How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today | openDemocracy - 6 views
-
After the war, however, the problem of reintegrating into society both those who had served and those who had lost, and finding a narrative that could contain both, found one answer by an emphasis on the universality of heroism. A British society that has since the 1960s grown increasingly distant from the realities of military service - whilst remaining dedicated to it as a location for fantasy - has been unable to move on from this rhetorical standpoint
-
The war's portrayal has always been shaped by contemporary cultural mores, and commemorative documentaries demonstrate just how much the relationship between the creators and consumers of popular culture has changed over the last fifty years. For the fiftieth anniversary of 1914, the BBC commissioned the twenty-six part series The Great War, based around archive footage and featuring interviews with veterans. There was an authoritative narrative voice, but no presenters. For the eightieth anniversary, it collaborated with an American television company on a six-part series littered with academic talking-heads. For the ninetieth anniversary, it has had a range of TV presenter-celebrities - among them Michael Palin, Dan Snow, Natalie Cassidy and Eamonn Holmes - on a journey of discovery of their families' military connections. These invariably culminate next to graves and memorials in a display of the right kind of televisual emotion at the moment the formula demands and the audience has come to expect. The focus of these programmes - family history as a means of understanding the past - is worthy of note in itself. It is indicative of the dramatic growth of family history as a leisure interest, perhaps in response to the sense of dislocation inherent in modernity
-
The search for family history is usually shaped by modern preconceptions, and as such it seldom results by itself in a deeper understanding of the past. The modern experience of finding someone who shares your surname on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, taking a day trip to France and finding his grave (perhaps with a cathartic tear or few) might increase a person's or family's sense of emotional connection to the war, and may bring other satisfactions. Insofar as it is led not by a direct connection with a loved one, however, but by what television has "taught" as right conduct, it can seldom encourage a more profound appreciation of what the war meant for those who fought it, why they kept fighting, or why they died.
- ...3 more annotations...
Modern art was CIA 'weapon' - World, News - The Independent - 6 views
-
The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
-
in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.
-
The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.
- ...7 more annotations...
Art Project, powered by Google - 8 views
-
Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.
-
Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.
AAAH - 16 views
Is English Language So Popular because of the USA? - 0 views
Americans might tend to inflate the influence of the United States in the history of the spread of English. Before the World Wars, particularly WWII, the US was a bit player on the world stage. The...
A Teacher Made a Hitler Joke in the Classroom. It Tore the School Apart. - The New York... - 4 views
-
The concepts of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” hotly debated on college campuses for years, are now reaching high schools too
-
the question of what high school students should be exposed to, and protected from, feels murkier in 2018. Today’s high school students are more precocious, more politically engaged, more tuned in to their gender identities and nascent sexuality. They are already flooded with uncensored, unedited information, 24 hours a day: What would a safe space even look like for a 16-year-old with an iPhone?
-
At exclusive private schools like Friends, the question is further complicated by the involvement of wealthy parents. As these schools have grown more expensive — Friends costs nearly $50,000 a year — administrators have found themselves trying to balance their own institutional values with the demands of parents who are in a sense high-paying customers. Teachers are increasingly caught between the two.
- ...12 more annotations...
Jefferson Davis' Speech at Jackson, Miss.December 1862 - 0 views
-
ble and clearly defined in the spirit of that declaration which rests the right to govern on the consent of the governed, but because I foresaw that the wickedness of the North would precipitate a war upon us. Those who supposed that the exercise of this right of separation could not produce war, have had cause to be convinced that they had credited their recent associates of the North with a moderation, a sagacity, a morality they did not possess. You have been involved in a war waged for the gratification of the lust of power and of aggrandizement, for your conquest and your subjugation, with a malignant ferocity and with a disregard and a contempt of the usages of civilization, entirely unequalled in history. Such, I have ever warned you, were the characteristics of the Northern people--of those with whom our ancestors entered into a Union of consent, and with whom they formed a constitutional compact. And yet, such was the attachment of our people for that Union, such their devotion to it, that those who desired preparation to be made for the inevitable conflict, were denounced as men who only wished to destroy the Union. After what has happened during the last two years, my only wonder is that we consented to live for so long a time in association with such miscreants, and have loved so much a government rotten to the core. Were it ever to be proposed again to enter into a Union with such a people, I could no more consent to do it than to trust myself in a den of thieves.
-
The issue then being: will you be slaves; will you consent to be robbed of your property; to be reduced to provincial dependence; will you renounce the exercise of those rights with which you were born and which were transmitted to you by your fathers?
History Classes Collaboration Project - 105 views
They're probably a bit young Ginger to interact with the high school history students on the network. It might be a worry if there were misunderstanding or other problems given the age gap. Eventu...
Is History history? - 35 views
I am creating a site you and your students might enjoy and perhaps add to. ahaafoundation.org is an online course in the history of art around the world. You can jump in anywhere. I would love to f...
« First
‹ Previous
41 - 51 of 51
Showing 20▼ items per page