Late 19th Century America Research Articles

Nije ograničeno ni definirano, već konstruirano i internalizirano

Donald Barthelme’s short fiction is marked by a dashing concentration on everyday life, construction of meaning, and plurality of reality in addition to his playful, metafictional, and fragmentary style. Although a fertile ground for exploring sociopolitical matters, particularly in the mid and late 20th century America, the review of studies on Barthelme’s works highlights a lacuna in the application of conceivably pertinent sociological and political theories on Barthelme’s short stories. Accordingly, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966) could be a congruous theory with Barthelme’s sociological concerns in his short fiction. In their treatise, Berger and Luckmann see reality as a kind of “collective fiction” that is constructed by the processes of institutionalization, socialization, and everyday social interaction, particularly through language. In this article, we read “The Balloon” and “I Bought a Little City,” which are selected thematically, in light of “society as objective reality” through the concepts of objectivation, institutionalization, and legitimation. Linking literature and sociology, we aim to pinpoint how the stories observe, unveil, and potentially critique construction of meaning and the real workings of the processes in the social construction of reality.

Ulysses S. Grant: Chronic Malaria and the myth of his alcoholism.

Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and twice-elected President of the United States, was highly respected in late-19th century America. Gradually however, it became the conventional wisdom that he was an alcoholic who had only succeeded as a general by using overwhelming force. This change began with his political enemies and those who resented his suppression of the Ku Klux Klan, his regard for the welfare of Native Americans and his support of Reconstruction. Jealous subordinates and those with an axe to grind added their voices to this and then the views of certain influential academic historians and romantic adherents of 'The Lost Cause' were unchallenged until the mid-1950s. Grant was undoubtedly an occasional binge drinker but this is not the same as being an alcoholic. Charles A. Dana is the most authoritative source for the claim that Grant was a frank alcoholic. In 1887 he wrote that Grant was drunk on a trip to Satartia, Mississippi in 1863 during the siege of Vicksburg. In this paper, the author shows that Grant was actually ill on that trip from the disease of malaria, alcohol was not involved at all, and that Grant suffered episodically from this disease both before and during the Civil War.

Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America. By Katherine K Preston. AMS Studies in Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. xxix, 618 pp.

Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America. By Katherine K Preston. AMS Studies in Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. xxix, 618 pp.

Review: Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America, by Katherine K. Preston

Book Review| August 01 2019 Review: Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America, by Katherine K. Preston Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America, by Katherine K. Preston. AMS Studies in Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. xxix, 618 pp. Candace Bailey Candace Bailey CANDACE BAILEY is Professor of Musicology at North Carolina Central University. Her current research focuses on women and music in the United States during the nineteenth century. Her most recent book is Charleston Belles Abroad (University of South Carolina Press, 2019). She will be a National Humanities Center Fellow and Kate Van Winkle Keller Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society in 2019–20. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2019) 72 (2): 581–585. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2019.72.2.581 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Candace Bailey; Review: Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America, by Katherine K. Preston. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 August 2019; 72 (2): 581–585. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2019.72.2.581 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search Nineteenth-century music has never faded as a foundational subject of inquiry among musicologists nor has its popularity waned in the concert hall or college classroom. Since at least the 1980s, however, musicologists have begun to question the prominence given to the repertoire presented in these spaces and, more broadly, the influence of the canon on modern perceptions of music of the past. Critical interrogation of musicology and its historiography has yielded an expanding list of composers, provided a more balanced view of compositional practices, and opened the door to reconsiderations of performance, circulation, and reception. This type of research provides a more holistic approach to Western music and allows for new examinations of old concepts and innovative interpretations of familiar repertoires. Music in the United States presents special challenges to traditional methodologies. Its historiography is too young to have many old concepts, and its repertoire hardly familiar. Tensions that may... You do not currently have access to this content.

Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America

Book Review| July 01 2019 Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America, by Katherine K. Preston. Pp. xxix + 618. AMS Studies in Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. £35.99. ISBN: 978-0-19-937165-5. Charlotte Bentley Charlotte Bentley University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2019) 37 (2): 257–261. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.37.2.0257 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Charlotte Bentley; Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America. American Music 1 January 2019; 37 (2): 257–261. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.37.2.0257 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressAmerican Music Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Representing and re-defining expert knowledge for the layman. Self-help medical manuals in late 19th century America

This paper analyses a corpus (over 1 million words) of three self-help medical handbooks published in the US in the latter quarter of the 19th century, R.V. Pierce’s The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser (1883), M.L. Byrn’s The Mystery of Medicine Explained (1887), and Gunn and Jordan’s Newest Revised Physician (1887). It aims to explore the discursive construction of medical knowledge and of the medical profession in the period, combining discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. The popularity of these manuals has to be seen within the context of medical care at a time when, in spite of the advances made in the course of the 19th century, the status of the medical profession was still unstable. Initially the focus of the study is on the representation of the medical profession. In this respect, the analysis testifies to an approach to traditional medical expertise which is essentially ambivalent, taking its distance from abstract medicine and quackery alike, while at the same time promoting a new approach based on different, more modern principles. The focus then shifts to the episteme of the medical science as represented in the works under investigation. The construction of selected epistemically relevant notions – knowledge, theory/ies, experience, evidence, and observation – is discussed relying on concordance lines in order to retrieve and examine all the contexts where they occur. The results of the analysis indicate a shift in the epistemological approach to knowledge, with theory and suppositions being complemented by experience, evidence and facts, and a representation of knowledge as a tool for empowerment, in line with the increasing democratisation of medicine characterising the period.

Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America by Katherine K. Preston

Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America by Katherine K. Preston

Securing Homes: Orphan Trains as a Way of Curing Ills of the Late 19th Century America

Rapid changes in American society at the late 19th century bred social ills which required solving with the use of all available resources of the era. One of the tools, developed by the Children’s Aid Society of New York, was the “Orphan Trains” program. It focused on the “street Arabs,” poor kids of New York tenements who in large numbers were relocated to Midwestern farms to be Americanized, taught to work and saved from destitution. The scheme is viewed through its central metaphor of “home” which refers not only to the homes found for the orphans but also the homes of the emerging bourgeois class as well as the tenement dwellings. The work attempts to show that saving innocent victims tried in fact to ensure stability of American society at large as it addressed growing economic disproportions, grave shortage of labor on farms and a threat to American participatory democracy caused by influx of unskilled foreigners. Moreover, the scheme of relocation employed community based, self-help solutions which drew on the traditional American values of family, home and hard work and attempted to address new ills with well-established methods of indentured work. Simultaneously, it implemented modern ideas concerning childhood, child care or charity.

Henry Ware Cattell and Walt Whitman's Brain.

Henry Ware Cattell was a prominent pathologist and medical editor in late 19th and early 20th century America. Strangely, his name is unknown to most medical historians but is more widely known by aficionados of Walt Whitman's poetry. In 1892, Cattell was involved in an incident that abruptly changed his life and decreased his commitment to pathology as a career. Cattell had been serving as the pathologist/prosector for the American Anthropometric Society at the time the poet Walt Whitman died. Cattell, the pathologist for the University of Pennsylvania's Wistar Institute, performed Whitman's autopsy on March 27, 1892; Whitman's brain was removed and was to join those of other prominent American intellectuals who had donated their brains to the Society's "Brain Club," but something went horribly wrong (allegedly, an assistant had dropped the brain and destroyed it) and Cattell kept this a secret. Full of self-doubt, Cattell was anguished about his inadequacies as a pathologist and was extremely worried about how all of this would affect his career when discovered. While still continuing to practice hospital-based pathology, he began to transition into an author and editor. This essay will provide a detailed biographical sketch of Henry Ware Cattell, address his sibling rivalry with his more famous brother James McKeen Cattell, briefly discuss the fad of 19th century intellectuals embracing the pseudo-science of phrenology and their participation in anatomical "brain clubs," and, finally, address the mystery of what happened to Walt Whitman's brain. Clin. Anat. 31:988-996, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

デューイというモナドが映す有機的統一の思想 : 若きデューイと「個人の時代」を考える(報告論文,デューイというモナドが映す有機的統一の思想-若きデューイと「個人の時代」を考える-,フォーラム2)

デューイというモナドが映す有機的統一の思想 : 若きデューイと「個人の時代」を考える(報告論文,デューイというモナドが映す有機的統一の思想-若きデューイと「個人の時代」を考える-,フォーラム2)

