Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ...
Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits
This page features links to reviews of movies, documentaries and exhibits with a historical theme. Listings are in reverse chronological order. Descriptions are taken directly from the linked publication. If you have articles you think should be listed on the Pop Culture page, please send them to the editor editor@historynewsnetwork.org.
SOURCE: Times (UK) (10-21-08)
The gruff phrase “Komm Frau!” – Come, woman! – still sends shivers down the spines of elderly Germans. It was the command given by Russian soldiers as they prowled Berlin and other bombed-out postwar German cities, searching for women to rape.
The hidden horror of those months is about to be revealed in a new German film, A Woman in Berlin, that is likely to shock the nation, stir resentment against the Russians and provoke a debate about morality in war.
The film is based on a diary written by the German journalist Marta Hillers. She began to scribble it in a dusty cellar on Friday April 20, 1945 – Hitler’s birthday, the last before his suicide ten days later.
Within days of the occupation she had been raped several times by Red Army soldiers, one of many hundreds of thousands of German women abused in this way. It was the crime that no one talked about.
In communist East Germany, where the Soviet Union was hailed as friend and...
The hidden horror of those months is about to be revealed in a new German film, A Woman in Berlin, that is likely to shock the nation, stir resentment against the Russians and provoke a debate about morality in war.
The film is based on a diary written by the German journalist Marta Hillers. She began to scribble it in a dusty cellar on Friday April 20, 1945 – Hitler’s birthday, the last before his suicide ten days later.
Within days of the occupation she had been raped several times by Red Army soldiers, one of many hundreds of thousands of German women abused in this way. It was the crime that no one talked about.
In communist East Germany, where the Soviet Union was hailed as friend and...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 10:36
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SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (10-21-08)
A city lies in charred ruins, empty windows bleak oblongs of light in fragile orphaned walls. It might easily be mistaken for a German city in 1945 but this is Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865. Its tall slivers of brick rising from an ashen wasteland are the remains of factories set alight by the Confederacy as it vacated its capital.
During the American civil war the southern "rebel" states fought to save slavery, and Richmond was their seat of government. Its evacuation was the south's death-blow and the fires in the city's industrial district were started by the rebels themselves to deny anything of military or industrial value to Lincoln's victorious Union. This came after the apocalyptic last months of the war. Atlanta had fallen in September 1864 to General William Tecumseh Sherman, who then decided the best way to finally crush Southern resistance was to march through Georgia, liberating slaves and despoiling estates built on human exploitation. Sherman...
During the American civil war the southern "rebel" states fought to save slavery, and Richmond was their seat of government. Its evacuation was the south's death-blow and the fires in the city's industrial district were started by the rebels themselves to deny anything of military or industrial value to Lincoln's victorious Union. This came after the apocalyptic last months of the war. Atlanta had fallen in September 1864 to General William Tecumseh Sherman, who then decided the best way to finally crush Southern resistance was to march through Georgia, liberating slaves and despoiling estates built on human exploitation. Sherman...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 10:17
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-19-08)
A lost portrait of a young Elizabeth I that was discovered in the attic of a country house has intrigued historians after X-rays revealed that it was painted over an earlier picture of the monarch.
The painting, which had lain unnoticed in the dirty loft for more than a century, depicts the Queen as a pale, pious and austere young woman, and is one of the few pictures to show the 16th century royal in the early years of her reign.
Elizabeth, who is dressed in simple black clothes and clutches a Bible, was believed to have been around 26 when the portrait was painted.
But X-ray scans of the canvas have uncovered an earlier portrait of the monarch, in which she was drawn without the Bible and with a more ostentatious ruff.
"The assumption is that the artist – and we do not know who he is - did an intitial portrait, and either he or the Queen did not like it," said Philip Mould, the London art dealer who owns the work.
The painting, which had lain unnoticed in the dirty loft for more than a century, depicts the Queen as a pale, pious and austere young woman, and is one of the few pictures to show the 16th century royal in the early years of her reign.
Elizabeth, who is dressed in simple black clothes and clutches a Bible, was believed to have been around 26 when the portrait was painted.
But X-ray scans of the canvas have uncovered an earlier portrait of the monarch, in which she was drawn without the Bible and with a more ostentatious ruff.
"The assumption is that the artist – and we do not know who he is - did an intitial portrait, and either he or the Queen did not like it," said Philip Mould, the London art dealer who owns the work.
Monday, October 20, 2008 - 20:30
SOURCE: Houston Chronicle (10-18-08)
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIF. — They read like dispatches from the controversy over Proposition 8, the current ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California.
"Homosexual Marriage?" asks one magazine headline in large white type. Another takes a more aggressive approach: "Let's Push Homophile Marriage," accompanied by an illustration of muscled men in amorous poses.
But a closer look at these magazine covers reveals something rather unexpected. They were published in 1953 and 1963, respectively — decades before same-sex marriage became a national lightning rod, let alone a rallying point for gay rights activists.
Copies of these yellowing periodicals are on display at the ONE Archives Gallery and Museum, a new space in West Hollywood that appears to be the first museum in Southern California solely dedicated to gay history.
The museum — really a micro-museum at 600 square feet — has set a macro goal for itself:...
"Homosexual Marriage?" asks one magazine headline in large white type. Another takes a more aggressive approach: "Let's Push Homophile Marriage," accompanied by an illustration of muscled men in amorous poses.
