scholarly journals Vivos Voco: Herzen's Past, Present, and Future

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Kathleen Frances Parthe
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Twenty First Century

A close reading of the journalism, correspondence, and memoirs of Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) yields a finely tuned relationship to past, present, and future, but not a complete philosophy of history. Herzen described no system, but repeated key metaphors (e.g., the libretto) and concepts (e.g. contingency) that reflected his understanding of the historical process. For Herzen, history became interesting when it was relieved of predetermined plots and algebraic formulas. However much he studied Russia’s past and planned its future, his preference was for the present, where freedom is most fully experienced in debate and in the need to choose a path forward. He understood the instrumentality of history in how the lives of ordinary people were affected, which remained his measure of progress. Herzen was a “historian of the present,” and his insights are remarkably applicable to twenty-first-century Russia.

Is the Pastoral Ministry Bad for One’s Spiritual Health?

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-52
Author(s):  
Eric Sorenson
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Ministry ◽  
Spiritual Health ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Vocational Ministry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
Unique Context

It was a universal conviction among the leaders of the ancient church that vocational ministry is attended by certain spiritual hazards that threaten to undo the very soul of the minister. This notion is revived in William Paley’s 1795 sermon, “Dangers Incidental to the Clerical Character.” The pastoral ministry, he warns, is comprised of “dangers inherent to the very nature of our profession.” In this ordination sermon, Paley not only identifies certain spiritual hazards, but he traces their roots to the unique context and responsibilities of daily ministry. A close reading of Paley’s sermon highlights its clear relevance to ministers in the twenty-first century, who, like all ministers throughout the history of the church, are constantly exposed to the spiritual dangers lurking in ministry itself. Such a close reading also reveals practical means by which today’s minister can be constantly vigilant to overcome these dangers.

Motivating the Twenty-first-Century Student with Oral History

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Whitman
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Life Review ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
First Century ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Training Method ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article focuses on the teaching of oral history in the twenty-first century. The article discusses the importance of educators when it comes to teaching oral history to students. According to this article educators can bring into the classrooms and programs of the twenty-first century a historical process once used by Thucydides to chronicle the Peloponnesian Wars, and use that process to challenge students with learning opportunities. The student-oral historian has many roles to play like preservation, and publication of the past and present for future generations, a revelation that emerges as they consider the variety of oral history projects being conducted at all levels. Classroom oral history projects generally fall into one of two categories: those that focus on individual biographical/life review interviews, and those that deal with a particular period or place following the oral history training method which allows students to understand the challenges associated with oral history as a methodology.

Beware the Lamb: Staging Bach's Passions

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
BETTINA VARWIG
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

AbstractThis article considers the twentieth- and twenty-first-century practice of presenting Johann Sebastian Bach's Passion compositions on stage, in light of recent debates about performativity, presence and liveness. By tracing the history of such stagings from Ferruccio Busoni's plans in the 1920s to contemporary versions by Peter Sellars, Alain Platel, and others, I explore the increasing tendency to turn these canonical works into politically or aesthetically relevant events. Through a close reading of the critical reception of each production, I show how stagings have the capacity to challenge productively our easy familiarity with these pieces outside their initial liturgical setting. Unlike a standard concert presentation, staged performances tend to confront audiences more immediately with the violent imagery and spiritual demands of the Passions, thereby continually renewing the dialogue between Bach's works and later audiences. The article thus offers a contribution to an anthropological enquiry into the present-day cult of Bach and the particular forms of aesthetic pleasure that classical music affords its twenty-first-century devotees.

scholarly journals Visualizing Shame: Menstruation, Graphic Medicine, and the Discourse of Lycanthropy

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sathyaraj Venkatesan ◽  
◽  
Anu Mary Peter ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Biological Process ◽  
First Century ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Graphic Medicine ◽  
Cultural Anxieties ◽  
Twenty First Century

Beyond its medical definition as a natural phenomenon concerning the female body, menstruation is a term that is overburdened with a plethora of distorted cultural and religious meanings. Through the centuries, the biological process of the monthly expulsion of non-pregnant women’s uterus lining is popularly misunderstood as a profane activity. Despite the surplus of awareness measurements to educate masses about menstruation’s biological underpinnings, societal negligence towards women’s incapacitating experiential realities associated with menstruation continues even in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, Paula Knight’s graphic medical memoir on infertility, titled The Facts of Life (2017), offers a distinctive perspective about menstruation through the creative deployment of the lycanthrope metaphor. By depicting her menstruating self as a lone werewolf, Knight offers a compelling representation of menstruating women’s abysmal corporeal and cultural anxieties. By close reading relevant images from Knight’s memoir and drawing theoretical insights from Victoria Louise Newton and Elizabeth El Refaie, this article analyses how graphic medicine necessitates a humane and non-stigmatizing approach to menstruation.

scholarly journals New Approaches to the novel: From Terra Nostra to twitter literature

Co-herencia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 13-23
Author(s):  
Raymond L. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Terra Nostra

This article addresses new approaches to the novel in the twenty-first century. It begins with an affirmation that even the most avant-garde of contemporary critics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century share a commonality: a background in what was identified as “close reading” in the Anglo-American academic world and analyse de texte in French. After numerous declarations in recent decades about the death of the novel, the death of the author and the death of literary criticism, it is evident that the novel as a genre has survived, authors remain a subject of study, and new approaches are possible. The study of trauma in fiction (as introduced by Cathy Caruth and David Aberbach), as well as eco-criticism, are promising new points of departure. The required close reading implied by Twitter also opens up new possibilities.

