Sensational Internationalism

Sensational Internationalism
Author: J. Michelle Coghlan
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2016-09-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1474411215

In refocusing attention on the Paris Commune as a key event in American political and cultural memory, Sensational Internationalism radically changes our understanding of the relationship between France and the United States in the long nineteenth century. It offers fascinating, remarkably accessible readings of a range of literary works, from periodical poetry and boys' adventure fiction to radical pulp and the writings of Henry James, as well as a rich analysis of visual, print, and performance culture, from post-bellum illustrated weeklies and panoramas to agit-prop pamphlets and Coney Island pyrotechnic shows. This book will speak to readers looking to understand the affective, cultural, and aesthetic afterlives of revolt and revolution pre-and-post Occupy Wall Street, as well as those interested in space, gender, performance, and transatlantic print culture.

American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910: Volume 4

American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910: Volume 4
Author: Lindsay V. Reckson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 703
Release: 2022-08-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108801862

Addressing US literature from 1876 to 1910, this volume aims to account for the period's immense transformations while troubling the ideology of progress that underwrote much of its self-understanding. This volume queries the various forms and formations of post-Reconstruction American literature. It contends that the literature of this period, most often referred to as 'turn-of-the-century' might be more productively oriented by the end of Reconstruction and the haunting aftermath of its emancipatory potential than by the logic of temporal and social advance that underwrote the end of the century and the beginning of the Progressive Era. Acknowledging that nearly all US literature after 1876 might be described as post-Reconstruction, the volume invites readers to reframe this period by asking: under what terms did post-Reconstruction American literature challenge or re-consolidate the 'nation' as an affective, political, and discursive phenomenon? And what kind of alternative pasts and futures did it write into existence?

Literature and Revolution

Literature and Revolution
Author: Owen Holland
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2022-03-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1978821948

Between March and May 1871, the Parisian Communards fought for a revolutionary alternative to the status quo grounded in a vision of internationalism, radical democracy and economic justice for the working masses that cut across national borders. The eventual defeat and bloody suppression of the Commune resonated far beyond Paris. In Britain, the Commune provoked widespread and fierce condemnation, while its defenders constituted a small, but vocal, minority. The Commune evoked long-standing fears about the continental ‘spectre’ of revolution, not least because the Communards’ seizure of power represented an embryonic alternative to the bourgeois social order. This book examines how a heterogeneous group of authors in Britain responded to the Commune. In doing so, it provides the first full-length critical study of the reception and representation of the Commune in Britain during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, showing how discussions of the Commune functioned as a screen to project hope and fear, serving as a warning for some and an example to others. Writers considered in the book include John Ruskin, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eliza Lynn Linton, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Margaret Oliphant, George Gissing, Henry James, William Morris, Alfred Austin and H.G. Wells. As the book shows, many, but not all, of these writers responded to the Commune with literary strategies that sought to stabilize bourgeois subjectivity in the wake of the traumatic shock of a revolutionary event. The book extends critical understanding of the Commune’s cultural afterlives and explores the relationship between literature and revolution.

Transatlantic Radicalism

Transatlantic Radicalism
Author: Frank Jacob
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1800858663

The Atlantic Ocean not only connected North and South America with Europe through trade but also provided the means for an exchange of knowledge and ideas, including political radicalism. Socialists and anarchists would use this “radical ocean” to escape state prosecution in their home countries and establish radical milieus abroad. However, this was often a rather unorganized development and therefore the connections that existed were quite diverse. The movement of individuals led to the establishment of organizational ties and the import and exchange of political publications between Europe and the Americas. The main aim of this book is to show how the transatlantic networks of political radicalism evolved with regard to socialist and anarchist milieus and in particular to look at the actors within the relevant processes—topics that have so far been neglected in the major histories of transnational political radicalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Individual case studies are examined within a wider context to show how networks were actually created, how they functioned and their impact on the broader history of the radical Atlantic.

