Trick Cyclists? Recontextualizing Rwandan Dynastic Chronology

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 191-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Newbury
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
The Way

Chronology used to be an object of great interest among African historians because it was seen as essential to history, it provided exactitude where so much else was analytic, and it was such a difficult feature to handle in oral accounts. More recently, historical analysis has been concerned more with processes and periods than with defined events and dates. Although deemed to be useful when available, precise chronology is now seen as less essential to historical reconstruction; it is accepted that chronologies are subject to interpretation and debate, and that these debates themselves illuminate the way in which local communities reconstruct—and historians understand—history.This paper addresses such issues of debate, contestation, and negotiation—that is, it explores the nature of intellectual hegemony—but it does so across cultural boundaries. It thus illustrates a fundamental contradiction in the manner by which historians have treated cultural units defined as distinct: while as independent polities they have been assumed to be culturally autonomous, source material from one is often drawn on to fill in the gaps of others. This procedure was especially common where there were powerful kingdoms whose political boundaries were assumed to be rigid and inviolate. The states of the western Interlacustrine area, each believed to be ruled by an established dynastic line whose origins reached far back into antiquity, provide an exemplary illustration of this process.By the early twentieth century, at the time of European conquest, Rwanda was one of the most powerful of these states, having either conquered and absorbed, or at least dominated, many of the distinct kingdoms with which it formerly competed.

Breeding Better Babies in the Eugenic Garden City: ‘Municipal Darwinism’ and the (Anti)Cosmopolitan Utopia in the early Twentieth Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Currell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Core Beliefs ◽  
Garden City ◽  
New Town ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
National Body ◽  
Practical Level ◽  
The Way

Showing how ‘modernist cosmopolitanism’ coexisted with an anti-cosmopolitan municipal control this essay looks at the way utopian ideals about breeding better humans entered into new town and city planning in the early twentieth century. An experiment in eugenic garden city planning which took place in Strasbourg, France, in the 1920s provided a model for modern planning that was keenly observed by the international eugenics movement as well as city planners. The comparative approach taken in this essay shows that while core beliefs about degeneration and the importance of eugenics to improve the national ‘body’ were often transnational and cosmopolitan, attempts to implement eugenic beliefs on a practical level were shaped by national and regional circumstances that were on many levels anti-cosmopolitan. As a way of assuaging the tensions between the local and the global, as well as the traditional with the modern, this unique and now forgotten experiment in eugenic city planning aimed to show that both preservation and progress could succeed at the same time.

Poetic Trespass

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lital Levy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Old World ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Emile Habiby ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. This book brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine. More than that, the book presents a captivating portrait of the literary imagination's power to transgress political boundaries and transform ideas about language and belonging. Blending history and literature, the book traces the interwoven life of Arabic and Hebrew in Israel/Palestine from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, exposing the two languages' intimate entanglements in contemporary works of prose, poetry, film, and visual art by both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. In a context where intense political and social pressures work to identify Jews with Hebrew and Palestinians with Arabic, the book finds writers who have boldly crossed over this divide to create literature in the language of their “other,” as well as writers who bring the two languages into dialogue to rewrite them from within. Exploring such acts of poetic trespass, the book introduces new readings of canonical and lesser-known authors, including Emile Habiby, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Anton Shammas, Saul Tchernichowsky, Samir Naqqash, Ronit Matalon, Salman Masalha, A. B. Yehoshua, and Almog Behar. By revealing uncommon visions of what it means to write in Arabic and Hebrew, the book will change the way we understand literature and culture in the shadow of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Rituals and Records: the Films of the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke McKernan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Slow Motion ◽  
Sports History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Olympic Sport ◽  
Film Record ◽  
Landmark Study ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Olympic Games

The title of Allen Guttmann's landmark study of sports history,From Ritual to Record, captures the way cinematic treatments of the Olympic Games, Europe's most resonant sporting invention, developed in the early twentieth century. Projected film and the modern Olympic Games began in the same year, 1896, and the way the two phenomena have grown together demonstrates a progression from formality and ritual to an ever-increasing emphasis on individual, nation and achievement. This transition from ritual to record is demonstrated by two Olympic films from the European Games of Paris 1924 and Amsterdam 1928,Les Jeux Olympiques Paris 1924andDe Olympische Spelen. These cinematic records are not only documentary records of the events they portray, but are an important reminder that modern sports are witnessed by most not as stadium spectators but as viewers – in the case of the 1924 and 1928 films, as members of a cinema audience. The film record is essential to our understanding of the popularisation of modern sports, while through their contrary impulses to document and to idealise (particularly through the use of slow-motion photography), the two films demonstrate what is meaningful about Olympic sport.