19世紀後半アメリカにおける国立大学設立論 : ジョン・ホイトの国立大学論形成を中心として

19世紀後半アメリカにおける国立大学設立論 : ジョン・ホイトの国立大学論形成を中心として

“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here”: The Critique of Consumer Society in American Psycho and Fight Club

This article explores the politics of two films, namely American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000) and Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999), both of which portray a privileged, white collar protagonist suffering from a personality disorder that leads him to commit violent acts. Set in the late 20th century America characterized by rampant consumerism, stark materialism and fierce competition, both films suggest that it is the debilitating impact of the commodifed, commodity-driven consumer society that leads the protagonists to resort to violence as a way of transcending their depthless, shallow, one-dimensional existence. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that both American Psycho and Fight Club present a critique of American society through the portrayal of protagonists whose pathologically violent behaviour stems from the dehumanizing effects of consumer culture on the individual psyche.

Appropriating Pools: At Play in the Spaces of the City

This essay examines skateboarding as an architectural act of pleasure that allows private spaces in cities to be appropriated for alternative uses. In particular, the appropriation of swimming pools by skateboarders will be explored, from the renegade to the officially sanctioned, to explore socio-political aspects of space. The film Dogtown and Z-Boys (Stacy Peralta, 2001) provides a primary source for this examination, and will be used as a vehicle through which to examine these issues, particularly in Los Angeles. Recent appropriations of swimming pools in New York will provide a secondary reference. In Dogtown and Z-Boys, swimming pools form a playground in which skaters in 1970s Los Angeles re-appropriated urban space for their own use. This paper will argue that the appropriation of swimming pools by skateboarders has provided a viable venue for alternative uses of the city that include both play and dissent. By framing the history of swimming pools in late 20th century America, a case will be presented for how skateboarders’ appropriation of swimming pools in 1970s Los Angeles can provide clues to continual opportunities for alternative configurations and uses of twenty-first century urban space.

The Geography of Strenuousness: “America” In William James' Narrative of Moral Energy

Strenuous effort on behalf of moral ideals was a life-long concern for William James. Growing out of his own well-documented personal struggles as a young man, it was also a cultural phenomenon in late 19th century America. For many, the cause of the problem of depleted moral energy was environmental. Herbert Spencer’s definition of mind as the correspondence of inner relations to outer relations lent intellectual support to this reduction of moral lethargy to environmental factors and writers such as George Beard and Theodore Roosevelt seemed to be in agreement. While many employed America as an environment in this cultural discussion, William James resisted this environmental reductionism and instead employed “America” as a metaphorical trope around which he organized his thoughts on moral energy. This was no mere literary device on James’ part, but instead a reflection of his own disagreements with Spencer that led James to articulate his own groundbreaking model of consciousness as reflex action. As the framework for addressing the issue of moral strenuousness.

The Patriarch’s Balls: Class-Consciousness, Violence, and Dystopia in George Saunders’ Vision of Contemporary America

In late 19th Century America, the elite of wealthy New York families were united by the Patriarch’s Balls. The Society of the Patriarch organized lavish balls to foster a content class-consciousness among the society of “The Four Hundred” who mattered, in contrast to the rest who did not. In 21st Century America, the tables have been turned and the class conscious are less able to enjoy the fruits of their labor sans guilt (or the realization of a nasty pun). As Slavoj Zizek asserts in Six Sideways Glances on Violence, contemporary America’s “culture of capital” is marked by the systemic violence that allows the West to maintain its First World status and North American writer George Saunders, for one, knows it. This paper will look at how Saunders returns to those East Coast, greater New York communities in the 21st Century, communities that are now more egalitarian and “open” yet just as worried about keeping up with the Joneses. Writing their stories with a dystopic twist, he intimately explores the anxieties that plague their communities, while also maintaining a sense of the universal in his work that allows for its wider interpretation and relevance to the American national identity in general. Saunders writes as the moral conscience of a community that while “successful” according to American standards, cannot help but feel all the dirtier after the help have cleaned the kitchen.

Cutting Calories and TXNIP From the Skeletal Muscle to Restore Insulin Sensitivity.

