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Spiritualism, Summerland, Slavery in the Afterlife

July 30, 2018 by Emily Sosolik

“The Negro Is the Negro Still” How spiritualism grappled with slavery and race in the Civil War era By Emily Sosolik [In the Summerland] all distinctions between [African Americans] and white spirits cease to exist, they then having become as white, beautiful, refined, and intellectual as these. — Spiritualist Eugene Crowell, “The Spirit World: Its Inhabitants, Nature, and Philosophy”[1] The Civil War era produced extraordinary change in nearly every aspect of American life. From the annexation of Texas in 1845 […]

Categories: Article • Tags: civil war, death, religion, slavery, spirituality, US history, US politics

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Bust portrait of a young man representing the nativist ideal of the Know Nothing party, from Harp Week collection of American political prints, 1766-1876

Anti-Immigration Politics Pre Trump

April 24, 2017 by Emily Sosolik

“I Know Nothing”: Faith, Fear, and Politics in Antebellum America By Emily Sosolik Let our opponents torture and distort the truth as they may, no specious reasoning, no political sophistry can alter the fact that those who are constantly laboring to fight down Americanism and Protestantism are enemies of their country, and tories or traitors of their native land. — The Know Nothing Almanac and True Americans’ Manual for 1856 The fear of the other has manifested wildly […]

Categories: Article • Tags: Catholic Church, citizenship, Fourteenth Amendment, immigration, Know-Nothing Party, nativist, naturalization, United States of America, US history, US politics

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Portrait of Marie-Olympe de Gouges, painted by Alexander Kucharsky (1741-1819), private collection

Woman, Wake Up! Know your Rights

November 21, 2016 by Emily Sosolik

The French Revolution, the Declaration, and Olympe de Gouges’s “Rights of Woman” By Emily Sosolik Homme, es-tu capable d’être juste ? C’est une femme qui t’en fait la question ; tu ne lui ôteras pas moins ce droit. Dis-moi ? Qui t’a donné le souverain empire d’opprimer mon sexe ? Ta force ? Tes talents ? (Man, are you capable of being just? It’s a woman who is asking this question; you will, at least, not take this right from her. […]

Categories: Article • Tags: feminism, feminists, France, French Revolution, human rights, women, women's rights, women's studies

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Olive Pierce: Children, Cambridge, Iraq

September 13, 2016 by William Eaton

By您好, yangyang Geng Memory heals the scars of time. Photography documents the wounds. — Michael Ignatieff[1] It requires constant vigilance to see people as they are. — Olive Pierce The Portraits of the Jefferson Park Housing Project in Cambridge and No Easy Roses Olive Pierce was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1925 and died on May 23, 2016. She was a lifelong photographer and political activist. She was educated at Vassar College and, in 1948, she traveled with […]

Categories: Article • Tags: adolescence, childhood, children, girls, Iraq, photography, war

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The Immigration Debate—from the 1920s

August 16, 2016 by Martin Green

Stanching the Flow By Martin Green The emergence of immigration as a major issue worldwide and especially in the presidential campaign—thanks to Donald Trump’s vociferous attack on alleged rapists, drug dealers, and other criminals sneaking across the southern border, to say nothing of the threat posed by terrorists hiding among Moslem refugees—is not, of course, the first time Americans have debated the issue of access to American society by aliens. The early 1920s was the decade in which […]

Categories: Article • Tags: American history, anti-Semitism, Donald Trump, immigrants, immigration

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Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel, Ceiling, Lunette - Aminadab

Michelangelo’s Jews

May 12, 2016 by William Eaton

The Treatment of Jews in Renaissance Rome and on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling By Chantal Sulkow Introduction After the earliest stage of the cleaning of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes in the early 1980s, the lunettes depicting Christ’s ancestors were the first to emerge from beneath centuries’ worth of darkened layers of dirt. (Fig. 1) Michelangelo’s brilliant use of color was not the only revelation; previously obscured details also came to light. One of these was an element of […]

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Does Feminism Need Beyoncé?

March 8, 2016 by William Eaton

By Emily Tobey Ever since the word feminism first appeared in public discourse in the late 1800’s, it has stimulated debate and disagreement about its meaning and purpose. The basic definition of feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality with men. The fundamental tenor of this definition frequently gets lost, however, amidst conflicting views, myths and misconceptions. Nonetheless, from the suffrage movement through the fight for equal pay and reproductive […]

Categories: Article • Tags: African-Americans, Beyonce, celebrity, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, feminism, gender, Jay-Z, Ms. Magazine, music, popular music, women

Monet’s and Loti’s Japanese Spaces

January 13, 2016 by William Eaton

Creating a Contemplation Space for Artistic Creation Pierre Loti’s Essays on Japanese Temple Art as a Key to Claude Monet’s Water Garden By Richard M. Berrong Though there is no evidence that Claude Monet and French novelist Pierre Loti ever met, these almost exact contemporaries developed similarly Impressionist styles.[1] They also, and probably not coincidentally, shared an interest in Japanese art, to the extent that they both incorporated it in significant ways into their homes. Loti’s two essays […]

Categories: Article • Tags: France, garden, Impressionism, Japan, Monet, nineteenth century, Pierre Loti

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Theodor Herzl: Comedy and Politics Mix

November 5, 2015 by William Eaton

Comic Figures in Theodor Herzl’s Zionist Literary Writing By Alex Marshall Known first and foremost as the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) was also author of the pamphlet The Jewish State and, subsequently, a national hero in Israel. However, before his Zionism, he was a well-known literary figure in Vienna. Herzl is generally seen as a serious-minded writer and political leader, whose jokes were limited to either stage comedies with no bearing on Jewish politics, or […]

Categories: Article • Tags: comedy, fiction, Jews, theater, Theodor Herzl, Vienna, Zionism