History Commons^™

Mapping The Theaters Of Brooklyn's Past (1825-1925): A Gis Project, Elena Shefsky

Publications and Research

Despite its rich performance culture, Brooklyn remains underrepresented in theater history, eclipsed in fame by the well-known theaters of Manhattan. One of the most populous areas in America, Brooklyn has been an artistic home to actors, playwrights, directors, and impresarios for centuries. That said, there is a dearth of accessible information and scholarship on Brooklyn theaters. My objective was to update an ongoing mapping project, The City Performs, to include information and images of theater buildings from Brooklyn. The project is an interactive, open-source digital map that uses ArcGIS software to georeference data about NYC theaters. I collected data …

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

A Call For The Library Community To Deploy Best Practices Toward A Database For Biocultural Knowledge Relating To Climate Change, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Abstract

Purpose – In this paper, a call to the library and information science community to support documentation and conservation of cultural and biocultural heritage has been presented.

Design/methodology/approach – Based in existing Literature, this proposal is generative and descriptive— rather than prescriptive—regarding precisely how libraries should collaborate to employ technical and ethical best practices to provide access to vital data, research and cultural narratives relating to climate.

Findings – COVID-19 and climate destruction signal urgent global challenges. Library best practices are positioned to respond to climate change. Literature indicates how libraries preserve, share and cross-link cultural and scientific knowledge. …

Using Monuments To Teach About Racism, Colonialism, And Sexism, Susan Phillip

Publications and Research

This chapter examines how an interdisciplinary high-impact practice approach to teaching and learning using selected contested monuments can reveal intersections of racism, colonialism, and sexism, and lay the foundation for students’ civic engagement. In place-based and virtual experiences, students observe and investigate local and national monuments, integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines, including history, psychology, art, culture, and tourism. Students make critical analyses about how monuments reveal power relationships in our society. Students from various disciplines explore the origin of contested monuments, the evolving national and local debates around them, and their effect on students’ learning to evaluate historical, contemporary, and …

Cuneiform And The Rise Of Early Alphabets In The Greater Arabian Peninsula: A Visual Investigation, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

Scholars trace the roots of most historical and modern alphabets in the Near East and Europe, including Arabic and Latin, to a single obscure script, namely the Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite script. This presumed script was attested by Western scholars in the early 20^th Century following the discovery in 1905-06 of a few, very short graffiti inscriptions at “Serabit el-Khadim” in the Sinai Peninsula and the subsequent discovery in 1999 of a few similar ones at “Wadi el-Hol” in the middle of Egypt. According to these scholars, Proto-Sinaitic was derived from the Egyptian Hieroglyphs writing system between 18^th-15 …

Silent Protest And The Art Of Paper Folding: The Golden Venture Paper Sculptures At The Museum Of Chinese In America, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

Housed in the Museum of Chinese in America is the Fly to Freedom collection of paper art, which were produced by a traditional folk method of Chinese paper folding. The 123 paper works were created by detainees of the Golden Venture, a freighter used to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the U.S. On the evening of June 6, 1993, the ship ran aground off the Rockaways in New York City and nearly 300 migrants, gaunt from the four-month ordeal at sea, poured out of the cramped windowless hold of the vessel. Several drowned that night, a few escaped, but the majority …

Robot Saints, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

In the Middle Ages, articulating religious figures like wooden Deposition crucifixes and ambulatory saints were tools for devotion, techno-mythological objects that distilled the wonders of engineering and holiness. Robots are gestures toward immortality, created in the face of the undeniable fact and experience of the ongoing decay of our fleshy bodies. Both like and unlike human beings, robots and androids occupy a nebulous perceptual realm between life and death, animation and inanimation. Masahiro Mori called this in-between space the “uncanny valley.” In this essay I argue that unlike a modern person apprehending an android (the uncanny human-like object that resides …

On The Origin And Future Of Poetry: Notes Towards An Investigation, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

An exploration on the historical and material conditions that allowed the emergence of metaphors and poetry alongside language. This article analyzes the historical relation between poetry and technology across history. It discusses the so-called ontological crisis of poetry and opens the conversation on its future.