Race, Gender, and Propriety in Dominican Commemoration

2018 ◽  
pp. 75-110
Author(s):  
Dixa Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
First Century ◽  
Julia Alvarez ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
National Icon ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Dominican Women ◽  
Dominant Narratives

This chapter argues that Salomé Ureña’s canonization through the twentieth century required various forms of ghosting. The first half of the chapter traces her commemoration in sculpture, imagery, and biography to show how her celebration as a national icon relied both on her phenotypical whitening and on the elision of some of the strongest desires expressed in her work. The second half of the chapter examines writings about Ureña by two twenty-first century feminist and diasporic Dominican women writers, Julia Alvarez and Chiqui Vicioso. Through close reading analysis and a black diasporic feminist lens, the chapter proposes that feminist and critical race theories, the increase in Dominican literacy rates, and the growth of a diasporic Dominican community with a different vocabulary of race allow Alvarez’s and Vicioso’s recuperative texts to compete with other dominant narratives. Their portrayals model narratives of belonging in which women and nonwhite subjects can be legible as full subjects with myriad desires.

scholarly journals Periferias europeias: Sebald fala em Tübingen (e uma digressão sobre Pierre Bertaux) | European peripheries: Sebald speechs in Tübingen (and a digression about Pierre Bertaux)

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-60
Author(s):  
Uwe Schütte
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Special Position ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historia Natural ◽  
European Unification ◽  
Twenty First Century

O tema deste artigo é um texto apócrifo de W. G. Sebald, o ensaio "Europäische Peripherien" [Periferias Europeias], baseado em uma palestra proferida em fevereiro de 1992, em Tübingen. Esse ensaio ocupa um lugar especial na obra de Sebald, pois nele o autor se expressa mais resolutamente do que em qualquer outra ocasião sobre questões políticas, no que diz respeito tanto ao processo de unificação europeia quanto aos problemas fundamentais das sociedades ocidentais na transição para o século XXI. A partir de uma leitura mais atenta, chego à conclusão de que esse ensaio, supostamente secundário, revela-se um importante pilar para reconstruir a interpretação profundamente melancólica que Sebald faz da história com base no conceito de uma “história natural da destruição”. Ao mesmo tempo, “Europäische Peripherien” permite reconhecer a importância de Mutation der Menschheit [Mutação da Humanidade], de Pierre Bertaux, como influência fundamental, até então não reconhecida, para o desenvolvimento da obra de Sebald.Palavras-chave: W.G. Sebald. Europa. “História natural da destruição”. Pierre Bertaux. AbstractThis article discusses the essay "Europäische Peripherien", a hitherto overlooked text by W.G. Sebald based on a lecture given in Tübingen in February 1992. The essay occupies a special position in Sebald's oeuvre, as the author positions himself more pronouncedly than anywhere else on political issues, both with regard to the process of European unification and to fundamental challenges of Western societies in the transition to the twenty-first century. In my close reading the supposedly insignificant essay proves to be an important text for a reconstruction of Sebald's deeply melancholic view of history as expressed in the concept of a "natural history of destruction". At the same time, "European Peripheries" allows us to acknowledge the importance of Pierre Bertaux’ Mutation der Menschheit as an undiscovered influence on the development of Sebald's oeuvre.Keywords: W.G. Sebald. Europa. “Natural history of destruction”. Pierre Bertaux. ORCIDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-4825-1912

scholarly journals The “Ready-Made-Writer” in a Selection of Contemporary Francophone Literary Advice Manuals

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-216
Author(s):  
Françoise Grauby
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Small Enterprise ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Official Recognition ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis chapter explores the concepts of discursive and non-discursive ethos, as well as the notion of authorial stance (posture) as defined by Jerôme Meizoz (2007; 2011) in order to analyze the figure of the “ready-made-writer” in French manuals and writing guides at the beginning of the twenty-first century. “Authorial stance,” “ethos,” and “persona” are all terms that take stock of the way in which authors declare themselves writers in the literary field. For Meizoz, posture begins at the moment of publication, that is, at the moment of the official recognition of the author. A close reading of some recent French writing manuals, however, reveals the outline of an implicit portrait of the author budding into a legitimate artist and credible writer, and contains indications on how to carve out a space of creation for oneself. The identities presented by the manuals are shaped by literary models and invested by a collective imaginary. They conform to culturally accepted archetypes, because “becoming a writer, and doing the work of a writer are part of the same phantasm” (Ducas 2002). Learning the craft of writing thus also entails acquiring a corporeal dramaturgy or an “auctorial scenography” (Diaz 2009) which is a prerequisite for creation. This can be achieved by going through various authorial stances, from “visionary” to “apprentice” and “manager of one’s own small enterprise.”

Further Reading

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Media ◽  
Twenty First Century

What does reading mean in the twenty-first century? As other disciplines challenge literary criticism’s authority to answer this question, English professors themselves are defining new alternatives to close reading and to interpretation more generally. Further Reading brings together thirty commissioned essays drawing on approaches as different as formalism, historicism, neuroscience, disability, and computation. Contributors take up the following questions: What do we mean when we talk about “reading” today? How are reading techniques evolving in the digital era? What is the future of reading? This book foregrounds reading as a topic worthy of investigation in its own right rather than as a sub-section of histories of the book, sociologies of literacy, or theories of literature. As our knowledge of reading changes in step with the media and the scholarly tools used to apprehend it, a more precise understanding of this topic is crucial to the discipline’s future. This collection therefore seeks to introduce new ways of conceptualizing the term’s forms, boundaries, and uses. Its contributors bring varied vocabularies to bear on the contested nature and continued importance of reading, within the academy and beyond.

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