scholarly journals THE 1951 DIPLOMATIC GIFT: THE ROLE OF A GERMAN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY HANUKKAH LAMP IN ISRAELI-AMERICAN RELATIONS

ARTis ON ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 67-77
Author(s):  
Shir Kochavi
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
The Gift ◽  
History Of

A diplomatic gift in the form of a Hanukkah Lamp, given to President Harry Truman by the Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion in 1951 was selected for this occasion by museum personnel from the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem and the Jewish Museum in New York. Based on primary sources found in archives in Israel and in the United States, this case study investigates the process of objects exchange between two museums, orchestrated on the basis of an existing collegial relationship, and illustrates how the Hanukkah Lamp becomes more than itself and signifies both the history of the Jewish people and the mutual obligations between the two nations. Drawing on the theories of Marcel Mauss, Arjun Appadurai, and Igor Kopytoff on the notion of the gift, the article highlights the layers of meanings attributed to a gifted object.

“The Principal Russian Church in America”: from the History of Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the City of New York

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Vladimir Pechatnov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ministry Of Finance ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Foreign Ministry ◽  
The City

Based on previously unearthed documents from the Russia’s State Historical Archive and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire the article explores the history of the first Russian Orthodox parish in New York City and construction of Saint-Nickolas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the city. It was a protracted and complicated interagency process that involved Russian Orthodox mission in the United States, Russia’s Foreign Ministry and its missions in the United States, the Holy Governing Synod, Russia’s Ministry of Finance and the State Council. The principal actors were the bishops Nicholas (Ziorov) and especially Tikhon (Bellavin), Ober-Prosecutor of the Holy Governing Synod Konstantine Pobedonostsev and Reverend Alexander Khotovitsky. This case study of the Cathedral history reveals an interaction of ecclesiastical and civil authorities in which private and civic initiative was combined with strict bureaucratic rules and procedures.

scholarly journals The Gilded Interior: French Style and American Renaissance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Laura C. Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Interior Decoration ◽  
Architectural Tradition

ABSTRACT In the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, New York was seized by a passion for things French in interior decoration. The influx of French eighteenth-century decorative arts from London and Paris exerted a powerful influence over the imaginations of a new millionaire class, while the emergence of the professional dealer-decorator established channels for the incorporation of these materials into the luxury residence. While these interiors were developed in collaboration with leading US architects such as Richard Morris Hunt and George B. Post, they also posed a subtle challenge to the discourse of intellectualism developed on architects’ behalf. Governed by issues of taste and commerce as well as by artistic judgement, these French interiors presented a compelling vision of aristocratic stature that was at once in keeping, and in conflict, with the aspirations of an American Renaissance. This article considers the role of eighteenth-century French-style interiors in the articulation of a ‘civilised’ architectural tradition in the United States during the so-called Gilded Age. Focusing on the private mansion, it reconsiders the notion of the American Renaissance as a principally academic movement by calling attention to the ways in which it also responded to the requirements of the elite class as well as the commercial marketplace.

“The Hora Staccato in Swing!”: Jascha Heifetz's Musical Eclecticism and the Adaptation of Violin Miniatures

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-431
Author(s):  
JOSHUA S. WALDEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Tin Pan Alley ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
History Of

AbstractJascha Heifetz (1901–87) promoted a modern brand of musical eclecticism, recording, performing, and editing adaptations of folk and popular songs while remaining dedicated to the standard violin repertoire and the compositions of his contemporaries. This essay examines the complex influences of his displacement from Eastern Europe and assimilation to the culture of the United States on both the hybridity of his repertoire and the critical reception he received in his new home. It takes as its case study Heifetz's composition of the virtuosic showpiece “Hora Staccato,” based on a Romany violin performance he heard in Bucharest, and his later adaptation of the music into an American swing hit he titled “Hora Swing-cato.” Finally, the essay turns to the field of popular song to consider how two of the works Heifetz performed most frequently were adapted for New York Yiddish radio as Tin Pan Alley–style songs whose lyrics narrate the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. The performance and arrangement history of many of Heifetz's miniatures reveals the multivalent ways in which works in his repertoire, and for some listeners Heifetz himself, were reinterpreted, adapted, and assimilated into American culture.

The Not-So-Strange Birth of the Modern American State: A Comment on James A. Henretta's “Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America”

2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Novak
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

James Henretta's “Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America” takes up one of the most interesting and important interpretive questions in the history of American political economy. What explains the dramatic transformation in liberal ideology and governance between 1877 and 1937 that carried the United States from laissez-faire constitutionalism to New Deal statism, from classical liberalism to democratic social-welfarism? That question has preoccupied legions of historians, political-economists, and legal scholars (as well as politicians and ideologues) at least since Hughes himself opened the October 1935 Term of the U.S. Supreme Court in a brand new building and amid a rising chorus of constitutional criticism. Henretta, wisely in my opinion, looks to law, particularly public law, for new insights into that great transformation. But, of course, the challenge in using legal history to answer such a question is the enormous increase in the actual policy output of courts, legislatures, and administrative agencies in this period. Trying to synthesize the complex changes in “law-in-action” in the fiercely contested forums of turn-of-the-century America sometimes seems the historical-sociological equivalent of attempting to empty the sea with a slotted spoon. Like any good social scientist, Henretta responds to the impossibility of surveying the whole by taking a sample. Through a case-study of the ideas, political reforms, and legal opinions of Charles Evans Hughes, particularly as governor of New York and associate and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Henretta offers us in microcosm the story of the revolution (or rather several revolutions) in modern American governance.

Performing Prestige

2013 ◽  
pp. 619-638
Author(s):  
Nathan Platte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Silent Films ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Short Films ◽  
History Of ◽  
Orchestral Scores

This chaptertraces the history of orchestral music in silent films in the United States during the period from 1910 to 1958. It provides a case study of short films of symphonic performances from the 1950s to illustrate the role of the orchestra not only in the cinema but also more broadly in American culture. It suggests that while orchestral scores continue to play an important role in certain genres of American cinema, they no longer characterize a particular theater’s exhibition style or studio’s soundtrack.

Handcraft as urban intervention: In recognition of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Sewing Society

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 175-186
Author(s):  
Hinda Mandell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Urban Intervention ◽  
Parking Lot ◽  
History Of

In 1851, in Rochester, New York, a group of nineteen women banded together as the founding members of an anti-slavery group in order to support the work of the abolitionist, writer, orator and newspaper publisher, Frederick Douglass. They were the benefactors of Frederick Douglass, himself regarded as the founder of the twentieth-century Civil Rights movement. They called themselves the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, although they dropped ‘Sewing’ from their group’s name in 1855. Yet the fact that ‘Sewing’ was included in the original name of this reformist group indicates the foundational role of craft not only as a guiding activity, but also as a key activist mechanism to abolish the institution of slavery. This article explains how a contemporary craft intervention in downtown Rochester, New York, involving 400 swatches contributed from across the United States, sought to honour and reclaim the history of this social-reformist group, at Corinthian Hall, the physical location where they held their abolitionist fundraising bazaars in the nineteenth century. That building is now a parking lot in the heart of central Rochester. Ultimately, yarn is argued to be a social-action tool to help reverse historic erasure in a crowded urban environment.

30. Abortion and the fall of midwifery in 19th Century North America

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
C. Schram
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
North America ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Social Views ◽  
The 19Th Century