Reading With The Grain: On Vin Nardizzi’S Wooden Os: Shakespeare’S Theatres And England’S Trees, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Preserving The Historic Garden Suburb: Case Studies From London And New York, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

The garden city or garden suburb was a response to the social and environmental ills of cities at the turn of the twentieth century. Letchworth Garden City, Hampstead Garden Suburb, and Welwyn Garden City were built outside London in the early 1900s, and each remains a highly desirable place of residence today. From the start, each was tightly regulated, and remains so a century later. By protecting the appearance and enhancing property values, the strict application of historic preservation principles contribute to the long-term sustainability of each place. Similar garden suburbs were built in the borough of Queens in New …

On The Social Construction Of Hellenism Cold War Narratives Of Modernity, Development And Democracy For Greece, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

Hellenism is one of those overarching, ever-changing narratives always subject to historical circumstances, intellectual fashions and political needs. Conversely, it is fraught with meaning and conditioning powers, enabling and constraining imagination and practical life. In this essay I tease out the hold that the idea of Hellas has had on post-war Greece and I explore the ways in which the American anti-communist rhetoric and discussions about political and economic stabilization appropriated and rearticulated Hellenism. Central to this history of transformations are the archaeologists; the archaeologists as intellectuals, as producers of culture who, while stepping in and out of their disciplinary …

The Socialist Design: Urban Dilemmas In Postwar Europe And The Soviet Union, Elidor Mehilli

Publications and Research

Taking a cue from two books—Stephen Bittner’s account of the “many lives” of the Soviet Thaw and Greg Castillo’s study of the Cold War as a series of battles in design and the domestic sphere—as well as a recent explosion of interest among historians in the Khrushchev era, “spatial history,” material culture, and East–West exchanges, this article addresses the paradoxes of the Thaw as exemplified in urban form. It argues for the interconnected nature of domestic, international, and Eastern bloc- level dynamics by viewing processes of the Thaw simultaneously from the angles of neighborhood, city, and empire. These angles capture …

William Henry Aspinwall (1807-1875), Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

William Henry Aspinwall (1807-1875) was a 19th century New York City "merchant prince."

Review Of 1900: Art At The Crossroads, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

There is probably little doubt that the fissure between "high" and "low" culture is more conspicuous nowadays than it ever was. Clement Greenberg, that dashing arbiter of contemporary art, had already sensed it in 1939 when he wrote the seminal essay quoted above, as Adorno also perceived it decades before him. Their foreboding premonitions, however, could not hinder the relentless success of popular culture and the retreat of so-called high art into the safe harbors of the university campus, the museum, and the private sphere.

Villas On The Hudson: An Architectural And Biographical Examination, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

A study of Villas on the Hudson: A Collection of Photo-Lithographs of Thirty-One Country Residences (D. Appleton & Co., 1860) depicts floor plans and views of stately homes of 19^th century country gentlemen that were located in today's upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester County, Dutchess County, and even Hoboken, NJ. When published, architecture was in its infancy as a profession and we see representative works of A.J. Davis, J.C Wells, T.R. Jackson and D. Lienau, and others. The accomplishments and interests of the villa’s owners are discussed; and the current status and use of the surviving eleven villas are …

The "Llibre De Franqueses I Privilegis Del Regne De Mallorca": A Source Of Music Iconography, Antoni Pizà, Ramon Rosselló

Publications and Research

The Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca of Palma de Mallorca, Spain, holds numerous collections of manuscripts that have been assembled at random regardless of their unity in subject or time period. The codices kept at the Arxiu comprise many different types of documents whose provenance and compilation history is yet to be determined. One of the most valuable among these codices is the Llibre de franqueses i privilegis del Regne de Mallorca (Codex 1), also known as Códice de los Reyes.