Dafora, Asadata (1890--1965)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takiyah Nur Amin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
African Dance ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Cultural Themes ◽  
Cultural Aesthetics

Multidisciplinary artist Asadata Dafora (also known as Austin Asadata Dafora Horton) was widely known for his contributions to dance as well as for the propagation of African drumming and cultural aesthetics across the United States. As a composer, librettist, singer, choreographer, and dancer, Dafora built a formidable career during the Great Depression, creating full-length operatic works using African drumming, instrumentation, dance styles, and cultural themes. His groundbreaking work Kykunkor (1934), based on Mende folklore, employed authentic African dance, music, language and a predominantly African-born cast and ran for months to increasingly larger audiences in New York. In 1960 he returned to Sierra Leone to serve as Director of Culture, and after his return to the United States two years later, he turned over the leadership of his company to Esther Rolle. As one of the first artists to introduce authentic African dance and music to American audiences, Dafora became a pioneer of black concert dance.

Design Piracy in the Fashion Industries of Paris and New York in the Interwar Years

2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique Pouillard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fashion Design ◽  
National Interests ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
American Fashion ◽  
Fashion Designers

During the Great Depression, counterfeiters of the newest styles posed a challenge to the high-fashion designers who dominated Parisian design. Meanwhile, New York, traditionally the destination of the first corporate buyers of Paris couture, became a potential contender for the role of fashion capital. Scrutiny of French and American laws reveals that strong national interests were at stake in the fashion business. In France, the law safeguarded copyrights of fashion design while, in the United States, legislators denied such protection to American fashion.

War and the Next Lesson

Money ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Great Depression

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.

Our Daily Bread: ‘Cooperation’, ‘Independence’ and Politics in Mid-1930s Cinema

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Neve
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cooperative Activity ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter revisits and explores the production history of director King Vidor’s independently made movie, Our Daily Bread (1934), its ideological and aesthetic motifs, and its exhibition and reception in the United States and beyond, not least its apparent failure at the box office. It further considers the relationship between the film and contemporary advocacy of cooperative activity as a response to the Great Depression, notably by the California Cooperative League, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California campaign for the state governorship. It also assesses the movie in relation to Vidor’s own cooperative vision through its emphasis on individuals and community as a solution to the Great Depression and the significant absence of the state in this agency.

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