Kentucky Renaissance

Kentucky Renaissance
Author: Brian Sholis
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0300218982

A groundbreaking study of the extraordinary photographers, writers, printmakers, and publishers who formed a flourishing modernist community in Kentucky Dozens of American cities witnessed the founding of camera clubs in the first half of the 20th century, though few boasted as many accomplished artists as the one based in Lexington, Kentucky. This pioneering book provides the most absorbing account to date of the Lexington Camera Club, an under-studied group of artists whose ranks included Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Van Deren Coke, Robert C. May, James Baker Hall, and Cranston Ritchie. These and other members of the Lexington Camera Club explored the craft and expressive potential of photography. They captured Kentucky's dramatic natural landscape and experimented widely with different techniques, including creating double and multiple exposures or shooting deliberately out-of-focus images. In addition to compiling images by these photographers, this book examines their relationships with writers, publishers, and printmakers based in Kentucky at the time, such as Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Jonathan Greene, and Thomas Merton. Moreover, the publication seeks to highlight the unique contributions that the Lexington Camera Club made to 20th-century photography, thus broadening a narrative of modern art that has long focused on New York and Chicago. Featuring a wealth of new scholarship, this fascinating catalogue asserts the importance and artistic achievement of these often overlooked photographers and their circle.

Bluegrass Renaissance

Bluegrass Renaissance
Author: James C. Klotter
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2012-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813140439

Originally established in 1775 the town of Lexington, Kentucky grew quickly into a national cultural center amongst the rolling green hills of the Bluegrass Region. Nicknamed the "Athens of the West," Lexington and the surrounding area became a leader in higher education, visual arts, architecture, and music, and the center of the horse breeding and racing industries. The national impact of the Bluegrass was further confirmed by prominent Kentucky figures such as Henry Clay and John C. Breckinridge. Bluegrass Renaissance: The History and Culture of Central Kentucky, 1792-1852, chronicles Lexington's development as one of the most important educational and cultural centers in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. Editors Daniel Rowland and James C. Klotter gather leading scholars to examine the successes and failures of Central Kentuckians from statehood to the death of Henry Clay, in an investigation of the area's cultural and economic development and national influence. Bluegrass Renaissance is an interdisciplinary study of the evolution of Lexington's status as antebellum Kentucky's cultural metropolis.

Our Kentucky

Our Kentucky
Author: James C. Klotter
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2014-10-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813156661

Originally published in 1992 in conjunction with Kentucky's bicentennial observations and designed for use in the high school classroom, Our Kentucky remains one of the most concise, well-written introductions to the Bluegrass State. While the focus is on history, specialists in other fields contribute chapters that provide a comprehensive description of Kentucky's people and their past, present, and future. This expanded edition brings the scholarship up to date, ensuring the book's continued availability for students and general readers. State historian James C. Klotter, together with a teachers' advisory group, has gathered nineteen authorities on the Commonwealth, each of whom has written a section in his or her area of expertise. The topics range widely, from architecture to women's rights, from Native Americans to Kentucky's future—and much in between. Well-respected authors from various disciplines—including geography, history, literature, religion, journalism, education, and political science—have crafted concise and stimulating chapters that help explain the state's past, present, and future. Designed for use in the Kentucky Studies high school elective course, the book has been praised for covering so many aspects of Kentucky life and for bringing together such a wide array of writers. A special feature is the inclusion of seventeen award-winning essays written by high school students. These brief "sidebars" demonstrate the level of work that can be done by today's young Kentuckians. The combination of essays by students, chapters by experts, and a generous selection of photographs and original documents results in a book that will inform and delight all Kentucky readers.

The Harlan Renaissance

The Harlan Renaissance
Author: William H Turner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2021-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781952271212

A personal remembrance from the preeminent chronicler of Black life in Appalachia.

Antebellum Architecture of Kentucky

Antebellum Architecture of Kentucky
Author: Clay Lancaster
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 362
Release: 1991-01-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780813117591

" By the author of the acclaimed Antebellum Houses of the Bluegrass, this book includes significant structures from throughout the commonwealth, illustrating the entire range of stylistic architectural development."

