History Commons^™

The Theoretical Status Of The Concept Of Civilization, Roger W. Wescott

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper may be regarded as an effort to answer some questions concerning the conceptualization of civilization.

1. Whether or not concepts are essentially verbal, is the concept of civilization primarily denotative (referential) or connotative (emotive) in meaning?

2. If the concept of civilization is primarily emotive, is its emotive force predominantly laudatory or derogatory in effect?

3. When the concept of civilization is derogatory, is it decadence or outdatedness that is primarily derogated?

4. If the concept of civilization is primarily denotative, is its denotation primarily abstract (referring to culture and associated mentifacts) or primarily concrete (referring to people …

Lisa Campbell, Lisa Campbell, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Lisa Campbell, project manager for the non-profit Do Your Part Refugee Community Center in Greece. Lisa combined efforts with multiple organizations to better the lives of refugees in the Delisi, Greece area. Lisa discusses the evolution of the growing refugee crisis and the millions who flee to Greece and Turkey.

Symbolism Of Temple Gates In Ancient Israel, Talitha Hart

Studia Antiqua

The gates of the city and the temple establish boundaries between inner and outer space, while also allowing access to an area that is clearly separated from its surroundings. Throughout ancient Israel, the city gate was seen as representing economic activity, belonging, justice, and strength. I would argue that the gate of the temple represented many of the same things and was seen in a similar way. I have decided to include the tabernacle, as well as both Solomon’s and Herod’s temples, in this analysis, as they seem to have been seen in a similar light even if they were …

Chiming The Hours Of History: The Historiosophy Of Pitirim A. Sorokin As A Spring Of His Integralistic Sociocultural Paradigm, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

The purpose here is to present an original rethinking of the genesis, evolution, essence, role, place, and significance of the philosophical and historical views of the great Russian and American philosopher, sociologist and educator Pitirim A. Sorokin. In addition, an attempt will be made to determine their place and role in his scholarly work, as well as in the world’s treasury of the highest achievements of the human spirit.

Intervention And Reinvention: Rethinking Airport Amenities, Jens Vange

The Bridge

Over the past eight years, I’ve had the rare opportunity to explore in excruciating detail one of the most mundane spaces that most of us have experienced: airport restrooms. My immigration experience influenced the outcome of this exploration. My father, erik Vange, immigrated to the US from Denmark during World War II and never moved back. My mom, Lissi, and my sister, Katrine, came over about ten years later. They settled in the Chicago area, and after a few years my parents decided to adopt a child from Denmark. Fortunately, that turned out to be me. I immigrated to the …

Nicole Ludwig, Tsos, Nicole Ludwig

TSOS Interview Gallery

In September 2016, Nicole Ludwig led a group of her neighbors in Germany to assist newly-arrived Syrian and Afghani refugees. The volunteers collected clothing and toys, organized activities and field trips for the refugee children, and taught them German. Later, the volunteers offered homework support and led library reading groups. For the adult refugees, the volunteers provided cultural assimilation instruction and cooking classes. While there were occasional challenges to working together, the volunteers and refugees fostered a collaborative system and even hosted a Christmas party, during which one elderly Syrian man said, “This is one of the best memories I …

Quigley's Model As A Model Model, Matthew Melko

Comparative Civilizations Review

Joseph Drew, editor-in-chief of the Comparative Civilizations Review, has updated and edited a paper from the early nineteen seventies composed by noted scholar and past president of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilization, Dr. Matthew Melko. In it, Dr. Melko advances the proposition that the best model for the study of civilizations -- exemplified by the model proposed by Dr. Carroll Quigley which advances a holistic method -- is the comparative study of civilizations. According to the paper, this model along with similar ones is the best avenue to study inter-civilizational connections. Another way noted by the …

Comparative And Civilizational Perspectives In The Social Sciences And Humanities: An Inventory And Statement, Benjamin Nelson, Vytautas Kavolis

Comparative Civilizations Review

The editor-in-chief of the Comparative Civilization Review, Joseph Drew, has updated and edited this article by two noted scholars and early presidents of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations. In this paper, written in the early nineteen seventies, Benjamin Nelson and Vytautas Kavolis, the first two presidents after the association’s relocation to the United States, present the basic philosophy of the association. One approach is in the study of comparative civilizations, the study of different cultures and societies which they place on the lower form of their encompassing “horizons approach.” The horizons approach seeks a more far-reaching …

A Danish Lad In America, Fred Delcomyn

The Bridge

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So said L.P. Hartley in The Go-Between (1953). Looking back on myself as a young immigrant child in Detroit at mid-century, the phrase seems especially apt. In my past I was quite literally in a foreign country.

