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Jacques-mile Ruhlmann, Pierre Chareau, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Charlotte Perriand, Eileen Gray: together these designers and their contemporaries pioneered the look of the modern French interior during the 1920s. Their use of sumptuous materials, rich jewel tones, intricate geometric patterns, and complex and varied textures has made this work a lasting favorite among interior designers, architects, and their clients. When it first appeared, the got moderne, or modern taste, was marketed through limited-edition portfolios containing unbound drawings, printed in full color using a traditional process called pochoir. Created in an era before color photography, the vivid gouache and watercolor d...
"This collection of essays revisits gender and urban modernity in nineteenth-century Paris in the wake of changes to the fabric of the city and social life. In rethinking the figure of the flâneur, the contributors apply the most current thinking in literature and urban studies to an examination of visual culture of the period, including painting, caricature, illustrated magazines, and posters. Using a variety of approaches, the collection re-examines the long-held belief that life in Paris was divided according to strict gender norms, with men free to roam in public space while women were restricted to the privacy of the domestic sphere." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0743/2007533305-d.html.
The War Inside is a groundbreaking history of the contribution of British psychoanalysis to the making of social democracy, childhood, and the family during World War II and the postwar reconstruction. Psychoanalysts informed understandings not only of individuals, but also of broader political questions. By asserting a link between a real 'war outside' and an emotional 'war inside', psychoanalysts contributed to an increased state responsibility for citizens' mental health. They made understanding children and the mother-child relationship key to the successful creation of a democratic citizenry. Using rich archival sources, the book revises the common view of psychoanalysis as an elite discipline by taking it out of the clinic and into the war nursery, the juvenile court, the state welfare committee, and the children's hospital. It traces the work of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Freud in response to total war and explores its broad postwar effects on British society.
This volume extends recent debates on the politics of consumption, by focusing on organizations of consumers themselves who have chosen to speak for all consumers, and similar such bodies of experts which act on behalf of consumers. The book pays particular attention to specific moments in consumer mobilization and expertise, capturing the range of types of expert consumers across the twentieth century, from ethical consumer groups at the beginning, to intellectuals, housewives, economists and public officials.
Plastic Madonnas, packaged holy tours, and biblical theme parks can arouse discomfort, laughter, and even revulsion in religious believers and nonbelievers alike. Scholars, too, often see the intermingling of religion and commerce as a corruption of true spirituality. Suzanne K. Kaufman challenges these assumptions in her examination of the Lourdes pilgrimage in late nineteenth-century France.Consuming Visions offers new ways to interpret material forms of worship, female piety, and modern commercial culture. Kaufman argues that the melding of traditional pilgrimage activities with a newly developing mass culture produced fresh expressions of popular faith. For the devout women of humble ori...
This cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship discusses the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. The work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the European and national crises.
"A powerful book on caste, a subject that has dramatic importance not only for the history of democracy in modern India, but for the general discussion on the interferences of social inequalities and cultural exclusions. The Caste Question goes beyond the usual antitheses of localism and globalism, and illustrates a decisive notion of intensive universality."—Etienne Balibar "A sustained and probing analysis of the modern history of caste in Western India, connecting issues of gender, personhood, property, and politics to facts of oppression and inequality. This is the most politically and theoretically engaged book on caste to have come out in a long time."—Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Habitations of Modernity "A profound reflection, at once historically rich and theoretically nuanced, on the nature of political modernity itself."—John Comaroff, co-author (with Jean Comaroff) of Of Revelation and Revolution "Rao is entirely convincing in this brilliant and audacious re-evaluation of political modernity in India through the perspective of anti-caste struggles."—Mrinalini Sinha, author of Specters of Mother India: The Global Re-Structuring of an Empire
This history of Paris in 1919 explores the global implications of French political activism at the end of World War I.
A feminist analysis of the "cinema of uncertainty" through an examination of the crime serials of Louis Feuillade and the work of actress Musidora. The crime serials by French filmmaker Louis Feuillade provide a unique point of departure for film studies, presenting modes rarely examined within early cinematic paradigms. Made during 1913 to 1920, the series of six films share not only a consistency of narrative structure and style but also a progressive revelation of the criminal threat—a dislocation of both cinematic and ideological subjectivity—as it shifts realms of social, cultural, and aesthetic disturbance. Feuillade’s work raises significant questions of cinema authorship, film ...
Stories of House and Home is a social and cultural history of the massive construction campaign that Khrushchev instituted in 1957 to resolve the housing crisis in the Soviet Union and to provide each family its own apartment. Decent housing was deemed the key to a healthy, productive home life, which was essential to the realization of socialist collectivism. Drawing on archival materials, as well as memoirs, fiction, and the Soviet press, Christine Varga-Harris shows how the many aspects of this enormous state initiative—from neighborhood planning to interior design—sought to alleviate crowded, undignified living conditions and sculpt residents into ideal Soviet citizens. She also deta...