Above the Fray

Above the Fray
Author: Shai M. Dromi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2020-01-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022668024X

From Lake Chad to Iraq, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide relief around the globe, and their scope is growing every year. Policy makers and activists often assume that humanitarian aid is best provided by these organizations, which are generally seen as impartial and neutral. In Above the Fray, Shai M. Dromi investigates why the international community overwhelmingly trusts humanitarian NGOs by looking at the historical development of their culture. With a particular focus on the Red Cross, Dromi reveals that NGOs arose because of the efforts of orthodox Calvinists, demonstrating for the first time the origins of the unusual moral culture that has supported NGOs for the past 150 years. Drawing on archival research, Dromi traces the genesis of the Red Cross to a Calvinist movement working in mid-nineteenth-century Geneva. He shows how global humanitarian policies emerged from the Red Cross founding members’ faith that an international volunteer program not beholden to the state was the only ethical way to provide relief to victims of armed conflict. By illustrating how Calvinism shaped the humanitarian field, Dromi argues for the key role belief systems play in establishing social fields and institutions. Ultimately, Dromi shows the immeasurable social good that NGOs have achieved, but also points to their limitations and suggests that alternative models of humanitarian relief need to be considered.

Revolutionary World

Revolutionary World
Author: David Motadel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2021-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108187528

Throughout the modern age, revolutions have spread across state borders, engulfing entire regions, continents, and, at times, the globe. Revolutionary World examines the spread of upheavals during the major revolutionary moments in modern history: the Atlantic Revolutions, Europe's 1848 revolts, the commune movement of the 1870s, the 1905-15 upheavals in Asia, the communist revolutions around 1917, the 'Wilsonian' uprisings of 1919, the 'Third World' revolutions, the global Islamic revolt of 1978-79, the events of 1989, and the rise and fall of the 'Arab Spring'. The chapters explore the nature of these revolutionary waves, tracing the exchange of radical ideas and the movements of revolutionaries around the world. Bringing together a group of distinguished historians, Revolutionary World shows that the major revolutions of the modern age, which have so often been studied as isolated national or imperial events, were almost never contained within state borders and were usually part of broader revolutionary moments.

Sensory Experiments

Sensory Experiments
Author: Erica Fretwell
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2020-09-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1478012455

In Sensory Experiments, Erica Fretwell excavates the nineteenth-century science of psychophysics and its theorizations of sensation to examine the cultural and aesthetic landscape of feeling in nineteenth-century America. Fretwell demonstrates how psychophysics—a scientific movement originating in Germany and dedicated to the empirical study of sensory experience—shifted the understandings of feeling from the epistemology of sentiment to the phenomenological terrain of lived experience. Through analyses of medical case studies, spirit photographs, perfumes, music theory, recipes, and the work of canonical figures ranging from Kate Chopin and Pauline Hopkins to James Weldon Johnson and Emily Dickinson, Fretwell outlines how the five senses became important elements in the biopolitical work of constructing human difference along the lines of race, gender, and ability. In its entanglement with social difference, psychophysics contributed to the racialization of aesthetics while sketching out possibilities for alternate modes of being over and against the figure of the bourgeois liberal individual. Although psychophysics has largely been forgotten, Fretwell demonstrates that its importance to shaping social order through scientific notions of sensation is central to contemporary theories of new materialism, posthumanism, aesthetics, and affect theory.

The Paris Commune

The Paris Commune
Author: Carolyn J. Eichner
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2022-03-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1978827687

The Paris Commune, France's revolutionary civil war, rocked the nineteenth century and shaped the twentieth. A pivotal moment in history, it is the linchpin between revolutionary pasts and futures and as the crucible allowing alternate possibilities. Upending hierarchies, the Commune became a touchstone for subsequent revolutionary and radical social movements.

Food and Literature

Food and Literature
Author: Gitanjali G. Shahani
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 776
Release: 2018-06-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108623441

This volume examines food as subject, form, landscape, polemic, and aesthetic statement in literature. With essays analyzing food and race, queer food, intoxicated poets, avant-garde food writing, vegetarianism, the recipe, the supermarket, food comics, and vampiric eating, this collection brings together fascinating work from leading scholars in the field. It is the first volume to offer an overview of literary food studies and reflect on its origins, developments, and applications. Taking up maxims such as 'we are what we eat', it traces the origins of literary food studies and examines key questions in cultural texts from different global literary traditions. It charts the trajectories of the field in relation to work in critical race studies, postcolonial studies, and children's literature, positing an omnivorous method for the field at large.