Henry Clay

Henry Clay
Author: James C. Klotter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2018-07-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190498064

Charismatic, charming, and one of the best orators of his era, Henry Clay seemed to have it all. He offered a comprehensive plan of change for America, and he directed national affairs as Speaker of the House, as Secretary of State to John Quincy Adams--the man he put in office--and as acknowledged leader of the Whig party. As the broker of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, Henry Clay fought to keep a young nation united when westward expansion and slavery threatened to tear it apart. Yet, despite his talent and achievements, Henry Clay never became president. Three times he received Electoral College votes, twice more he sought his party's nomination, yet each time he was defeated. Alongside fellow senatorial greats Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, Clay was in the mix almost every moment from 1824 to 1848. Given his prominence, perhaps the years should be termed not the Jacksonian Era but rather the Age of Clay. James C. Klotter uses new research and offers a more focused, nuanced explanation of Clay's programs and politics in order to answer to the question of why the man they called "The Great Rejected" never won the presidency but did win the accolades of history. Klotter's fresh outlook reveals that the best monument to Henry Clay is the fact that the United States remains one country, one nation, one example of a successful democracy, still working, still changing, still reflecting his spirit. The appeal of Henry Clay and his emphasis on compromise still resonate in a society seeking less partisanship and more efforts at conciliation.

Aemilia Lanyer

Aemilia Lanyer
Author: Marshall Grossman
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813182808

Aemilia Lanyer was a Londoner of Jewish-Italian descent and the mistress of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain. But in 1611 she did something extraordinary for a middle-class woman of the seventeenth century: she published a volume of original poems. Using standard genres to address distinctly feminine concerns, Lanyer's work is varied, subtle, provocative, and witty. Her religious poem "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" repeatedly projects a female subject for a female reader and casts the Passion in terms of gender conflict. Lanyer also carried this concern with gender into the very structure of the poem; whereas a work of praise usually held up the superiority of its patrons, the good women in Lanyer's poem exemplify worth women in general. The essays in this volume establish the facts of Lanyer's life and use her poetry to interrogate that of her male contemporaries, Donne, Jonson, and Shakespeare. Lanyer's work sheds light on views of gender and class identities in early modern society. By using Lanyer to look at the larger issues of women writers working within a patriarchal system, the authors go beyond the explication of Lanyer's writing to address the dynamics of canonization and the construction of literary history.

Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind

Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind
Author: Anna Battigelli
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2021-10-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813183855

Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), led a dramatic life that brought her into contact with kings, queens, and the leading thinkers of her day. The English civil wars forced her into exile, accompanying Queen Henrietta Maria and her court to Paris. From this vantage point, she began writing voluminously, responding to the events and major intellectual movements of the mid-seventeenth century. Cavendish published twenty-three volumes in her lifetime, including plays, romances, poetry, letters, biography, and natural philosophy. In them she explored the political, scientific, and philosophical ideas of her day. While previous biographers of Cavendish have focused almost exclusively on her eccentric public behavior, Anna Battigelli is the first to explore in depth her intellectual life. She dismisses the myth of Cavendish as an isolated and lonely thinker, arguing that the role of exile was a rhetorical stance, one that allowed Cavendish to address and even criticize her world. She, like others writing during the period after the English civil wars, focused squarely on the problem of finding the proper relationship between mind and world. This volume presents Cavendish's writing self, the self she treasured above all others.

Of Woods & Waters

Of Woods & Waters
Author: Ron Ellis
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2014-04-23
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0813145767

“An insightful and varied view of Kentucky’s lush landscape. . . . [Will] appeal to hunters, anglers, environmentalists.” —Kentucky Monthly From the moment Daniel Boone first “gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and . . . beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below,” generations of Kentuckians have developed rich and enduring relationships with the land that surrounds them. Of Woods & Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader is filled with loving tributes offered in celebration of Kentucky’s widely varied environmental wonders that nurture both life and art. Ron Ellis, an outdoors enthusiast and noted writer, has gathered art, fiction, personal essays and poetry from many of Kentucky’s best-known authors for this comprehensive collection. Beginning with famed illustrator John James Audubon’s eloquent account of extracting catfish from the Ohio River and progressing through over fifty contributions by both established and emerging writers, Of Woods & Water covering two hundred years of hunting, fishing, camping, cooking, hiking, and canoeing in Kentucky’s wilderness. With contributions from Barbara Kingsolver, Wendell Berry, Janice Holt Giles, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jesse Stuart, James Still, Robert Penn Warren, James Baker Hall, Silas House, and other esteemed authors. “No other state offers such a variety of topics for its writers and this [anthology], which incorporates love of the land and the love of nature, is special.” —James C. Claypool, Northern Kentucky University, author of Our Fellow Kentuckians “Takes your mind outside. Read enough of it and you might get out of the chair and follow.” —Lexington Herald-Leader “A superb collection.” —Louisville Courier-Journal “Reading Of Woods & Waters is a sensory experience. Its fine, down-home musings stay with you long after the last page is turned.” —Murray Ledger and Times