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Estonia and the Estonians provides the first compendious survey in any language of Estonian history, from prehistoric times to the twenty-first century. Estonia's strategic geopolitical location—a crossroads where the major powers of northeastern Europe have struggled for influence—and the small number of ethnic Estonians are crucial factors that have shaped the history of the area and its inhabitants. The book emphasizes the period since the mid-nineteenth century, when a national movement calling for Estonian cultural and political autonomy began to emerge. During the two world wars, Estonia gained and lost political self-determination. Yet a modern Estonian culture was firmly established, and a strong sense of national identity survived the Soviet era.
The poem Kalevipoeg, over 19,000 lines in length, was composed by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882) on the basis on folklore material. It was published in an Estonian-German bilingual edition in six instalments between 1857 and 1861; it went on to become the Estonian national epic. This first English-language monograph on the Kalevipoeg sheds light on various aspects of the emergence, creation and reception of the text. The first chapter sketches the objectives of the book and gives a short summary of the contents of the twenty tales of the epic, while the second chapter treats the significance of the epic against the cultural background of nineteenth-century Estonia. The third cha...
Are the arguments of the Frankfurt School still relevant? Modern Culture and Critical Theory investigates this question in the context of important issues in contemporary cultural politics: neoconservatism and new social movements, discontents with modernity and debates on postmodernism, the political hegemony of Ronald Reagan, and the cultural hegemony of structuralism and poststructuralism. Russell Berman thoughtfully explores the theories of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Foucault and their relevance to both historical and contemporary issues in literature, politics, and the arts.
In this updated edition of their renowned The Baltic States, Romuald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera bring the story of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia up to the 1990s. The authors describe and analyze how the Baltic nations survived fifty years of social disruption, language discrimination, and Russian colonialism. The nations' histories are fully integrated and compared, and some notable differences between them are pointed out. With two new chapters, a revised preface, and an appendix on the end of Soviet domination, this expanded study covers a tumultuous period of political, economic, cultural, and ecological reform.
Hanson (American studies, U. of New Mexico) offers an broad overview of cheerleading and its place in American culture, looking at the cheerleader as a symbol invested with both negative and positive values. She touches on issues such as the social context of the institutionalization and adult control of cheerleading; the changing patterns of age, class, and gender of participants; and the development of cheerleading in professional sports in the 1960s. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Ekphrasis is the art of describing works of art, the verbal representation of visual representation. Profoundly ambivalent, ekphrastic poetry celebrates the power of the silent image even as it tries to circumscribe that power with the authority of the word. Over the ages its practitioners have created a museum of words about real and imaginary paintings and sculptures. In the first book ever to explore this museum, James Heffernan argues that ekphrasis stages a battle for mastery between the image and the word. Moving from the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Dante to contemporary American poetry, this book treats the history of struggle between rival systems of representation. Readable and well illustrated, this study of how poets have represented painting and sculpture is a major contribution to our understanding of the relation between the arts.
Known for over thirty years in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the music of Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (born 1930) was not heard in the West until the 1990s. Tormis has written more than 200 choral works, an opera, a ballet/cantata, thirty film scores, vocal and instrumental chamber music, solo songs, and several orchestral pieces. Educated at the Tallinn and Moscow Conservatories, Tormis has integrated the techniques of 20th-century art music with the melodies of the regilaul or ancient Estonian folksong.Ancient Song Recovered: The Life and Music of Veljo Tormis is the first book in a Western language about a master of 20th-century choral music. The book includes chapters on Estoni...
This book of thirteen conversations introduces us to the life of an exceptional person—theatre critic, Germanist, and long-time chair of the Open Lithuania Fund board—Irena Veisaitė. The dialogue between Lithuanian historian Aurimas Švedas and a woman who reflects deeply on her experiences reveals both one individual’s historically dramatic life and the fate of Europe and Lithuania in the twentieth century. Through the complementary lenses of history and memory, we confront with Veisaitė the horrific events of the Holocaust, which brought about the end of the Lithuanian Jewish world. We also meet an array of world-class cultural figures, see fragments of legendary theatre performanc...
A study probing the ambiguities of German nationhood. Berman takes a theoretical perspective of cultural studies, exploring such themes as: the constitution of nationhood; what holds a citizenry together; and history's role in providing a framework for current identities and institutions.