Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era

Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era
Author: Shannon L. Walsh
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2020-11-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3030587649

This book strives to unmask the racial inequity at the root of the emergence of modern physical culture systems in the US Progressive Era (1890s–1920s). This book focuses on physical culture – systematic, non-competitive exercise performed under the direction of an expert – because tracing how people practiced physical culture in the Progressive Era, especially middle- and upper-class white women, reveals how modes of popular performance, institutional regulation, and ideologies of individualism and motherhood combined to sublimate whiteness beneath the veneer of liberal progressivism and reform. The sites in this book give the fullest picture of the different strata of physical culture for white women during that time and demonstrate the unracialization of whiteness through physical culture practices. By illuminating the ways in which whiteness in the US became a default identity category absorbed into the “universal” ideals of culture, arts, and sciences, the author shows how physical culture circulated as a popular performance form with its own conventions, audience, and promised profitability. Finally, the chapters reveal troubling connections between the daily habits physical culturists promoted and the eugenics movement’s drive towards more reproductively efficient white bodies. By examining these written, visual, and embodied texts, the author insists on a closer scrutiny of the implicit whiteness of physical culture and forwards it as a crucial site of analysis for performance scholars interested in how corporeality is marshaled by and able to contest local and global systems of power.

The Cultivation of Body and Mind in Nineteenth-Century American Delsartism

The Cultivation of Body and Mind in Nineteenth-Century American Delsartism
Author: Nancy Ruyter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 190
Release: 1999-09-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0313003378

This study chronicles the American adaptation of the theory and practice of the French acting, singing, and aesthetics teacher, Francois Delsarte. Delsartism was introduced in the United States by Steele Mackaye, Delsarte's only American student. American Delsartism, with its emphasis on physical culture and expression, differed significantly from Delsarte's works in France. The system evolved from professional training for actors and orators to a means of physical culture and expression that became popular among middle and upper class American women and girls. It allowed nineteenth-century women to pay attention to their bodies, to explore their own physicality, and to perform in a socially acceptable venues. In its later manifestations, Delsartism influenced the innovative dance of such artists as Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn. Biographical information on the most notable figures in the development of American Delsartism is presented along with a discussion of the spread of Delsartism throughout the United States and to Germany. The Delsartean approach to training and expression is traced from Delsarte and Mackaye through the theory, teaching, and performance of Genevieve Stebbins, the most notable American proponent of the system. This work will appeal to scholars of dance history and of late nineteenth-century women's studies. Theater historians will appreciate the detailed account of the system as developed and taught by Steele Mackaye as training for actors. Although Delsartism has been acknowledged as relevant to the history of modern dance, scant information and research has previously been published which explores the movement in depth and discusses its importance to women's physical and cultural education in nineteenth-century America. Photographs illustrate the text and an extensive bibliography serves as a useful guide for further research.

Dance, Modernity, and Culture

Dance, Modernity, and Culture
Author: Helen Thomas
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1995
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780415087933

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Americanized Delsarte Culture

Americanized Delsarte Culture
Author: Emily Montague Mulkin Bishop
Publisher: Legare Street Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-10-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781018022840

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Americanized Delsarte Culture (Classic Reprint)

Americanized Delsarte Culture (Classic Reprint)
Author: Emily M. Bishop
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2017-10-15
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780266343752

Excerpt from Americanized Delsarte Culture His little volume was originally written to meet the demand of those who studied with Miss Dorothy Bishop and myself for a book that should contain the whys, hows, and wherefores of our preliminary course in self-expression and Health culture. Not only former pupils, but unknown friends - physicians, teachers, students and many others - have generously expressed appreciation of its helpful teachings. The desire that this helpfulness may continue and increase has prompted this revision of the book and the insertion of a new chapter, Hints for Study. The suggestions contained in that chapter will, it is believed, make the book more available as a text-book for schools, for classes in physical educa tion and in elocution. A true voice and a natural use of it are impossible if the physical instrument of expression - the body - lacks in power, elasticity and responsiveness. In the Chautauqua School of Expression (chautauqua Assembly, Chautauqua, N. Self-expression and Health culture is found to be an important preparation for higher literary and dramatic interpretation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts

Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts
Author: Cheryl Glenn
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2011-01-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 080938616X

In Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts,editors Cheryl Glenn and Krista Ratcliffe bring together seventeen essays by new and established scholars that demonstrate the value and importance of silence and listening to the study and practice of rhetoric. Building on the editors’ groundbreaking research, which respects the power of the spoken word while challenging the marginalized status of silence and listening, this volumemakes a strong case for placing these overlooked concepts, and their intersections, at the forefront of rhetorical arts within rhetoric and composition studies. Divided into three parts—History, Theory and Criticism, and Praxes—this book reimagines traditional histories and theories of rhetoric and incorporates contemporary interests, such as race, gender, and cross-cultural concerns, into scholarly conversations about rhetorical history, theory, criticism, and praxes. For the editors and the other contributors to this volume, silence is not simply the absence of sound and listening is not a passive act. When used strategically and with purpose—together and separately—silence and listening are powerful rhetorical devices integral to effective communication. The essays cover a wide range of subjects, including women rhetors from ancient Greece and medieval and Renaissance Europe; African philosophy and African American rhetoric; contemporary antiwar protests in the United States; activist conflict resolution in Israel and Palestine; and feminist and second-language pedagogies. Taken together, the essays in this volume advance the argument that silence and listening are as important to rhetoric and composition studies as the more traditionally emphasized arts of reading, writing, and speaking and are particularly effective for theorizing, historicizing, analyzing, and teaching. An extremely valuable resource for instructors and students in rhetoric, composition, and communication studies, Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts will also have applications beyond academia, helping individuals, cultural groups, and nations more productively discern and implement appropriate actions when all parties agree to engage in rhetorical situations that include not only respectful speaking, reading, and writing but also productive silence and rhetorical listening.

Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre

Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre
Author: Julia A. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2005-06-30
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1139446274

Although often dismissed as a minor offshoot of the better-known German movement, expressionism on the American stage represents a critical phase in the development of American dramatic modernism. Situating expressionism within the context of early twentieth-century American culture, Walker demonstrates how playwrights who wrote in this mode were responding both to new communications technologies and to the perceived threat they posed to the embodied act of meaning. At a time when mute bodies gesticulated on the silver screen, ghostly voices emanated from tin horns, and inked words stamped out the personality of the hand that composed them, expressionist playwrights began to represent these new cultural experiences by disarticulating the theatrical languages of bodies, voices and words. In doing so, they not only innovated a new dramatic form, but redefined playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form, heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism.