scholarly journals “‘From Our Lips:’ Lipstick as Consumer Technology and the MAC VIVA GLAM Advertising Campaigns”

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Benoit
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Safe Sex ◽  
Heterosexual Women ◽  
Cultural Mores ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Meaning And Function ◽  
Lady Gaga

Lipstick has remained a stable technology for over five thousand years, while influenced by social and cultural mores, and ideas about sexuality, gender and class. This is particularly evident in the twentieth century since lipstick has become a consumer technology, as evidenced by the fundraising lipstick VIVA GLAM. Made by the originally Canadian brand MAC Cosmetics, sales of VIVA GLAM generate funds for the brand's own AIDS charity, the MAC AIDS Fund. VIVA GLAM’s advertising was initially controversial because it featured drag performer RuPaul in 1995 and Canadian crooner k. d. lang in 1997. More recently, VIVA GLAM’s advertising has featured singers Cyndi Lauper and Lady Gaga and promoted safe sex behaviours amongst young heterosexual women. Lipstick’s meaning and function continues to adapt to its historical circumstances, particularly around gender norms, and VIVA GLAM is a new chapter in this cultural history of lipstick as a consumer technology.

The Art of Love Poetry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gray
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Love Poetry ◽  
Erotic Love ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Meaning And Function ◽  
Comprehensive History

Love begets poetry; poetry begets love. These two propositions have seemed evident to thinkers and poets across the Western literary tradition. Plato writes that “anyone that love touches instantly becomes a poet.” And even today, when poetry has largely disappeared from the mainstream of popular culture, it retains its romantic associations. But why should this be so—what are the connections between poetry and erotic love that lead us to associate them so strongly with one another? An examination of different theories of both love and poetry across the centuries reveals that the connection between them is not merely an accident of cultural history—the result of our having grown up hearing, or hearing about, love poetry—but something more intrinsic. Even as definitions of them have changed, the two phenomena have consistently been described in parallel terms. Love is characterized by paradox. Above all, it is both necessarily public, because interpersonal, and intensely private; hence it both requires expression and resists it. In poetry, especially lyric poetry, which features its own characteristic paradoxes and silences, love finds a natural outlet. This study considers both the theories and the love poems themselves, bringing together a wide range of examples from different eras in order to examine the major structures that love and poetry share. It does not aim to be a comprehensive history of Western love poetry, but an investigation into the meaning and function of recurrent tropes, forms, and images employed by poets to express and describe erotic love.

Dualism or Paradox? A New ‘Light’ on the Gospel of John

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-118
Author(s):  
Douglas Estes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Communicative Strategy ◽  
And Function ◽  
Meaning And Function

Abstract Modern scholarship maintains the Gospel of John is dualistic. This view is uneasily held as there is a growing move to distance the gospel from the original history-of-religions concept of dualism that reached its peak in the mid-twentieth century with expectations of incipient Gnosticism in John. Instead of further nuancing the dualistic-sounding ideas in John, this essay challenges directly the claim that John is dualistic—and it proposes that what is often understood to be a dualistic metaphysic is actually paradoxical language as part of the Gospel’s oral and literary language games. Starting with a survey of how dualism entered into the scholarly purview of John, the essay then turns to the meaning and function of paradox in the ancient world. Since scholars point to John’s ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ imagery as the most prominent example of dualism, this essay uses the paradox language of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ as a test case to demonstrate how paradox, and not dualism, is a more accurate and historical descriptor for John’s communicative strategy.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Television Film ◽  
Popular Image

The introductory chapter discusses the popular image of the ‘Romantic mad poet’ in television, film, theatre, fiction, the history of literary criticism, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century and its countercultures, including anti-psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Existing literary-historical work on related topics is assessed, before the introduction goes on to suggest why some problems or difficulties in writing about this subject might be productive for further cultural history. The introduction also considers at length the legacy of Michel Foucault’s Folie et Déraison (1961), and the continued viability of Foucauldian methods and concepts for examining literary-cultural representations of madness after the half-century of critiques and controversies following that book’s publication. Methodological discussion both draws on and critiques the models of historical sociology used by George Becker and Sander L. Gilman to discuss genius, madness, deviance, and stereotype in the nineteenth century. A note on terminology concludes the introduction.

BANDITS, ELVIS, AND OTHER MYSTICS: An Interview with Paul Vanderwood

2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-592
Author(s):  
Eric Van Young
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
San Diego ◽  
Professor Emeritus ◽  
The Political ◽  
State University ◽  
History Of ◽  
San Diego State University ◽  
Power Of God

Paul Vanderwood, Professor Emeritus of History at San Diego State University, died in San Diego onOctober 10, 2011, at the age of 82. A distinguished and innovative historian of modern Mexico, Vanderwood authored or co-authored several books, mostly dealing with the political, social, and cultural history of Mexico between about 1860 and the mid-twentieth century. The four works for which he is best known are Disorder and Progress (1982), The Power of God Against the Guns ofGovernment (1998), Juan Soldado (2004), and Satan's Playground (2010), and they are discussed extensively in this interview.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Soviet Authority ◽  
Close Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Meaning And Function ◽  
Single Locality ◽  
Karaganda Region

This chapter first sets out the book's purpose, namely to explore the role played by the Gulag in the Soviet polity. It provides a close study of the camps and exiles in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan along with a general reconsideration of the scope, meaning, and function of the Gulag in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. Focusing on Karaganda offers a number of benefits to an examination of the history of the Gulag. First, a concentrated look at a single locality allows for a study of the massive phenomenon of the Gulag without giving up the chronological breadth that is important to understanding shifts in its operations through the period (approximately 1930–57) when it was at its height. Second, exploring the Gulag at the local level reveals the operation of the system at the very point of contact between Soviet authority and its detained subjects. The chapter then describes the sources upon which the book is based, followed by an overview of the subsequent chapters.

On the Heels of Juan Moreira: Lessons for the Cultural History of Reading

PMLA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-163
Author(s):  
William G. Acree
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South America ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Real Life ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Río De La Plata ◽  
The Real ◽  
La Plata ◽  
History Of

Between November 1879 and January 1880, the argentine author Eduardo Gutierrez published a serialized narrative of the life of Juan Moreira in the Buenos Aires newspaper La Patria Argentina. Titled simply Juan Moreira, the heroic tale of the real-life outlaw went like this: Moreira was a good gaucho gone bad, who fought to preserve his honor against the backdrop of modernizing forces that were transforming life in this part of South America. His string of crimes and ultimate downfall resulted from his unjust persecution by corrupt state officials. The success of the serial surpassed all expectations. The paper's sales skyrocketed, and the melodramatic narrative soon appeared in book form. Enterprising printers produced tens of thousands of authorized and pirated editions to sell in the Rio de la Plata (Argentina and Uruguay), making Juan Moreira a leading example of everyday reading for the region's rapidly growing literate population and one of Latin America's pre-twentieth-century bestsellers (Acree, Everyday Reading; Gutiérrez, The Gaucho Juan Moreira).

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