The Meaning[s] of "Without": An Exploration of Liszt's Bagatelle ohne Tonart

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 230-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Berry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Future ◽  
Piano Composition ◽  
Musical Evolution ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
The Way

In this essay, I explore historical and theoretical issues germane to an understanding of an 1885 piano composition with an intriguing title: LisztÕs Bagatelle ohne Tonart--a bagatelle "without tonality" or "without a key." After briefly describing the workÕs history and musical associations with other compositions by Liszt, I survey two present-day approaches that reveal ways in which the work defies tonality: octatonic interpretations via set-class examinations, and Schenker-influenced prolongational models. I then turn to focus instead on how the Bagatelle fit within the framework of nineteenth-century musical thought; how its processes were supported by contemporaneously evolving theories of chromaticism. Partly through an analysis based on the practice of Gottfried Weber (1779-1839), I demonstrate that the Bagatelle is not a piece "without tonality" as much as it is one "without the fulfillment of the tonic." It maintains harmonic tension by avoiding anticipated resolutions, as well as by preserving a sense of ambiguity as to what the actual "missing" key is. Next, I consider why Liszt was prompted to write a piece in such a manner. We know that he was a proponent of musical progress--of Zukunftsmusik ("music of the future")--but for this fact to be relevant we must confirm, first, that Liszt had definite ideas about a Zukunftsharmoniesystem; and second, that such a system is reflected in the processes exhibited by the Bagatelle. I argue that the BagatelleÕs traits are indeed in accordance with theoretical views about musicÕs future direction, to which Liszt subscribed. Relevant theories of Karl Friedrich Weitzmann (1808-80) and Franois-Joseph FŽtis (1784-1871) are assessed. Lastly, in a "Schoenbergian epilogue" I explore connections between LisztÕs operations and SchoenbergÕs ideas, addressing historical associations that conjoin their views of composing "ohne Tonart."I conclude that the 1885 BagatelleÕs attenuation of tonality was part of a tradition that extended from the mid-nineteenth into the early twentieth century--one that stretched from Liszt and his contemporaries through Schoenberg and his pupils and beyond, embracing along the way the theoretical prescriptions of Weitzmann, FŽtis, and Schoenberg himself. The various threads of theory and analysis explored in this article contribute to an understanding of the same strand of musical evolution: the increasing circumvention of tonality to the point that a piece could be written "ohne Tonart."

The Institution of Meter

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Martin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Prime Mover ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Measure ◽  
Successes And Failures ◽  
The Way

This chapter begins with a discussion of metrical mastery, outlining the way that Robert Bridges's intervention in his best-selling treatise Milton's Prosody expanded and popularized the theories that he and Gerard Manley Hopkins discussed together. It shows how Bridges and his influential competitor, George Saintsbury, were jostling for position during the height of the prosody wars between 1900 and 1910, and how their successes and failures characterize much of our contemporary thinking about early twentieth-century prosody. Author of the three-volume History of English Prosody (1906–10), Saintsbury was a prime mover in both the foundation of English literary study and the institutionalization of the “foot” as the primary measure of English poetry. Infused with Edwardian-era military rhetoric, Sainstbury's foot marched to a particularly English rhythm, which he traced through the ages with wit and martial vigor.

Isolating, Placing and Contextualising the Hangover

The Hangover ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 9-32
Author(s):  
Jonathon Shears
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Tom Wolfe ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
The Way

This chapter identifies and isolates some of the prominent features of a hangover. It demonstrates the kind of physical phenomena that usually occupy quantitative studies of the hangover in the sciences before elaborating on the way these are linked to affect – often negative, although not exclusively – such as guilt, self-disgust and anxiety. It does this through contextualised, close literary analysis of hangover descriptions in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Wolfe and Kingsley Amis. These readings demonstrate the way that hangover symptoms can both reveal and conceal larger socio-cultural concerns and how hangover consciousness is informed by the experience of transgressing social values. It also traces the etymology of the word hangover, reflecting on some of the vernacular used to describe hangovers in the early twentieth century, and introduces the Traditional-Punishment and Withdrawal-Relief responses that can disclose continuities between periods.