Growing Up In Junction City, Oregon. A Memoir., Lois Christiansen Eagleton

The Bridge

I grew up in a Danish world in America. It seemed that all of my relatives and most of our family friends were Danes. Though my parents did not speak much Danish at home, mainly because their families had come from different parts of Denmark and they could not agree on pronunciation, I learned when I went to college that I had a few Danish words in my vocabulary that I had no idea were not English.

A Girl In Two Worlds, Meryem Sert

The Bridge

It is evening in Allerød. I am sitting here by the window, trying to write a little before I go to sleep. In front of me are two photos that were taken only a few months apart.

One photo is of an eight-year-old girl with bare feet, dressed in a long skirt and head scarf. She is standing in the middle of a flock of sheep in front of a low house built of clay and stone. The other photo shows the same girl, taken in front of a red, high-rise apartment with a lot of cars around. She is …

'Det Ny Fra Thy': Historical Innovation In A Peripheral Place, Poul Houe

The Bridge

When we say in English that a certain innovation "takes place" or in Danish: finder sted, which means literally, "finds place" -both linguistic idioms, "takes" or "finds" place, suggest that the role of place is not accidental. This is obviously pivotal in geography, but also in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and a host of cultural studies, sometimes in the form of "mental geography." Recent Danish book titles suggest as much: Dan Ringgaard's Stedssans (Sense of Place), Anne-Marie Mai's Hvor litteraturen finder sted (Where literature Takes Place) in 3 volumes, and Ringgaard & Mai's anthology Sted (Place).

A Journey To Denmark In 1928, Anton Gravesen

The Bridge

It is now just 3 months ago that I packed my valise and said goodbye to Askov to make a journey to Denmark. It was with some mixed feelings. Half my life I have lived here and my other half over there in the old country.

On Danish-American Cultural Identity, Signe Sloth

The Bridge

In 1967 an article was published which kick-started a discussion that is still going on among sociologists today. The subject of the article is American civil religion and the writer is the American sociologist Robert Bellah who claims that every nation and every people has a religious self-understanding. He advocates an American civil religion that is separated from other denominations and established religious institutions, but just like them demands recognition and understanding. Bellah defines this Civil Religion as " ... A genuine apprehension of universal and transcendental religious reality as seen in or . . . as revealed through the …

Remembrances: Early Years By The River: Growing Up In The Junction City Danish Community, 1904-2, Arnold N. Bodtker

The Bridge

I was born December 5, 1904, in Junction City, Oregon, on the farm, which later will be referred to as the "lower place." Quite often my father called it "Sibirien." (This is the Danish word for Siberia.) My memories from that place, where I lived my first five years, are spotty now, but nevertheless vivid

Grundtvigian Danish-Americans - A Story Of Preservation And Renewal Of Cultural And Religious Traditions, Henrik Bredmose Simonsen

The Bridge

grant from the Grundtvig Centre at Aarhus University enabled me in 2010 to visit several small towns in the American Midwest, where Grundtvigian institutions and traditions have played and still play a role. The trip was part of the research project "Integration, Identity and Narrative among Grundtvigian Danish-Americans," which Skanderborg Museum launched in 2009.

Politics And Culture At The Jacobean Court: The Role Of Queen Anna Of Denmark, Courtney Erin Thomas

Quidditas

Until recently, analyses of the Jacobean court marginalized the important role played by James I and VI’s queen consort, Anna of Denmark. While historians and literary critics now acknowledge that Anna was a key player in patronage networks and artistic circles at the time, the extent of her political involvement remains largely unexplored in favor of portraying her solely as a cultural figure. This essay seeks to examine the connections between Anna’s cultural and political activities and suggests that, by viewing Anna’s involvements thorough a dichotomous lens as being either political or cultural, a truly textured and nuanced understanding of …

Whose Memory Is It After All?, Inger M. Olsen

The Bridge

The EU (European Union) constitution was issued May 2005 and its preamble states that the writers have "let themselves be inspired by Europe's cultural, religious and humanistic inheritance which is the foundation for the development of the universal values: the individual human being's inviolable and inalienable rights as well as freedom, equality and constitutional state"1 2 The preamble goes on to mention the painful experiences that Europe has undergone and the fact that Europe is once again united. The final note states that Europe "wishes to develop further the public life's democratic and open character and work for peace, justice …

The Greater Challenge: Staying Home Or Emigrating?, Inger Wiehl

The Bridge

This presentation poses the challenge of emigrating versus that of staying home, exemplified by a Southern Jutlander who stayed home during the years of Prussian rule between 1864 and 1920 and one who left for America during those years. It begs the larger question of who endures more, those who leave or those who stay behind, a salient issue underlying all emigration and any significant parting. Put in classical terms: Who faces the greater challenge Odysseus or Penelope? He endures any number of dangers on his way back from Troy; she stays by her loom and keeps home intact for …

N.F.S. Grundtvig's Approach To Christian Community And Civic Responsibility, Mark C. Mattes

The Bridge

A perennial concern of Christian social ethics is the attempt to discern the best paradigm for relating the Christian faith and life to wider culture. H. Richard Niebuhr's typology1 of how Christ relates to culture, i. e., "Christ against culture" (sectarian), "Christ above culture" (Roman Catholic), "Christ transforming culture" (Reformed), "Christ of culture" (liberal Protestant), and "Christ and culture in paradox" (Lutheran) continues to provide a helpful framework in which to understand the role of the Christian ethos in public life. One important interpretation of this latter type, "Christ and culture in paradox" is that of the nineteenth century Danish …

Grundtvig' S Relevance Today: The Current Debate, Henrik Wiegh Poulsen

The Bridge

Hardly any individual has meant more to Denmark and the Danes than Grundtvig. But lately he has suffered a fall from grace in public opinion. Why is this and what does it mean to Grundtvig and to Danish society?

Defining An Immigrant, Helle Mathiasen

The Bridge

Before emigrating in August 1965, I had already experienced America while a child living in Denmark. My first American memory is the smell of Wrigley's Doublement gum. I also remember the green gum package containing the thin, shiny silver paper with the jagged edge you had to remove in order to touch the delectable candy. For me, as a child, chewing gum was America. I was born in Vangede in 1940, the year the Germans invaded Denmark. During much of the five-year Nazi Occupation, our family lived in Sydhavnen, in Copenhagen, on Sjcel0r Boulevard number 3, in a onebedroom apartment. …

Comments And Announcements, Lukas F. Burckhardt

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The Swiss General Strike of 1918

Lukas F. Burckhardt, Bern

Review Essay: Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies And The Body Politic: Discourses Of Social Pathology In Early Modern England, Julian Yates

Quidditas

Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. xi + 197 pp. $64.95. ISBN 0-521-59405-7.

Book Review: The New Switzerland Problems And Policies, Nicole Butz

Swiss American Historical Society Review

This volume, edited by Rolf Kieser and Kurt R. Spillmann, consists of twentyeight essays written by a group of Swiss scholars and officials. Originally intended as a new edition of the 1978 volume Modern Switzerland (edited by J. Murray Luck, Lukas F. Burckhardt, and Hans Haug), The New Switzerland nonetheless differs significantly in content and perspective from its earlier counterpart. As noted by the editors in the preface, the book does not attempt to provide its readers with a comprehensive account of Switzerland; rather, it seeks to inform a broad international audience through "a discussion of the present and future …

Review Essay: Frantzen, Allen J. And John D. Niles, Eds. Anglo-Saxonism And The Construction Of Social Identity, Peter Richardson

Quidditas

Frantzen, Allen J., and John D. Niles, eds. Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 1997. 242 pp., illustrations. $49.95.

Memories From A Danish American Parsonage, Bodil S. Sorensen

The Bridge

Those of us who grew up in the Danish-American

colonies of the 30' s and 40' s experienced a life that has

now disappeared. It was a rich and unique life. It was a

time of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation immigrants adjusting

to the American culture and at the same time cherishing

their particular brand of Danish heritage.

Identifying Danish-American Folklife, Gregory Hansen

The Bridge

Danish-American ethnicity has traditionally been studied by examining the literature, religion, social and educational institutions, and business enterprises of Danes in America. In general researchers have looked to Fine Arts and Culture to understand the Danish ethnic identity. But examining only Culture and Art yields an incomplete understanding of culture and art. Danish ethnic culture in America consists primarily of the non-elitist traditions and arts of individuals' everyday lives rather than the contributions of the elite, and the discipline of folklore can provide a more complete concept of Danish heritage. Folklife studies involve the stages of identifying, documenting, interpreting, and …

Goals And Objectives Of The Danish American Heritage Society

The Bridge

To promote an interest in Danish American contributions to American life.

To encourage research in the life and culture of Danish Americans. To serve as an agency for the publication of studies of Danish American contributions to American life.

To provide a means of communication and education for individuals interested in the activities of Danish Americans.

The Travels Abroad Of H. C. Andersen, Don Mowatt

The Bridge

A complete appreciation of Hans Christian Andersen has always been limited to Danish-speaking readers because so much of his private life is most clearly revealed in his letters, diaries, and travel books which remain largely untranslated into English. There is a handful of exceptions, the majority of which are mid-nineteenth century translations from England.