbanism, mass production, and perceived cultural homogeneity. Anxious about a contemporary American society they interpreted as in decline, antimodernists celebrated an idealized artisan past as a means to cultural renewal.

Telling the Truth in Historic Houses: How Substitutes Can Be Authentic

Collections ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-103
Author(s):  
Pete Brown
Keyword(s):  
Real Thing ◽  
The Real ◽  
House Museums ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
Historic House Museums ◽  
Historic House

Many historic house museums are a hotchpotch of architectural styles, furnishing, and fittings, reflecting the tastes and financial situations of generations of owners, and therefore rarely entirely “genuine” or complete. A few examples have been “frozen” at a point in time and remain an unchanging representation of the lives of the last owners, while others are carefully constructed art installations or pieces of theater. And yet, over centuries, museums have cultivated an aura of authenticity which leads visitors to assume that what we show them is “the real thing,” even if the evidence in front of them suggests the opposite. This case study explores two questions: by allowing historic house visitors to believe that what they are seeing is original (when it is not), are we jeopardizing a relationship based on trust? And conversely, will revealing the truth destroy the aura of realism that attracts our audiences in the first place?

scholarly journals American family slideshows : 1952 - 1967

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer DiCocco
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
Print Form ◽  
Popular Medium ◽  
Vernacular Photography ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Twentieth Century America

Vernacular photography has been a popular topic of research within the platforms of the history of photography and sociological studies and, in its print form, has increasingly seen its value rise in the marketplace. However, the family slideshow has been largely excluded from these various sites of attention. This thesis explores the family slideshow as a cultural product of mid-twentieth-century America. The slideshow is analysed in terms of how it was presented to and consumed by families in the 1950s and 1960s. The main section of this thesis provides an analysis of a case study carried out regarding the slideshow. The case study collected oral histories from four individuals on their experiences with producing and viewing slideshows in the mid-twentieth century. The analysis provides qualitative research on the consumption, production and viewing of the slideshow as a popular medium for family snapshots.

Liberals, Modernists, and Others: A Response

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-412
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
American Society ◽  
Protestant Liberalism ◽  
Ancient Christianity ◽  
Twentieth Century America

My thanks to Maria Doerfler for organizing a session at the January 2020 meeting of the American Society of Church History on my book The Fathers Refounded: Protestant Liberalism, Roman Catholic Modernism, and the Teaching of Ancient Christianity in Early Twentieth-Century America, to the editors of Church History for suggesting that the (revised) papers from the session could find a home in print, and, especially, to the panelists for their insightful comments.

The Queerest House in Cambridge

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-69
Author(s):  
Hilary Iris Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Historic Site ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
House Museum ◽  
Historic House ◽  
History Of

One of the great challenges for public historians in LGBTQ history is finding and developing interpretation of the history of sexuality for public audiences at current historic sites. This article answers this challenge by repositioning historic house museums as sites of some of the most important LGBTQ public history we have, by using the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a case study. At this house museum, we can re-see historical interpretation through a queer lens and take on histories that have been until recently “slandered, ignored, and erased” from our public narratives of the past.1

Constructions of Authenticity at Scottish Historic House Museums

Collections ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-161
Author(s):  
Anna Venturini
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
House Museums ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Museum Professionals ◽  
Museum Objects ◽  
Historic House Museums ◽  
Historic House ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Selection Of

This study investigates how authenticity is perceived and negotiated by curators at a selection of Scottish historic house museums (HHMs). Many HHMs are preserved so as to recreate the dwellings of remarkable historical personalities, thus showcasing a unique blend of period artifacts, replicas, and original objects once in the possession of their inhabitants. Focusing on three different case studies, this research investigates how these authentic museum objects are displayed to and interpreted for the public; how relevant their authenticity is from a curatorial perspective; what are the factors influencing curatorial perceptions of authenticity; and how (or, if) HHMs help visitors negotiating the inauthenticity of replicas and period objects displayed onsite. While most studies have examined constructions of authenticity at tourism sites and in terms of their impact on consumers’ behavior, this work aims to shed light on how museum professionals conceive of authenticity within the under-researched context of HHMs, by discussing the outcomes of interviews with curators at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum and Cottage (Alloway), Broughton House (Kirkcudbright), and Ellisland Farm (Auldgirth).

