Theatre History Commons^™

Friends Of Musselman Library Newsletter Fall 2014, Musselman Library

Friends of Musselman Library Newsletter

Table of Contents: From the Director: Gettysburgreat: The Campaign for Our College (Robin Wagner); Popular Middle East Series Continues; Letter from Edgar Rice Burroughs Explains Origin of Tarzan's Name; Library Celebration Owl & Nightingale's 100th Anniversary (Chelsea Bucklin '10, Chris Kauffman '92, Elyse Bennett '10); Encore! Owl & Nightingale Players Take Center Stage at Homecoming (Paul Di Salvo '13, Chelsea Bucklin '10, Aliena J. (Fischer) Garnard '93, Kelsey Lamagdeleine '09, Sean Valentine '05); Research Reflections: Shakespeare Folio (Chris Kauffman '92); GettDigital- The Story Continues: Professor Visits Italy and Recreates WWII Photos (Alan Perry, Catherine Perry); Don't Be Antisocial; Obama Awards …

We Are French. Et Anglais Nous Restons., Alison Jane Bowie

Masters Theses

French Canadian playwright Joseph Armand Leclaire (1888-1931) was very well known and respected in his time. Although he wrote over thirty plays, lyrics to several songs and an abundance of political poems, most of his work has been lost and Leclaire himself seems to have been forgotten. Several of his plays were produced at the time they were written, including his 1916 play La petite maîtresse de l'école (later published in 1929 as Le petit maître d'école), but none have been presented postumously nor have any been translated. This M. F. A. thesis presents the first ever translation and …

Nineteenth Century Views On Theater And Drama In English, Rebecca Unetic

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

With the passing of the Licensing Act of 1737 and until its repeal in 1969 the Lord Chamberlain’s office has been legally able to censor any drama to be performed at established theatres in England. However, the 1737 Act left inconsistencies in the definition of censorship and the role of censor. People who were involved in theatre believed the Lord Chamberlain’s office gained too much power from the Act. In the nineteenth century, actors, playwrights and members of Parliament agitated for the reform of the 1737 Licensing Act, which led to the establishment of three special parliamentary committees in 1822-1823, …

Ms-159: Robert Pomponio ’88 Theatre Arts Scrapbook, Chelsea M. Bucklin

All Finding Aids

Robert Pomponio assembled this scrapbook while a student at Gettysburg College in the 1980’s. The scrapbook primarily focuses on the Owl & Nightingale Players production of “Happy End” by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, directed by Emile O. Schmidt in the spring of 1986. It includes production photographs taken by Pomponio, who was a member of the production crew, as well as captions and annotations provided by Pomponio. Also included in the scrapbook are photographs of campus events including performances by The Johnny White & Elite Band on November 1st, 1985, The DB’s in November 1985 and The Neats. Additional …

The Saint Of Llanbadrig: A Contested Dedication, Deborah K.E. Crawford

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

Located on the Isle of Anglesey in northwest Wales, the medieval church of Llanbadrig is the pride of the nearby village of Cemaes, on Cemaes Bay. There is a strong local tradition that the church is dedicated to Patrick, Apostle of the Irish. However, reporting of that dedication has been divided between the patron saint of Ireland and one Padrig ab Alfryd, a saint associated with northern Wales. The issue of the dedication is important to the community of Cemaes. A resolution is also needed for scholarly purposes.

Theater Of War: Booth And Beyond, Valerie N. Merlina

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Lastly, we come upon perhaps the best known actor of the Civil War era, John Wilkes Booth. Of course, the reason memory allows us to recall the name is not because of the merits achieved through his profession, but rather because he murdered the elected executive official – United States President Abraham Lincoln. Booth, a product of a theater family, was a dramatic, eccentric, and impatient being. He wanted the leading roles, did not want to prepare the role, but to simply play the role. His brother, Edwin Booth, a talented poetical performer, one might deduce, did prepare for his …

Theater Of War: Combining Entertainment And Art, Valerie N. Merlina

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Did the theater work to benefit the causes for north or south, dependent upon region? Sautter stated that this phenomenon was less common than many might expect. Many actors stated their neutrality, or as one Civil War era actor said, “I am neither northerner nor southerner.” Still others simply responded to the war by leaving the country. One must consider the “clannish nature” of theater of the time in order to understand how actors could have taken the neutral role during a war of ideals: many actors were born into theater life, therefore did not grow up in any one …

Theatre Of War: A Witness To Love, Tragedy, And Parody, Valerie N. Merlina

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Central to American nineteenth century life was the theater. As the fratricidal fighting of the American Civil War broke out and divided the nation, this centrality remained, and audiences crowded into the theaters. For both north and south, the theater provided an outlet through which Americans could enjoy plays, performances, music, and variety shows that appealed to all social classes of American society. However, in order to understand the operations of theater companies during the war itself, it is first essential to examine the state of the theater as a concept during the mid-nineteenth century, and in the pre-war years. …

Ms-139: Jerome O. Hanson Collection, Chelsea M. Bucklin

All Finding Aids

This collection consists of photograph slides of theatrical productions and projects produced at Gettysburg College and in the town of Gettysburg. The majority of this collection has been digitized and can be accessed upon request to Special Collections.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.

