scholarly journals Opera Production in Ireland: No Place for Politics?

Author(s):  
Áine Sheil

Opera has a history of just over four hundred years and a markedly finite canon in comparison with spoken theatre. The repertory has expanded very little in the past half-century, and this means that renewal is largely achieved through direction and design. In continental European theatres, and in Germany in particular, operas constantly acquire new layers of meaning in production, and are often staged as political statements. In Ireland, this type of ‘director’s theatre’ is rare. Irish companies seldom see opera as a vehicle for clear ideological statements, and productions often shy away from the political potential of opera texts. Drawing on theatre, opera and performance theory by Keir Elam, David J. Levin and Jon McKenzie among others, this article takes four recent Irish opera productions as case studies and argues that even apparently apolitical opera is inevitably shaped by politics.

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Josh Sides

California—simultaneously celebrated and reviled for its fabled sexual tolerance for the past half-century—has pioneered the use of sexual propositions, ballot initiatives designed to either expand the scope of “obscenity” censorship or to suppress the rights and aspirations of homosexuals. Viewed through the prism of the sexual propositions, the political landscape of California looks quite different than we generally imagine. This article examines the history of these propositions, their financial backers, and the politicians involved with them, including E. Richard Barnes’s Proposition 16, John Briggs’s Proposition 6 (The Briggs Initiative), and William J. “Pete” Knight’s Proposition 22.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.


1988 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Sivin

Sinology and the history of science have changed practically beyond recognition in the past half-century. Both have become academic specialisms, with their own departments, journals, and professional societies. Both have moved off in new directions, drawing on the tools and insights of several disciplines. Although some sinologists still honor no ambition beyond explicating primary texts, on many of the field's frontiers philology is no more than a tool. Similarly, many technical historians now explore issues for which anthropology or systems analysis is as indispensable as traditional historiography.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard M. Wachtel

Fifty years on, the Review of Radical Political Economics ( RRPE) lives on against the odds that such a quixotic 1968 adventure could survive for half a century. As the first managing editor of the RRPE and one of the founders of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE), I have compiled a history of the first five years of the journal and the organization. This retrospective is primarily based on archival research, supplemented by my recollections. It concludes with some thoughts on how URPE and the RRPE affected the study and uses of economics in the past half century.


2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-4
Author(s):  
Judith T. Sowder

The beginning of a new year as well as the threshold of a new century and a new millennium seem appropriate times to take stock of where we have been and where we are going as a mathematics education research community. We have accomplished a great deal in the past half century of our existence, and I for one look forward to reading the forthcoming book on the history of mathematics education, edited by Jeremy Kilpatrick and George Stanic. That book will review for us our progress thus far, but what are the challenges we now face? This question will be addressed in various ways at various gatherings in the coming year, and new agendas will result from those discussions.


Author(s):  
Reinhard Müller

This essay examines the nature of pentateuchal redaction, the various positions that scholars have taken on it across the history of modern biblical studies, and the ways that these theories contribute to larger theories of compositional history. It highlights the manner in which redactional theories have been especially productive among continental European scholars over the past half-century. The essay concludes with a consideration of external, empirical evidence for redaction, especially among the Persian and Hellenistic period witnesses to the Pentateuch.


2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-254
Author(s):  
Susan Schroeder

Over the course of the past half century, the field of colonial Latin American history has been greatly enriched by the contributions of Father Stafford Poole. He has written 14 books and 84 articles and book chapters and has readily shared his knowledge at coundess symposia and other scholarly forums. Renowned as a historian, he was also a seminary administrator and professor of history in Missouri and California. Moreover, his background and formation are surely unique among priests in the United States and his story is certainly worth the telling.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 157-169
Author(s):  
James C. Henriques

Summary Very likely due to its modest nature, the Cosa Mithraeum has been mentioned in scholarly publications only four times – each in passing – since its discovery in 1954. This sparse attention, restricted solely to literature on Cosa, has meant that the mithraeum is well-known among those intimately familiar with the colony, but has languished in complete obscurity among Mithraic scholars for the past half century. In addition to bringing the Cosa Mithraeum to the attention of a wider audience, this article also argues for a re-evaluation of the most recent dating of the mithraeum. Recent advances in scholarship on mithraea at Ostia give ample reason to suggest that the original date for the Cosa Mithraeum might be more accurate than later interpreters have assumed. Furthermore, the ongoing excavations of Cosa's bath complex, conducted by Florida State University, Bryn Mawr College, and Tübingen University have revealed a city that was still quite active during the 2nd century CE. In light of these developments, this article is an overdue study of the Cosa Mithraeum and its role in the history of the colony.


Author(s):  
John L. Brooke

The twenty-five-year political history of the early American republic, covering the period from the first federal election through the War of 1812, critically shaped the terms and path of American politics over the ensuing two centuries. During this time the United States emerged from the volatility of revolutionary politics to establish the bipolar party structure that has dominated the American political landscape ever since. The central ideological debate over the power of the national government was shaped by classical understandings of politics and by powerfully contested interests. This essay begins with a short chronological summary of the politics of the period, and then turns to the five broad frameworks that historians of the politics of the early republic have addressed over the past half-century: party structure, republican ideology, political culture, slavery, and state-formation.


2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-196
Author(s):  
Ann M. Lesch

Yezid Sayigh's encylopedic history focuses on the role that the idea of armed struggle played in the Palestinian national movement as it evolved over the past half-century. His central thesis is that “armed struggle provided the political impulse and organisational dynamic in the evolution of Palestinian national identity and in the formation of parastatal institutions and a bureaucratic elite, the nucleus of government” (p. vii). The concept of armed struggle reforged Palestinian national identity, mobilized Palestinians, provided political legitimization to the Palestinian movement, made the Palestinians a distinct political actor in relation to the Arab states, helped to create institutions that could form the basis of a government, and established a well-defined political elite. Thus, even though Palestinian leaders never transformed the armed struggle into a people's war along the lines of Algeria or Vietnam, and never liberated any part of Palestine by force, armed struggle served other important, statist functions.


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