scholarly journals A Community of Many Worlds

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-110
Author(s):  
Vincent F. Biondo III

This edited collection complemented a March 2001 museum exhibit and isbased upon a February 2000 Columbia University conference and a threeyearFord Foundation-sponsored research project. It provides a generaloverview of the history and diversity of Arab Americans in New York Cityand is particularly strong in the area of the arts, featuring several chapters onliterature and music, including several first-person narratives. This two-partbook, which surveys both the historical and the contemporary scenes, isfurther enhanced by forty black-and-white photographs, including thirteenby Empire State College’s Mel Rosenthal.New York contains the third largest Arab-American community, afterDearborn (Michigan) and Los Angeles. In the first chapter, Alixa Naffexplains that the community was formed around 1895, when Christian missionaries in Syria encouraged Arab Christians near Mount Lebanon to workin New York for a couple of years to make money for their families. Syrianand Lebanese immigrants initially gathered at Washington Street in LowerManhattan and soon moved to Atlantic Avenue in the South Ferry portion ofBrooklyn. From 1899-1910, 56,909 Syrian immigrants arrived in New York.In the book’s first part, two historical chapters are followed by entrieson literature, music, photography, and first-person accounts. Philip Kayalpoints out that Arab-American is a cultural and ethnic – but not a religious– category, for most Arab Americans are Christian, not Muslim. JonathanFriedlander reveals that the first Arab-American immigrant, AntonioBishallany, visited from Lebanon in 1854 to gather evangelical teachings foruse back home. This four-page and six-photograph entry on representationsin historical archives could be expanded into a larger work ...

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-251
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob

The Marxists had it right all along, they just got tripped up by their materialism. Early modern capitalism opened vast new worlds, particularly in the arts and sciences, only the traffic went both ways. Creative agents invented new markets and pushed commerce in directions that favored enterprises immensely cosmopolitan and innovative, often solely for the sake of beauty and display. Commerce offered a context but the nobility, and not an imagined bourgeoisie, had the edge when it came to exploiting the market for objets. Paintings could be traded for property, land, and houses. Princes could sponsor natural philosophers, and the fluidity in values meant that good investors, like good practitioners of the arts and sciences, took an interest in all aspects of learning. The interrelatedness of the representational arts and natural philosophy stands as one of the central themes in this tightly integrated collection of essays. We now have a vast historiography telling us that we should no longer teach early modern science without reference to the art of the time, and vice-versa. The point is beautifully illustrated by an exhibition recently held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (spring 2002) on the art of Pieter Saenredam. Working in Utrecht in the 1630s, he used geometry to regularize and make precise the angles and corners found in the exquisite paintings he made of the city's churches. He knew as much about geometry as he did about chiaroscuro. At precisely the same moment, an hour or two away by barge, Descartes in Leiden put the final touches on his Discourse on Method (1637). In effect he explained to the world why precision and clarity of thought made possible the kind of beauty that Saenredam's paintings would come to embody.



Tempo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (251) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Alona Keren-Sagee

Joseph Schillinger (1895–1943), the eminent Russian-American music theorist, teacher and composer, emigrated to the United States in 1928, after having served in high positions in some of the major music institutions in the Ukraine, Khar'kov, Moscow, and Leningrad. He settled in New York, where he taught music, mathematics, art history, and his theory of rhythmic design at the New School for Social Research, New York University, and the Teachers College of Columbia University. He formulated a philosophical and practical system of music theory based on mathematics, and became a celebrated teacher of prominent composers and radio musicians. Schillinger's writings include: Kaleidophone: New Resources of Melody and Harmony (New York: M. Witmark, 1940; New York: Charles Colin, 1976); Schillinger System of Musical Composition, 2 vols. (New York: Carl Fischer, 1946; New York: Da Capo Press, 1977); Mathematical Basis of the Arts (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948; New York: Da Capo Press, 1976); Encyclopedia of Rhythms (New York: Charles Colin, 1966; New York: Da Capo Press, 1976).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document