Review Of Subject Stages: Marriage, Theater, And The Law In Early Modern Spain, Gladys Robalino

Modern Language Educator Scholarship

En Subject Stages, Carrión estudia la relación entre las leyes de la España contra reformista del XVI y XVII, el teatro y la institución del matrimonio. Yéndose en contra de la propuesta de José Antonio Maravall de que el teatro de la época era un mecanismo de propaganda de la monarquía absolutista católica, Carrión propone, a través del ejemplo del matrimonio, que varios escenarios públicos—incluyendo el teatro—resistían prescripciones diseñadas por la ideología dominante. Carrión trabaja sobre la premisa de que tanto los espacios legales (cortes judiciales), como los espacios teatrales (escenarios) de la España de la época revelan la existencia …

Editor's Introduction To Pandemic Disease In The Medieval World: Rethinking The Black Death, Monica H. Green

The Medieval Globe

Extraction of the genetic material of the causative organism of plague, Yersinia pestis, from the remains of persons who died during the Black Death has confirmed that pathogen’s role in one of the largest pandemics of human history. This then opens up historical research to investigations based on modern science, which has studied Yersinia pestis from a variety of perspectives, most importantly its evolutionary history and its complex ecology of transmission. The contributors to this special issue argue for the benefits of a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to the many remaining mysteries associated with the plague’s geographical extent, rapid transmission, …

New Science And Old Sources: Why The Ottoman Experience Of Plague Matters, Nükhet Varlık

The Medieval Globe

Reconstructing the Ottoman plague experience is vital to understanding the larger Afro-Eurasian disease zone during the Second Pandemic. This essay deals with two different aspects of this experience. On the one hand, it discusses the historical and historiographical problems that rendered this epidemiological experience mostly invisible to previous scholars of plague. On the other, it reconstructs the empire’s plague ecologies, with particular attention to plague’s persistence, focalization, and transmission. Further, it uses this epidemiological experience to offer new insights and complicate some commonly held assumptions about plague history and its relationship to plague science.

Plague Depopulation And Irrigation Decay In Medieval Egypt, Stuart Borsch

The Medieval Globe

Starting with the Black Death, and continuing over the century and a half that followed, plague depopulation brought about the ruin of Egypt’s irrigation system, the motor of its economy. For many generations, the Egyptians who survived the plague therefore faced a tragic new reality: a transformed landscape and way of life significantly worsened by plague, a situation very different from that of plague survivors in Europe. This article looks at the ways in which this transformation took place. It measures the scale and scope of rural depopulation and explains why it had such a significant impact on the agricultural …

Diagnosis Of A "Plague" Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale, Monica H. Green, Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Wolfgang P. Müller

The Medieval Globe

This brief study examines the genesis of the “misdiagnosis” of a fourteenth- century image that has become a frequently used representation of the Black Death on the Internet and in popular publications. The image in fact depicts another common disease in medieval Europe, leprosy, but was misinterpreted as “plague” because of a labeling error. The error was then magnified because of digital dissemination. This mistake is a reminder that interpretation of cultural products continues to demand the skills and expertise of humanists. Included is a full transcription and translation of the text which the image was originally meant to illustrate: …

Epilogue: A Hypothesis On The East Asian Beginnings Of The Yersinia Pestis Polytomy, Robert Hymes

The Medieval Globe

The work of Cui et al. (2013)—in both dating the polytomy that produced most existing strains of Yersinia pestis and locating its original home to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau—offers a genetically derived specific historical proposition for historians of East and Central Asia to investigate from their own sources. The present article offers the hypothesis that the polytomy manifests itself in the Mongol invasion of the Xia state in the Gansu corridor in the early thirteenth century and continues in the Mongols’ expansion into China and other parts of Eurasia. The hypothesis relies to a considerable extent on work of Cao Shuji …

The Black Death And Its Consequences For The Jewish Community In Tàrrega: Lessons From History And Archeology, Anna Colet, Josep Xavier Muntané I Santiveri, Jordi Ruíz Ventura, Oriol Saula, M. Eulàlia Subirà De Galdàcano, Clara Jáuregui

The Medieval Globe

In 2007, excavations in a suburb of the Catalan town of Tàrrega identified the possible location of the medieval Jewish cemetery. Subsequent excavations confirmed that multiple individuals buried in six communal graves had suffered violent deaths. The present study argues that these communal graves can be connected to a well-documented assault on the Jews of Tàrrega that occurred in 1348: long known as one of the earliest episodes of anti-Jewish violence related to the Black Death, but never before corroborated by physical remains. This study places textual sources, both Christian and Jewish, alongside the recently discovered archeological evidence of the …

The Medieval Globe 1 (2014) - Pandemic Disease In The Medieval World: Rethinking The Black Death, Monica H. Green, Carol Symes

The Medieval Globe

The plague organism (Yersinia pestis) killed an estimated 40% to 60% of all people when it spread rapidly through the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe in the fourteenth century: an event known as the Black Death. Previous research has shown, especially for Western Europe, how population losses then led to structural economic, political, and social changes. But why and how did the pandemic happen in the first place? When and where did it begin? How was it sustained? What was its full geographic extent? And when did it really end?

Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World is …

Review Of The Comedia Of Virginity: Mary And The Politics Of Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater, Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Mirzam Perez

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introducing The Medieval Globe, Carol Symes

The Medieval Globe

The concept of “the medieval” has long been essential to global imperial ventures, national ideologies, and the discourse of modernity. And yet the projects enabled by this powerful construct have essentially hindered investigation of the world’s interconnected territories during a millennium of movement and exchange. The mission of The Medieval Globe is to reclaim this “middle age” and to place it at the center of global studies.

The Black Death And The Future Of The Plague, Michelle Ziegler

The Medieval Globe

This essay summarizes what we know about the spread of Yersinia pestis today, assesses the potential risks of tomorrow, and suggests avenues for future collaboration among scientists and humanists. Plague is both a re-emerging infectious disease and a developed biological weapon, and it can be found in enzootic foci on every inhabited continent except Australia. Studies of the Black Death and successive epidemics can help us to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks (and other pandemics) because analysis of medieval plagues provides a crucial context for modern scientific discoveries and theories. These studies prevent us from stopping at easy answers, …

Taking "Pandemic" Seriously: Making The Black Death Global, Monica H. Green

The Medieval Globe

This essay introduces the inaugural issue of The Medieval Globe, “Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death”. It suggests that the history of the pathogen Yersinia pestis, as it has now been reconstructed by molecular biology, allows for an expanded definition of the Second Plague Pandemic. Historiography of the Black Death has hitherto focused on a limited number of vector and host species, and on Western Europe and those parts of the Islamicate world touching the Mediterranean littoral. Biological considerations suggest the value of a broadened framework, one that encompasses an enlarged range of host species and …

The Anthropology Of Plague: Insights From Bioarcheological Analyses Of Epidemic Cemeteries, Sharon N. Dewitte

The Medieval Globe

Most research on historic plague has relied on documentary evidence, but recently researchers have examined the remains of plague victims to produce a deeper understanding of the disease. Bioarcheological analysis allows the skeletal remains of epidemic victims to bear witness to the contexts of their deaths. This is important for our understanding of the experiences of the vast majority of people who lived in the past, who are not typically included in the historical record. This paper summarizes bioarcheological research on plague, primarily investigations of the Black Death in London (1349–50), emphasizing what anthropology uniquely contributes to plague studies.

Plague Persistence In Western Europe: A Hypothesis, Ann G. Carmichael

The Medieval Globe

Historical sources documenting recurrent plagues of the “Second Pandemic” usually focus on urban epidemic mortality. Instead, plague persists in remote, rural hinterlands: areas less visible in the written sources of late medieval Europe. Plague spreads as fleas move from relatively resistant rodents, which serve as “maintenance hosts,” to an array of more susceptible rural mammals, now called “amplifying hosts.” Using sources relevant to plague in thinly populated Central and Western Alpine regions, this paper postulates that Alpine Europe could have been a region of plague persistence via its population of wild rodents, particularly the Alpine marmot.

Heterogeneous Immunological Landscapes And Medieval Plague: An Invitation To A New Dialogue Between Historians And Immunologists, Fabian Crespo, Matt B. Lawrenz

The Medieval Globe

Efforts to understand the differential mortality caused by plague must account for many factors, including human immune responses. In this essay we are particularly interested in those people who were exposed to the Yersinia pestis pathogen during the Black Death, but who had differing fates—survival or death—that could depend on which individuals (once infected) were able to mount an appropriate immune response as a result of biological, environmental, and social factors. The proposed model suggests that historians of the medieval world could make a significant contribution to the study of human health, and especially the role of human immunology in …

Re-Thinking Paris At The Fin-De-Siècle: A New Vision Of Parisian Musical Culture From The Perspective Of Gabriel Astruc (1854-1938), Cesar A. Leal

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Gabriel Astruc (1864-1938), a French impresario of Jewish background, is mostly known for his collaborative work as an impresario with Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. His role within Parisian musical culture at the fin de siècle, however, was much broader. He was a critic, creator of a leading periodical, producer of musical and circus events, music publisher, and associate of many important cultural figures of his day. Although Astruc has been mentioned in scholarly literature, his multifaceted activities have never been carefully studied.

Following the revisionist initiatives of previous scholars (e.g., Pasler, Huebner, Garafola, Fauser), this project offers …

Temptress Of The Stage: Whither The Widow-Woman?, Kathryn Elizabeth Snyder

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.