Introduction

Édith Piaf ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
David Looseley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Alternative Mode ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon

This chapter introduces the question of Piaf’s meanings 100 years after her birth. It discusses the problematic nature of Piaf’s biography and opts for an alternative mode of analysis defined as cultural history, examining the singer as cultural phenomenon. It briefly surveys the existing literature on Piaf in order to clarify what distinguishes the approach adopted in the book. This approach is characterised as a critical analysis of the Piaf legend and of issues of cultural memory, Frenchness, and the transnational circulation of Piaf’s meanings. It also includes a consideration of the author’s own ethnographic distance.

scholarly journals Review of: Olga Zhukova, An essay on Russian culture: philosophy of history, literature and art. Moscow: “Soglasie” Publisher house, 2019. 588 pages. Hardcover: ISBN 978-5-907038-50-9, € 17

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei Alexeevich Kara-Murza
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Study ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
New Research

AbstractThis book review discusses the new research of the Russian philosopher and cultural study scholar Olga A. Zhukova. What is special about the Russian intellectual movement Russian Europeanism? Zhukova reconstructs the ideas of Russian Europeanism, and she evaluates the approaches of Russian thinkers to national cultural history. The author manages to introduce the reader to current discussions about the specifics of the Russian cultural and philosophical “project” and to propose new approaches for the interpretation of the intellectual and literary heritage of Russia. In addition to offering a critical analysis of Zhukova’s volume, the book review presents this thought provoking monograph as a great piece of scholarly work.

scholarly journals Women in the Qur'an, Traditions and Interpretation

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-270
Author(s):  
Amina Wadud-Muhsin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Informed Reader

It takes a book like Barbara Freyer Stowasser's Women in theQur'an, Traditions and Interpretation to help extricate the compleximages of Muslim women from the gross overgeneralization characteristicof popular western media. Truly understanding that complexityrequires a look at all of the components that make up the Islamic worldview,from its primary sources ideologically to its cultural history as ithas affected the lives of Muslims. Such a look has been offered inStowasser's book.I was very excited by the cross-referential methodology proposed bythe author in her introduction and her actual use of it throughout the text.She moves among Qur'anic passages, earlier tafasir, hadith traditions, aswell as among contenders in modem Islamic discourse: modernists, traditionalists,and fundamentalists (pp. 5-7). As a result, the reader viewsdifferent responses to ideas about specific women from the Qur'anic textwhile knowing precisely the source of certain ideas.This is not the usual diatribe that confuses indiscriminately fact withmythology, intellectual tradition with popular culture, and results in misinformingthe already ill-informed reader. Moreover, Stowasser avoidsthe other popular extreme: diminishing everything to a single factor, suchas gross misogyny, for example. Although she distinguishes between thevarious strains that make up a complex picture, she does not merelyregurgitate the historical legacy but rather offers critical analysis anddemonstrates her capability in deciphering the various components in theinternal Islamic debates as well.Perhaps the complexity of the cross-referential methodology limits thebreadth of the subject matter. We can understand how complex notions ofthe place of Muslim women in society have resulted from these variousreferences, even though we get no hint at what that place is from this work.The characters analyzed are limited to the specific female characters givenindividual attention in the Qur'anic text and to the wives of the Prophet.These models of virtue and .struggle, failure and frustration, can and have ...

scholarly journals Religio-cultural heritage of libation, memory and Obang cultural history, Northwest Cameroon

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix K. Esoh ◽  
Chammah J. Kaunda
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Cultural Resilience ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Northwest Region

This article argues that libation, often associated with the ancestors, artefacts, images and pre-Christian religious devotions, constitutes sources for articulating authentic African cultural history of Obang community in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. It highlights that among traditional memory carriers, the ritual of libation remains trust worthy and pervasive, even among communities challenged by globalisation and colonising effects of Christianity. The article demonstrates the immense potentials of libation as an epitome and stabiliser of cultural memory, and a maxim in cultural resilience in contemporary Africa. Thus, the article calls for revisiting this ancient ritual to expose its potentials as a veritable memory repertoire in cultural–historical studies, especially at a time when social change and modernism continue to challenge the memories of traditional societies.

William Temple’s ‘Sharawadji’ and the poetics of world literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 70-88
Author(s):  
O. I. Polovinkina
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
World Literature ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Augustan Age ◽  
New Tradition

The article examines the ‘active presence’ (D. Damrosch) of the Chinese garden in the literary and cultural history of the English Augustan Age. Special attention is paid to W. Temple’s role as an intermediary in the comprehension of a foreign cultural phenomenon; interpretations of his description of the Chinese garden generated an entirely new tradition in the English literature of the early 18th c. J. Addison identified the Chinese garden with the idea of harmony, making it part and parcel of Neoclassical aesthetics. Pope followed the same logic. In his essay, Castell brings together the classical and the Chinese traditions, where the former does not act as an approving authority, rather it is the Chinese tradition that helps give it a more nuanced description. Quite a few English country homes display a combination of Neoclassical principles and elements of the Chinese garden, the new landscaping style summarized by Pope. Augustans’ Chinese garden draws on two national worldviews, but just like the world ‘sharawadji’ introduced byTemple, it belongs to the realm of imagination, at the crossroads of languages and cultures, none of which can fully claim it as their own.

A Cultural History of Memory in Antiquity

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Remote Past

The ancient world is a paradigm for the memory scholar. Without an awareness that collective memories are not only different from individual memories (or even the sum thereof) but also highly constructed, ancient research will be fundamentally flawed. Many networks of memories are beautifully represented in the written and material remains of antiquity, and it is precisely the ways in which they are fashioned, distorted, preserved or erased through which we can learn about the historical process as such. Our evidence is deeply characterized by the fact that ancient ‘identity’ and ‘memory’ appear exceptionally strong. Responsible for this is a continuing desire to link the present to the remote past, which creates many contexts in which memories were constructed. The ancient historian therefore has the right tools with which to work: places and objects from the past, monuments and iconography, and textual narratives with a primary purpose to memorize and commemorate. This is paired with our desire to understand the ancient world through its own self-perception. With the opportunity of tapping into this world by way of oral history, personal testimonies are a desideratum in all respects. Memory of the past, however, is profoundly about ‘self-understanding’. This volume surveys and builds on the many insights we have gained from vibrant research in the field since Maurice Halbwachs’ and Jan Assmann’s seminal studies on the idea and definition of ‘cultural memory’. While focusing on specific themes all chapters address the concepts and expressions of memory, and their historical impact and utilization by groups and individuals at specific times and for specific reasons.

Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Falk
Keyword(s):  
Prospect Theory ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Power Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Authorial Intent ◽  
Historical Authenticity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Future Status

This interdisciplinary study of violence in medieval Iceland pursues three intertwined goals. First, it proposes a new cultural history model for understanding violence. The model has three axes: power, signification, and risk. Analysis in instrumental terms, as an attempt to coerce others, focuses on power. Analysis in symbolic terms, as an attempt to manipulate meanings, focuses on signification. Analysis in cognitive terms, as an attempt to exercise agency over imperfectly controlled circumstances, focuses on risk. The axis of risk is the model’s major innovation and is laid out in detail, using insights from prospect theory, edgework, and the calculus of jeopardy. It is shown that violence, which itself generates risks, at the same time also serves to control uncertainties. Second, the book tests this model on a series of case studies from the history of medieval Iceland. It examines how violence shapes present circumstances, future status, and past memories, and how it transforms uncertain reality into socially useful narrative, showing how Icelanders’ feud paradigm blocked the prospects of warfare and state formation, while their idiom of human violence domesticated the natural environment. Third, the book develops the concept of uchronia, the hegemonic ideology of the past, to explain how texts modulate history. Uchronia is a motivated cultural memory which vouches for historical authenticity (regardless of factual reliability), maintains textual autonomy from authorial intent, and secures a fit between present society and its own past. In medieval Iceland, as often elsewhere, violence played a key role in the making of uchronia

scholarly journals Decolonising African vernacular rooted sculptures of selected contemporary Nigerian and South African artists

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sule James
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
South African ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
African Art ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Art Practices

I am interested in a decolonial reading of African vernacular rooted sculptures of selected contemporary South African and Nigerian artists and compares them. Although vernacular arts were produced in indigenous or traditional African arts context, there are still several forms of vernacular art practices jostling for space with canonical modes in contemporary art in various African contexts. However, I argue that the contemporary representations of cultural imagery and symbols from indigenous cultures or urban areas in South Africa and Nigeria suggest a different mode of engagement, even though the term vernacular is used to narrate them as a rethink in narrating art practices. Therefore, my paper argues that even though contemporary artists from both countries continue to represent cultural imagery (vernacular) in their artworks, they are not a continuation of traditional African art. I adopt formal analysis, cultural history methodologies for the critical analysis of the works of two South African and two Nigerian artists that were purposively selected and compare the ideas that unfold from the interrogations for a wider continental understanding of contemporary issues and artistic trends.

scholarly journals An ungovernable diversity?

1970 ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Lise Emilie Fosmo Talleraas
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The Subject

This article is based on my Ph.D. thesis, entitled An ungovernable diversity? Norwegian museum politics on the subject of local and regional museums in the period 1900 – ca. 1970 (Umeå 2009). It gives an historical account of the development of local and regional cultural history museums in Norway as a topic in Norwegian cultural policy 1900–1970. It describes how local and regional museums became a subject in Norwegian cultural policy during the twentieth century. In 1900, such institutions amounted to about fifteen. Seventy years later, the number was more than two hundred. The museums appear in this perspective as a cultural phenomenon in their own age, a phenomenon to which the Norwegian Parliament, the Ministry of Education and the museum profession attached both interpretations and conceptions. At the centre of their interest was the need to implement measures to ensure that these museums submitted to the main museums concerning key tasks, such as the preservation of objects of cultural value. It was important for the Parliament to create a policy based on accountability and equal treatment. 

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