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Christina Briola

Famous People Painting "Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante" - 9 views

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    Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante. Wow!!
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    I have created a very successful lesson/activity around this painting. The details are as follows. This window has this year's assignment. The next reply has the previous years. Advice: WHAP Review Activity: The Twittering Masses Review activity (mostly 1914- and East Asia) Description - I previously set up 103 discussions on turnitin.com for this lesson so they post into that person's discussion board and all replies are kept under the initial post. This year they posted on our classes Ning.com in the discussion forum. Grading is also difficult - Since not every one will have the same amount of replies - people are more likely to write to Hitler than Cui Jian for instance. So, I am grading the posts holistically out of 10 (I often only have 100-200 points in a quarter, so for instance a test might only be worth 40 points). I have students use a heading that states who [character] is tweeting what topic they are focusing on and who they are writing to. I would be interested in feedback or improvements people think they can make on this lesson - should I use Moodle, [Again, I have switched to Ning.com] etc.? Many thanks. And you can add or subtract people as you wish, so we have actually added Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, Stephen Biko, and Emiliano Zapata to our role play and taken the painters (of this painting) out of the role play - Write up for students: Go to http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1162771/The-Internet-sensation-dinner-party-painting-103-historical-guests--spot.html#comments to see who all these individuals are, in color. The rules: You will imagine that each of the historical actors above has access to twitter, the expanded edition, 140 words as compared to 140 characters, to communicate to the other guests present. You will choose six of them (from my list below - my list is the final list - some people pictured have been replaced) to role-play in the "Twittering Masses." As your historical
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    See previous post for advice. This is how I set it up the first two years without specific WHAP content or themes: The rules: You will imagine that each of the historical actors above has access to twitter, the expanded edition, to communicate to the other guests present. You will choose up to four (at least three) of them to role play in the "Twittering Masses" role play. As your historical person, during the Twittering Masses role play you will write, "tweet," at least four other persons. Two of the people should be in close proximity to you based on the painting above. Another tweet should go to the person you feel closest to (not by proximity) at the party - this could be based on ideology (MLK Jr. and Gandhi), background (Tagore and Gandhi), lifestyle (Gandhi and Mother Theresa), etc. Explain in your tweet why you are writing them. The other tweet should go to the person you see as most opposed, or farthest from you - Gandhi and Hitler or Gandhi and Gates or Gandhi and Churchill - in this tweet you should either try to bridge the gap between your differences or explain why the person is wrong in their beliefs. If you have only three guests - you will need to make 5 initial tweets. You will respond to each initial tweet. Then who knows . . . All tweets should have some connection to WHAP content or themes. You may want to comment on the surroundings or other guests . . .
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    I would love comments as to the posts above. Something similar I do is written up here: http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/7.3/gregg.html
Ed Webb

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.
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  • Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled "Advancing American Art", with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: "I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash." The tour had to be cancelled.
  • This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy's hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s.
  • If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.
  • Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another
  • As president of what he called "Mummy's museum", Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called "free enterprise painting"). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organise and curate most of its important art shows. The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Paley, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members' board of the museum's International Programme. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency's wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA's International Organisations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.
  • "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."
  • Would Abstract Expressionism have been the dominant art movement of the post-war years without this patronage? The answer is probably yes. Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that when you look at an Abstract Expressionist painting you are being duped by the CIA. But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries. For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded.
David Hilton

Documents Related to the History of International Relations, prior to 1914 - 1 views

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    A comprehensive list of links to documents on all periods of history, mainly focussed on the West. Seeings this links to all sorts of sites there will probably be a few dead links but it purports to link to documents and is maintained out of a university so should be useful for research and study.
Carrie Kotcho

Teach the Gold Rush with Objects from the Smithsonian - 7 views

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    Van Valen's Gold Rush Journey -- encourages 6th - 8th graders to learn what life was like during the gold rush by investigating the journal of Alex Van Valen, a man who set sail in 1849 to stake his claim in the California gold fields. The website includes a rich set of primary sources to explore and analyze, an interactive guide where students can record, save and print their findings, as well as a teacher's guide.
puzznbuzzus

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...

english quiz online

started by puzznbuzzus on 17 Feb 17 no follow-up yet
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