It is quite possible that if she had seen but a glimpse of her young country’s future while writing “The New Colossus” in late 19th-century America, Emma Lazarus might have modified her famous line to read “Give me your…huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” well-nourished and long-lived . And indeed, at a time when food shortage and famine were sources of great suffering throughout much of the world, such a persuasive line would have seemed very compelling to the “masses.” How strange might it also have been for people at that time to be told of what we now know, which is that overnourishment typically prohibits a person from living a long and healthy life. Evidence of this fact is manifested in the rapidly rising rates of obesity-related pathologies, particularly cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome/type 2 diabetes, which of course are hardly unique to the U.S. as recent reports show that rates of obesity and related cardiometabolic diseases are escalating worldwide, with the highest rates in developing countries across Africa and the Middle East (1,2). Lifestyle interventions to combat this epidemic are increasingly being prioritized by health care professionals who recognize that, unless action is taken, the tidal wave of associated costs and resource demands placed on hospitals and primary care providers will wash over us all with devastating consequences. Caloric restriction (CR) is an intervention that consistently leads to …

Prospecting for dinosaurs on the mining frontier: The value of information in America's Gilded Age.

How much is a dinosaur worth? This essay offers an account of the way vertebrate fossils were priced in late 19th-century America to explore the process by which monetary values are established in science. Examining a long and drawn-out negotiation over the sale of an unusually rich dinosaur quarry in Wyoming, I argue that, on their own, abstract market principles did not suffice to mediate between supply and demand. Rather, people haggling over the price of dinosaur bones looked to social norms from the mineral industry for cues on how to value these rare and unusual objects, adopting a set of negotiation tactics that exploited asymmetries in the distribution of scarce information to secure the better end of the deal. On the mining frontier in America's Gilded Age, dinosaurs were thus valued in much the same way as any other scarce natural resource one could dig out of the ground, including gold, silver, and coal.

Rebecca Brown's Evolution Toward Minimalism: A Beckettian Poetics

Rebecca Brown is best known for her 1994 novel The Gifts of the Body, which recounts the experiences of a home-care worker assisting people with AIDS, and which earned her several awards (such as a Lambda Literary Award).1 Reviewers are in the habit of placing this contemporary Seattle-based author in the tradition of Samuel Beckett. A remarkable blurb on the back of Brown’s The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary (1998) is a case in point: “If Samuel Beckett were a woman in late 20th century America, he might have written stories like Brown’s,” Publishers Weekly speculates.2 Charles Mudede calls Beckett an “ancestor” of Brown,3 and the author herself has affirmed that she counts Beckett among those “writers who have inspired me, fed me, writers who have saved my life. Writers I learn from.”4 I have elsewhere noted the thematic concerns that Brown shares with her literary forebear, such as a fascination with confused minds and decaying bodies,5 yet I would like to argue that another significant way in which Brown’s work can be said to parallel Beckett’s lies in the evolution of her writing style toward minimalism.

Water Wars, Talking Water: Art, Activism and the Eco-politics of Whitman’s Walk to the Water

'Babble on, O brook, with that utterance of thine … I will learn from thee, and dwell on thee – receive, copy, print from thee' (Specimen Days 1882). Walt Whitman, in lyrical communion with a mountain stream (Timber Creek, New Jersey), pledges a reverence towards the natural world that is as instructive in the 21st century as it was in late 19th century America. Whitman 'sings' as poet-activist. in listening to the water, he voices a call to human beings to practice what is now referred to as ecological consciousness – or, in Timothy Morton's words, the 'radical openness of ecological thought'. That the waters of the stream 'minister' to the poet is doubly significant; for it is the degradation of rivers and streams worldwide that so graphically marks the despoliation of fresh water supplies globally, and, both geographically and symbolically, maps the battlelines of the looming water wars of our time. In this essay, I will trace connections between Whitman’s Transcendentalist conceptions of the poet (and artist) as prototypical political 'eco-activist' and the later writings of figures such as Rachael Carson (Silent Spring 1962) and Edward Hoagland (Sex and the River Styx 2011). Comparative reference will also be made to the 'wars' over water in Australia and the United States, and the role of rivers in the cultural imagination of both nations.

Joan of Arc in Late 19th Century America : Women's Voices, Women's Bodies, and the Spiritual Dimension in The Bostonians(KYUSHU STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE)

Joan of Arc in Late 19th Century America : Women's Voices, Women's Bodies, and the Spiritual Dimension in The Bostonians(KYUSHU STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE)