The (Revised) Birth of Negritude: Communist Revolution and “the Immanent Negro” in 1935

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (3) ◽  
pp. 743-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher L. Miller

For Several Decades, Scholars have Believed, for Lack of Evidence to the Contrary, That Négritude—One of the Key Terms of identity formation in the twentieth century—appeared in print for the first time in Aimé Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land), in 1939. This consensus reflects a revision of what the cofounders (with Césaire) of the negritude movement, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas, had remembered and stated. Senghor said in 1959 that “the word [négritude] was invented by Césaire in an article in the newspaper that bore the title L'Etudiant noir” (qtd. in Ako 347). In an interview published in 1980, Damas said, “Césaire coined this word in L'Etudiant noir” (qtd. in Ako 348). But L‘étudiant noir was a phantom. Lilyan Kesteloot, in her groundbreaking study Black Writers in French, attempted to summarize the content of L‘étudiant noir without seeing a single issue of it; none was available to her (84n2).

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Karin Finsterbusch

This article studies how the word Torah is used in the Pentateuch to designate a collection of laws. In Deuteronomy – originally an independent composition – “Torah” is used for the first time as a designation of a substantial collection of laws. When Deuteronomy was integrated into the Pentateuch this deuteronomic signification of “Torah” changed: According to Exod 24:12, God gives on Mt. Sinai to Moses. Based on the key terms and , the adressees of the Pentateuch could only understand this Sinai-Torah as refering to Exod 25:1–31:17; Lev 1–27; Deut 5:1b–26:16; the blessings and curses of Deut 28; and the song of Deut 32. The Torah containing these passages forms the basis of the covenant in Moab (Deuteronomy 29–30) and is written down by Moses according to Deut 31:9, 24. This “Moabite” Torah Book is placed in the Pentateuch next to the “Book of the Covenant” which is written down by Moses as well (Exod 24:7) and which provides the basis for the covenant formed on Mt. Sinai.


Author(s):  
Larysa Kovryk-Tokar

Every nation is quite diverse in terms of his historical destiny, spiritual priorities, and cultural heritage. However, voluntary European integration, which is the final aim of political integration that began in the second half of the twentieth century from Western Europe, provided for an availability of large number of characteristics in common in political cultures of their societies. Therefore, Ukraine needs to find some common determinants that can create inextricable relationship between the European Community and Ukraine. Although Ukrainian culture is an intercultural weave of two East macrocivilizations, according to the author, Ukraine tends to Western-style society with its openness, democracy, tolerance, which constitute the basic values of Europeans. Keywords: Identity, collective identity, European values, European integration


Author(s):  
Melissa J. Homestead

This book tells for the first time the story of the central relationship of novelist Willa Cather’s life, her nearly forty-year partnership with Edith Lewis. Cather has been described as a distinguished artist who turned her back on the crass commercialism of the early twentieth century and as a deeply private woman who strove to hide her sexuality, and Lewis has often been identified as her secretary. However, Lewis was a successful professional woman who edited popular magazines and wrote advertising copy at a major advertising agency and who, behind the scenes, edited Cather’s fiction. Recognizing Lewis’s role in Cather’s creative process changes how we understand Cather as an artist, while recovering their domestic partnership (which they did not seek to hide) provides a fresh perspective on lesbian life in the early twentieth century. Homestead reconstructs Cather and Lewis’s life together in Greenwich Village and on Park Avenue, their travels to the American Southwest that formed the basis of Cather’s novels The Professor’s House and Death Comes for the Archbishop, their summers as part of an all-woman resort community on Grand Manan Island, and Lewis’s magazine and advertising work as a context for her editorial collaboration with Cather. Homestead tells a human story of two women who chose to live in partnership and also explains how the Cold War panic over homosexuality caused biographers and critics to make Lewis and her central role in Cather’s life vanish even as she lived on alone for twenty-five years after her partner’s death.


Author(s):  
Jack Corbett ◽  
Wouter Veenendaal

Chapter 1 introduces the main arguments of the book; outlines the approach, method, and data; defines key terms; and provides a chapter outline. Global theories of democratization have systematically excluded small states, which make up roughly 20 per cent of countries. These cases debunk mainstream theories of why democratization succeeds or fails. This book brings small states into the comparative politics fold for the first time. It is organized thematically, with each chapter tackling one of the main theories from the democratization literature. Different types of data are examined—case studies and other documentary evidence, interviews and observation. Following an abductive approach, in addition to examining the veracity of existing theory, each chapter is also used to build an explanation of how democracy is practiced in small states. Specifically, we highlight how small state politics is shaped by personalization and informal politics, rather than formal institutional design.


1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annegret Fauser

In 1903, one hundred years after the Prix de Rome had been created in music composition, women were allowed to participate in the competition for the first time. In 1913, Lili Boulanger became the first woman to win the prize, crowning the efforts of three others-Juliette Toutain, Hélène Fleury, and Nadia Boulanger-to achieve this goal. Their stories are fascinating case studies of the strategies women employed to achieve success and public recognition within the complex framework of French cultural politics at the beginning of the twentieth century.


PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (2) ◽  
pp. 488-499
Author(s):  
Eileen Chang

Translation played a central role in the life of Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing, 1920-95). One of the most iconic figures in twentieth-century Chinese literature, Chang also wrote extensively in English throughout her career, which began in the early 1940s in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. She achieved fame quickly but fell into obscurity after the war ended in 1945. Chang stayed in Shanghai through the 1949 Communist revolution and in 1952 moved to Hong Kong, where she worked as a freelance translator and writer for the United States Information Service and wrote two anti-Communist novels in English and Chinese, The Rice-Sprout Song (1955) and Naked Earth (1956).


Author(s):  
Inna N. Mamkina ◽  

The article draws attention to the sociocultural aspect of the Siberian Railway Committee's activities in the early twentieth century. Historiographic analysis showed a research interest in the status of the Committee in the context of the organization of management of the Russian Empire's Eastern outskirts. Taking into account the broad powers of the Siberian Railway Committee, the author notes isolated studies of the social aspect in its activities. The aim of this publication is an attempt to create a holistic view of the activities of the Committee for the implementation of social tasks aimed at improving the life of railway employees at the TransBaikal section of the railway in the early twentieth century. The study was conducted on the basis of the documentation of the Siberian Railway Committee. A number of documents are introduced into scholarly discourse for the first time. Based on the structural and functional approach, using a set of historical research methods, it has been revealed that, after the commissioning of the Trans-Baikal section of the Siberian Railway, considerable attention was paid to solve sociocultural problems aimed at improving the life of railway employees. The preparatory commission chaired by A.N. Kulomzina and the Main School Committee implemented social programs. The author has defined the procedure for the formation of the committee, its structure, and principles of its activity. For the first time, personal data of the school committee's members elected on the Trans-Baikal Railway are introduced into scholarly discourse. The information of the committee's activities of the opening and maintenance of primary schools at railway stations has been summarized. The obtained statistics convincingly prove the effectiveness of the committee in the field of school education. The author notes that the Siberian Railway Committee achieved a very successful development of the school network by applying administrative and financial efforts. The author, for the first time, provides data on the organization of libraries and public convocations for the employees on the Trans-Baikal Railway. She draws attention to the organization of medical care for the employees; establishes the organization order and types of medical institutions; generalizes information about the staff of hospitals and obstetric centers, and the number of patients. The author concludes that the Siberian Railway Committee had an organized and balanced approach to solving sociocultural problems that occupied an important place in its activities. The Siberian Railway Committee's social programs in a number of areas were ahead of those of other government departments.


Author(s):  
Oleksandr Antonenko ◽  
Margaryta Antonenko

The purpose of the article is to study the activities of festivals of spiritual songs in the context of the development of the musical culture of Ukraine in the late twentieth – early twentieth century. The methodology is based on historical and culturological approaches. A systematic method is also used to characterize festivals of the Orthodox music tradition in their connection with other components of culture; socio-cultural method – in the study of socio-cultural components of the artistic phenomenon of the festival. The scientific novelty of the work is that for the first time the activity of festivals of Orthodox sacred music as a new phenomenon in the musical culture of Ukraine is comprehensively analyzed. Conclusions. The emergence and active functioning of festivals of spiritual songs is one of the leading trends in the development of Orthodox musical culture in Ukraine. The ideological direction of the festivals is primarily of religious content, and, in addition to overcoming the negative trends in the field of culture, their leading function is the revival of orthodox traditions. Festivals of sacred music in Ukraine currently perform two main functions: educational and cultural. They contribute to the revival of the traditions of orthodox musical culture; demonstrate the traditions of orthodoxy in modern socio-cultural conditions; revive centuries-old traditions of spiritual choral singing of Ukraine; revive centuries-old traditions of spiritual choral singing of Ukraine.


Author(s):  
E.A. Radaeva ◽  

The purpose of this study is to present a model for the development of the expressionist method in the genre of the novel using the example of the evolution of the novelistic work of the Austrian writer of the early twentieth century L. Perutz. The results obtained: the creative method of the Austrian writer is moving from scientific knowledge to mysticism; in the center of all novels created with a large interval, there is always a confused hero, broken by what is happening (in other words, the absurdity of the world), whose state is often conveyed through gestures; the author finally moves away from linear narration to dividing the plot into almost autonomous stories, thematically gravitating more and more to the distant historical past. Scientific novelty: the novels of L. Perutz are for the first time examined in relative detail through the prism of the aesthetics of expressionism.


1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Beaumont James ◽  
Anne M. James

This volume gives an account of all the excavations undertaken at Clarendon in the twentieth century, including those of 1933–9 led by John Charlton and Tancred Borenius and the excavations by Elizabeth Eames and John Musty in the 1950s and 1960s. The history, archaeology and finds are examined together for the first time to present a detailed picture of palace life.


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