scholarly journals When a Coterie Becomes a Generation: Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-210
Author(s):  
Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Cultural Renewal ◽  
Sayyid Qutb ◽  
Concrete Action ◽  
Intellectual Networks ◽  
The Moment ◽  
New Generation

AbstractDeparting from the case study of Egyptian intellectuals, focusing particularly on Sayyid Qutb, this chapter explores the relationship between narratives of generational change and cultural renewal. It argues that the observation of intellectual sociability is a productive angle from which to understand the conditions under which generational claims result in the effective reshuffling of the intellectual leadership, aesthetic norms, and principles of intellectual authority. The biography of Qutb (1906–1966), a poet and literary critic who abandoned his literary activity in the mid-1950s to pursue a career in Islamic activism—allows us to observe how the generational narrative articulates with his shifting intellectual networks. As a public intellectual, Qutb was at the forefront of two literary confrontations in early- to mid-twentieth century Egypt in which he made generational claims in order to place himself in the literary tradition that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and later to cut himself off from that tradition by announcing the emergence of a new generation dedicated to political Islam. At the core of these competing uses of generational rhetoric, this chapter argues, is Qutb’s shifting relationship with the senior literary generation, some of whom he had considered his mentors. Departing from the case study, the chapter then argues that collectives defined as generational tend to emerge in tandem with the reshuffling of social bonds that a writer maintains with his seniors, switching from a bond of transmission to one of confrontation. The change announced in the generational narrative is effective when followed by the concrete action of shifting one’s intellectual solidarities from masters to peers, as this is the moment when the masters are abandoned to history and peers are promoted as the new literary generation. Depending on the particular set of relationships in which a writer finds himself, the notion of generation may act as a narrative of either change or tradition.

scholarly journals American family slideshows : 1952 - 1967

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer DiCocco
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
Print Form ◽  
Popular Medium ◽  
Vernacular Photography ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Twentieth Century America

Vernacular photography has been a popular topic of research within the platforms of the history of photography and sociological studies and, in its print form, has increasingly seen its value rise in the marketplace. However, the family slideshow has been largely excluded from these various sites of attention. This thesis explores the family slideshow as a cultural product of mid-twentieth-century America. The slideshow is analysed in terms of how it was presented to and consumed by families in the 1950s and 1960s. The main section of this thesis provides an analysis of a case study carried out regarding the slideshow. The case study collected oral histories from four individuals on their experiences with producing and viewing slideshows in the mid-twentieth century. The analysis provides qualitative research on the consumption, production and viewing of the slideshow as a popular medium for family snapshots.

A Machine for Feeling: Ping's Posthuman Affect

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Alys Moody
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Affective Quality ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Natural Emotion ◽  
Archival Quality ◽  
Historical Moment

Beckett's famous claim that his writing seeks to ‘work on the nerves of the audience, not the intellect’ points to the centrality of affect in his work. But while his writing's affective quality is widely acknowledged by readers of his work, its refusal of intellect has made it difficult to take fully into account in scholarly work on Beckett. Taking Beckett's 1967 short prose text Ping as a case study, this essay is an attempt to take the affective qualities of Beckett's writing seriously and to consider the implications of his affectively dense writing for his texts’ relationship to history. I argue that Ping's affect emerges from the rhythms of its prose, producing a highly ‘speakable’ text in which affect precedes interpretation. In Ping, however, this affective rhythmic patterning is portrayed as mechanical, the product of the machinic ‘ping’ that punctuates the text and the text's own mechanical rhythms, demanding the active involvement of the reader. The essay concludes by arguing that Ping's mechanised affect is a specifically historical feeling. Arising from a specifically twentieth-century anxiety about technology's tendency to evacuate ‘natural’ emotion in favour of inhuman affect, it participates in a tradition of affectively resonant but curiously blank or indifferent performances of cyborg embodiment. Read in this historical light, Ping's implication of the reader in the production of its mechanised affect grants it, from our contemporary perspective, an archival quality. At the same time, it asks us to broaden the way in which we understand the Beckettian text's relationship to history, pointing to the existence of a more complex and recursive relationship between literature, its historical moment, and our contemporary moment of reading. Such a post-archival historicism sees texts as generated by but not bound to their historical moments of composition, and understands the moment of reception as an integral, if shifting, part of the text's history.

A New Denominational Historiography?

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.

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