The 19th Century in North America was a time of many social and scientific changes that impacted the field of medicine. A result of one such change was the medicalization of childbirth, as the primary care of women during labour shifted from midwives to physicians. While there is ample discourse on the many factors that contributed to this shift, there is very little discussion on the role played by abortion. Studying abortion in the 19th Century is often limited by a paucity of primary sources from the physicians who performed abortions and women who obtained them. Although most authors who discuss the midwifery shift do not make any mention of a role played by the issue of abortion, it has been addressed and supported by primary sources. This raises the question, why is abortion not discussed in histories on the medicalization of childbirth by other authors? The objectives of this paper are historical and histographic. First, it will present the evidence on the use of abortion as a political tool employed by some policy makers, physicians and the media to discourage women from choosing midwives for their childbirth care. Second, it will analyze possible reasons why this topic is not addressed by the majority of historians of childbirth in 19th Century North America. Are the authors concerned about the varying social views of abortion, the associated politics, the lack of primary sources, or are they personally uncomfortable with the subject? Only the authors themselves can truly know their reasons for neglecting the subject of abortion in their work, but this analysis will show how issues that influence historians determine the version of the past that is produced and propagated into the present and the future. Borst CG. Catching Babies: the Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. Bourgeault B, Davis-Floyd R, eds. Reconceiving Midwifery. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Dodd DE, Gorham D, eds. Caring and Curing: Historical Perspectives on Women and Healing in Canada. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1994. Wertz DC, Wertz RW. Lying In; a History of Childbirth in America (expanded edition published 1989 by Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz) New York: Free Press; London: Macmillan, 1977. Reagan LJ. Linking midwives and abortion in the Progressive Era. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1995; 69(4):569-98. Reagan LJ. When Abortion Was a Crime, Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. London: University of California Press, 1997.

scholarly journals Devotion, Paintings, and the House: The Collections of Ercole and Giuseppe Branciforti, Princes of Scordia (Palermo, 1687–1720)

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Valeria Viola
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Structural Nature

This paper interrogates familial devotion and its relationship with parts of the house other than the chapel. In detail, it aims to problematize the issue of the devotional/non-devotional use of paintings inside the house by moving the focus from this dual opposition to the active role of canvases, broadly defined. Informed by Jacques Derrida’s and Pierre Bourdieu’s writings, this paper argues for the structural nature of the paintings inside the house and their meaningful correlation with both the arrangement of the domestic interior and the practices of people experiencing those spaces. To do this, the paper challenges the overwhelming attention paid by early-modern scholars to Northern and central Italy and investigates a precise case study, i.e., Palazzo Scordia in Palermo (Sicily). The research draws upon primary sources and amongst these, upon two detailed inventories of furniture referring to two subsequent generations of an aristocratic clan residing in Palermo between the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, i.e., Ercole and Giuseppe Branciforti, princes of Scordia.

scholarly journals Philomaths, Herschel, and the myth of the self-taught man

2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Winterburn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
University Education ◽  
Learning Science ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
William Herschel ◽  
Practice Of Science

The role of technicians and background characters in the historical practice of science is slowly gaining recognition. This paper looks at the collective effort involved in learning science, using as my case study the eighteenth-century musician turned astronomer, William Herschel. Lacking a university education, Herschel, like many contemporaries, presented himself as self-taught, thereby hiding his engagement with a rich network of didactic resources. Placing Herschel's story within the history of pedagogy, I argue that this network, previously discussed only in the context of popular or marketplace science, was an important resource for science education at its highest level.

The Role of the Anak Raja in Malay History: A Case Study from Eighteenth-Century Kedah

1976 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Watson Andaya
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Shifting Balance ◽  
History Of

The history of the Malay world in the eighteenth century is characterised by a constantly shifting balance of power, extreme flexibility in the political patterns, and an ongoing search for strong friends and advantageous allies. Malay and European sources relating to the period contain an often overwhelming amount of information concerning seemingly endless conspiracies, broken treaties, negotiations, and re-alignments. Yet from this maze of detail distinct themes emerge, one of which concerns the activities of various Malay anak raja (sons of kings and pirates) and anak baik (sons of nobles). Existing material allows for the compilation of a number of interesting biographies. We can, for instance, follow the career of Perak's Raja 'Alim, who might have successfully unseated his cousin and become ruler himself had it not been for Dutch intervention. The wandering life led by a Siak prince, Raja Ismail, and his unceasing efforts to rally support for a triumphant return to his homeland are similarly described in both Malay chronicles and the missives of Dutch governors. Such accounts make for absorbing reading and undoubtedly have their own intrinsic historical value. On the other hand, it is perhaps more fruitful to regard anak raja like Raja 'Alim and Raja Ismail not so much as individuals as representatives of a distinct social category within what has been called the “ruling class.” If viewed in this light, the activities of many anak raja mentioned in the records take on a new dimension, and comments concerning their role in Malay history assume a wider application.

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