scholarly journals Soviet Modernity: Stephen Kotkin and the Bolshevik Predicament

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA KRYLOVA
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Collective Property ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

‘Modernity’ has long been a working category of historical analysis in Russian and Soviet studies. Like any established category, it bears a history of its own characterised by founding assumptions, conceptual possibilities and lasting interpretive habits. Stephen Kotkin's work has played a special role in framing the kind of scholarship this category has enabled and the kind of modernity it has assigned to twentieth-century Russia. Kotkin's 1995Magnetic Mountainintroduced the concept of ‘socialist modernity’. His continued work with the concept in his 2001Kritikaarticle ‘Modern Times’ and his 2001Armageddon Avertedmarked crucial moments in the history of the discipline and have positioned the author as a pioneering and dominant voice on the subject for nearly two decades. Given the defining nature of Kotkin's work, a critical discussion of its impact on the way the discipline conceives of Soviet modernisation and presents it to non-Russian fields is perhaps overdue. Here, I approach Kotkin's work on modernity as the field's collective property in need of a critical, deconstructive reading for its underlying assumptions, prescribed master narratives, and resultant paradoxes.

The Meanings Embedded within Childcare Regulations: A Historical Analysis

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Medical Supervision ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Childcare Programs

In response to current discussions about a universal Canadian childcare system (affordable childcare for all families), this article deconstructs the position that childcare occupies in the province of Ontario through the examination, from a historical perspective, of a document that outlines regulations for childcare programs: the Day Nurseries Act. Three discourses are analyzed by tracing them to social and demographic conditions during the early twentieth century: discourses related to the need for medical supervision of children attending childcare centres; discourses that emphasize the relationship between childcare centres and ‘families in need’; and discourses that refer to the need to follow strict programming and behavioural guidelines.

The Final Bows

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-297
Author(s):  
Sara Hume
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Head ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Folk Dress

Abstract How did people actually dress across rural Alsace from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century? The image that fills the popular imagination of Alsatian dress during this period is of a regional costume, including a large head bow. This stereotype was developed and reinforced by intellectuals who documented and preserved these disappearing styles. The survival of this static folk dress obscures the actual transformation of regional dress into styles that more closely resembled those worn in urban areas. This study looks at rural costume in Alsace to understand its transition from distinctive regional dress into styles more in line with urban styles, by making use of a range of source material, including notarial acts, surviving garments preserved in museum collections, and photographs of weddings and other religious ceremonies. Comment s'habillaient les gens en Alsace rurale de la fin du dix-neuvième au début du vingtième siècle ? L'image qui nous vient tout de suite à l'esprit est celle du grand nœud noir. Ce stéréotype a été développé et renforcé par les intellectuels qui ont documenté et préservé ces modes en voie de disparition. La survivance de ce costume folklorique cache cependant la transformation qu'ont connue les habits régionaux, sous l'influence des vêtements portés en ville. Cet article étudie le costume rural en Alsace pour mieux comprendre comment s'est réalisée la transition des vêtements régionaux en vêtements dont le style était plus conforme à celui des villes. Pour ce faire, il utilise une variété de sources, y compris les actes notariés, les vêtements préservés dans les collections des musées, et les photographies de mariages et d'autres cérémonies religieuses.

'Glocalization' as a Key to the Interplay between Christianity and Asian Cultures: The Vision of Francis Wei in Early Twentieth Century China

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Tze Ming Ng
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
World Christianity ◽  
Henry Luce ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article aims to apply the concept of 'glocalization' to the study of theology and culture. China is chosen as a case study, with particular focus on a Chinese theologians discussion of the interplay between Christianity and Chinese Culture in the early twentieth century China. Francis Wei was the first Chinese President of Huazhong University in Wuhan, 1929–1952, and he was appointed as the first Henry Luce Visiting Professor of World Christianity in 1945–46. Wei's conviction was that Christianity and Chinese culture could be complementary. He held that China needed Christianity for a better understanding of God's nature and the way human beings could communicate with God, while maintaining that Christianity needed China to move beyond western denominationalism. Moreover, Christianity could not become a universal religion without including China. This article argues that Wei's work is relevant to the contemporary discussion about interaction between globalization and localization, known as 'glocalization'.

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