scholarly journals The Myths of Haji Firuz

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Beeta Baghoolizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Spring Equinox ◽  
History Of ◽  
Blackface Performance

Every year, around the arrival of the Spring equinox, Iranians in Iran and in diaspora will recognize a minstrel named Haji Firuz with his Nowruz jingle. The inclusion of Haji Firuz during Nowruz festivities has been questioned and challenged for decades; where some will point out his connections to anti-Blackness, others will defend Haji Firuz, arguing that his face is only covered in soot from fires also associated with the holiday. This article contextualizes these arguments as a part of a larger discourse of denying racism in Iran and, more poignantly, erasing Iran’s history of slavery altogether. This article addresses the consequences and pitfalls of defending Haji Firuz’s blackface performance, and its implications for the broader Iranian community.

Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture. Edited by W. T. Lhamon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003; pp. 459. $39.95 cloth.

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-335
Author(s):  
Kate Roark
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Performance Texts ◽  
Blackface Performance

As the first published collection of early blackface-performance texts, W. T. Lhamon's Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture provides scholars of American popular entertainment with a much-needed sourcebook. These texts are collected in service of the book's larger purpose of evaluating the career of Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, the first superstar of blackface performance, who became synonymous with his most popular character, Jim Crow. All the songs and plays gathered in Jump Jim Crow were performed by Rice (with the exception of the “street prose” section, which includes two contemporary, pamphlet biographies of Rice). The texts work with Lhamon's introduction to tell the story of Rice's career, which is a case study of the larger topic: the history of blackface performance before the rise of the minstrel show in the mid-1840s. As the plays collected here reveal, Rice's performance of blackface was fundamentally different from minstrel-show performance on many levels. The most important difference, Lhamon argues in his introduction, is that Rice's performances encouraged the white audience to identify with his blackface character, to laugh with him rather than at him.

scholarly journals Seasonal regulation of reproduction: altered role of melatonin under naturalistic conditions in hamsters

2010 ◽  
Vol 277 (1695) ◽  
pp. 2867-2874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew P. Butler ◽  
Kevin W. Turner ◽  
Jin Ho Park ◽  
Elanor E. Schoomer ◽  
Irving Zucker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Body Weight ◽  
Day Length ◽  
Seasonal Transition ◽  
Siberian Hamsters ◽  
Long Day ◽  
Spring Equinox ◽  
Natural Photoperiod ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seasonal Regulation

The seasonal reproductive cycle of photoperiodic rodents is conceptualized as a series of discrete melatonin-dependent neuroendocrine transitions. Least understood is the springtime restoration of responsiveness to winter-like melatonin signals (breaking of refractoriness) that enables animals to once again respond appropriately to winter photoperiods the following year. This has been posited to require many weeks of long days based on studies employing static photoperiods instead of the annual pattern of continually changing photoperiods under which these mechanisms evolved. Maintaining Siberian hamsters under simulated natural photoperiods, we demonstrate that winter refractoriness is broken within six weeks after the spring equinox. We then test whether a history of natural photoperiod exposure can eliminate the requirement for long-day melatonin signalling. Hamsters pinealectomized at the spring equinox and challenged 10 weeks later with winter melatonin infusions exhibited gonadal regression, indicating that refractoriness was broken. A photostimulatory effect on body weight is first observed in the last four weeks of winter. Thus, the seasonal transition to the summer photosensitive phenotype is triggered prior to the equinox without exposure to long days and is thereafter melatonin-independent. Distinctions between photoperiodic and circannual seasonal organization erode with the incorporation in the laboratory of ecologically relevant day length conditions.

scholarly journals Antinomic Comprehension of God in Unity of Transcendent and Immanent Principles in the Leading Religious-Philosophical Systems and Art of the Second Half of the І Millennium ВС — the Beginning of a New Era

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-146
Author(s):  
Yaroslava Bondarchuk
Keyword(s):  
Religious Art ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
New Era ◽  
Concepts Of God ◽  
Religious Worldview ◽  
Spring Equinox ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
First Time

The article aims to trace the antinomic comprehension of God in unity of spiritual transcendent and material immanent principles in the major religious systems of the second half of the 1st millennium BC — the beginning of a new era and the reflection of this process in the art of that time based on analyzing religious texts, theological and philosophical treatises of the main monotheistic and polytheistic religious worldview ideas and ways of their embodiment. The study showed that the universal idea of religious systems (Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity) of the indicated period is the idea of embodying the highest spiritual Absolut into a natural anthropomorphic form. In most leading religions of the time (except for Judaism) this interpretation of God became the basis for the development of religious art. For the first time, a comparison of concepts of God in the leading religious-philosophical systems of the researched period was made. Such an interpretation of the deity has been shown to be manifested in religious art, which confirms its worldview subordination. It was hypothesized that the antinomic comprehension of God in the unity of transcendent and immanent principles in the leading religious systems formed at the turn of the millennia determined that the dominant zodiacal Pisces constellation, in which the Sun was rising on the day of the spring equinox, was characterized as a sign of the unity of antinomies. This article may be used for further research, for the courses of lectures in the history of world culture.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document