The Smyrna Affair

The Smyrna Affair
Author: Marjorie Housepian Dobkin
Publisher: New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1971
Genre: History
ISBN:

Smyrna 1922

Smyrna 1922
Author: Marjorie Housepian Dobkin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1988
Genre: History
ISBN:

On one level Smyrna 1922 is a modern Greek tragedy replete with the elements of irony and horror. The Greeks, one of the victorious Allied powers during World War 1, were betrayed by their allies and their army driven into the sea at Smyrna by the forces of Mustapha Kemal, an insurgent leader to whom his former enemies had given considerable covert help. There followed an enactment of the week of orgy after the fall of Constantinople in 1453; pillage, rape and massacre culminating, in this instance, in the spectacular destruction by fire of Smyrna (now Izmir), considered an infidel city by the Turks because of its predominantly Greek character and population. Dobkin's study is a definitive work concerning a debacle deliberately soft pedalled and almost expunged from the memory of modern day man in the words of Henry Miller in The Colossus of Maroussi.

Middlesex

Middlesex
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2011-07-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307401944

Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides’ witty, exuberant novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of a fantastic, absurd, lovable immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there’s a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is a hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back in time, through a breathtaking review of the twentieth century, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set our narrator’s life in motion. Middlesex is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It’s a brilliant exploration of divided people, divided families, divided cities and nations -- the connected halves that make up ourselves and our world.

The Edge of Modernism

The Edge of Modernism
Author: Walter Kalaidjian
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 142142939X

In The Edge of Modernism, Walter Kalaidjian explores American poetry on genocide, the Holocaust, and total war as well as on postwar social antagonisms, racial oppression, and domestic violence. By asking what it means for traumatic memory to have agency in the American verse tradition, Kalaidjian creates an original historical account of how American poets became witnesses, often unconsciously, to modern extremity. Combining psychoanalytic theory and cultural studies, this intense, sweeping account of modern poetics analyzes the ways in which literary form gives testimony to the trauma of twentieth-century history. Through close readings of well-known and less familiar poets—among them Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Edwin Rolfe, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Peter Balakian, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Anne Sexton, and Anthony Hecht—Kalaidjian discerns the latent "edge" of modern trauma as it cuts through the literary representations, themes, and formal techniques of twentieth-century American poetics. In this way, The Edge of Modernism advances an innovative and dynamic model of modern periodization.

Modernism, Inc

Modernism, Inc
Author: Jani Scandura
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2001
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0814781373

Drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies and contemporary theory, Modernism, Inc. provides a new look at the relationship between modernism and postmodernism within the critical frame of twentieth-century American culture. Organized around the idea of "incorporation"--embodiment, repressed memory, and advanced capitalism--Modernism, Inc. covers a wide range of topics: Josephine Baker's "hot house style"; the president's penis in American political life; myth-making and the Hoover Dam; trauma, poetics, and the Armenian genocide; feminist kitsch and the recuperation of North America's "Great Lady painters"; Gertrude Stein and Jewish Social Science; the Reno Divorce Factory and the production of gender; Andy Razaf and Black Bolshevism. Collectively, the essays suggest that the relationship between the modern and the postmodern is not one of rupture, belatedness, dilution, or extremity, but of haunting. Modernism, Inc. looks at our ghosts, and at the unspeakable secrets of modernity from which they're derived. Contributors: Maria Damon, Walter Kalidjian, Walter Lew, Janet Lyon, William J. Maxwell, Cary Nelson, John Timberman Newcombe, David G. Nicholls, Thomas Pepper, Paula Rabinowitz, Daniel Rosenberg, Marlon Ross, Jani Scandura, Kathleen Stewart, Julia Walker.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide
Author: Alan Whitehorn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2015-05-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

With its analytical introductory essays, more than 140 individual entries, a historical timeline, and primary documents, this book provides an essential reference volume on the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian Genocide has often been considered a template for subsequent genocides and is one of the first genocides of the 20th century. As such, it holds crucial historical significance, and it is critically important that today's students understand this case study of inhumanity. This book provides a much-needed, long-overdue reference volume on the Armenian Genocide. It begins with seven introductory analytical essays that provide a broad overview of the Armenian Genocide and then presents individual entries, a historical timeline, and a selection of documents. This essential reference work covers all aspects of the Armenian Genocide, including the causes, phases, and consequences. It explores political and historical perspectives as well as the cultural aspects. The carefully selected collection of perspective essays will inspire critical thinking and provide readers with insight into some of the most controversial and significant issues of the Armenian Genocide. Similarly, the primary source documents are prefaced by thoughtful introductions that will provide the necessary context to help students understand the significance of the material.