But a closer look at these magazine covers reveals something rather unexpected. They were published in 1953 and 1963, respectively — decades before same-sex marriage became a national lightning rod, let alone a rallying point for gay rights activists.
Copies of these yellowing periodicals are on display at the ONE Archives Gallery and Museum, a new space in West Hollywood that appears to be the first museum in Southern California solely dedicated to gay history.
The museum — really a micro-museum at 600 square feet — has set a macro goal for itself:...
Monday, October 20, 2008 - 19:14
SOURCE: BBC (10-20-08)
A romantic telling of the life of one of the wives of Islam's prophet has caused controversy among some Muslims - and its publication has been indefinitely postponed in the UK amid fears of a violent reaction. But is The Jewel of Medina actually any good? Blogger Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is one of the few people in Britain to have read it.
The Jewel of Medina is a chest-heaving, brassiere-busting book of outrageously tacky historical romantic fiction.
Some parts of the media are suggesting that this book is at the forefront of defending free speech. The author wants it to reach out to solve our global problems of intercultural dialogue. Between them they had me rolling around on the floor laughing.
The book claims to tell the story of Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, through her own eyes, from the age of six, through adolescence and into adulthood. But although she lives through one of the most dramatic periods of history, the narrative...
The Jewel of Medina is a chest-heaving, brassiere-busting book of outrageously tacky historical romantic fiction.
Some parts of the media are suggesting that this book is at the forefront of defending free speech. The author wants it to reach out to solve our global problems of intercultural dialogue. Between them they had me rolling around on the floor laughing.
The book claims to tell the story of Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, through her own eyes, from the age of six, through adolescence and into adulthood. But although she lives through one of the most dramatic periods of history, the narrative...
Monday, October 20, 2008 - 18:24
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-20-08)
Riches – such as a bust of Charles II by Honoré Pelle, paintings by Old Masters including Sir Peter Paul Rubens and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and one of only two surviving pieces of furniture from the Palace of Versailles from Louis XIV's reign – will be shown at the V&A when the exhibition opens next April.
Baroque has come to be regarded as kitsch in recent years, its seemingly frivolous style bastardised in endless home makeover programmes.
But behind such extreme displays of wealth and power lay "profoundly serious and often political purposes", according to Professor Nigel Llewellyn, who is co-curating the exhibition.
"Absolute rulers" such as Louis XIV had themselves painted in "heroic portraits" to reinforce the cult of their personalities, he said.
Different royal courts would try to outdo each other, not on the battlefield but in the theatre, by staging ever more lavish and complicated...
Baroque has come to be regarded as kitsch in recent years, its seemingly frivolous style bastardised in endless home makeover programmes.
But behind such extreme displays of wealth and power lay "profoundly serious and often political purposes", according to Professor Nigel Llewellyn, who is co-curating the exhibition.
"Absolute rulers" such as Louis XIV had themselves painted in "heroic portraits" to reinforce the cult of their personalities, he said.
Different royal courts would try to outdo each other, not on the battlefield but in the theatre, by staging ever more lavish and complicated...
Monday, October 20, 2008 - 13:27
Monday, October 20, 2008 - 12:25
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-18-08)
Artworks looted by the Nazis during the Second World War and now held in Britain's national museums and galleries are to be handed back to their owners.
The Tate, the British Museum, and the British Library are all known to hold looted items but are currently prevented by law from giving them back to the families that once owned them.
Now the Government has decided to bring in new legislation to allow the artworks to be moved.
Experts have estimated that there could be several hundred artworks or artefacts in British galleries and museums that were plundered from occupied Europe by the Nazis. Many were seized from Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.
The move is expected reignite the debate over the Elgin Marbles, with campaigners seeking their return to Greece likely to claim the new legislation will set a precedent for museums to hand back items with disputed ownership.
The proposed legislation follows a campaign by Andrew Dismore,...
The Tate, the British Museum, and the British Library are all known to hold looted items but are currently prevented by law from giving them back to the families that once owned them.
Now the Government has decided to bring in new legislation to allow the artworks to be moved.
Experts have estimated that there could be several hundred artworks or artefacts in British galleries and museums that were plundered from occupied Europe by the Nazis. Many were seized from Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.
The move is expected reignite the debate over the Elgin Marbles, with campaigners seeking their return to Greece likely to claim the new legislation will set a precedent for museums to hand back items with disputed ownership.
The proposed legislation follows a campaign by Andrew Dismore,...
Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 12:12
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-18-08)
The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great made two extraordinary decisions which changed the world.
Think again: enamel icon with the archangel Michael
The first, in 313, was to end the persecution of Christians and to declare Christianity a legal religion in the Roman empire. The second, in 324, was to found a new city on the site of Byzantium, which he dedicated in 330 and called Constantinople. Today it is the vast city of Istanbul.
Constantinople flourished and by the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great (527-65) it was the Christian capital of a reduced Roman empire. Its rulers aspired to preside over a unified Mediterranean state with a common faith and a humane law code. We call this the Byzantine empire - though they still called it the Roman empire. It survived until 1453 when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks.
Byzantium 330-1453, a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, assesses the effects of Constantine's decisions. It brings back...
Think again: enamel icon with the archangel Michael
The first, in 313, was to end the persecution of Christians and to declare Christianity a legal religion in the Roman empire. The second, in 324, was to found a new city on the site of Byzantium, which he dedicated in 330 and called Constantinople. Today it is the vast city of Istanbul.
Constantinople flourished and by the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great (527-65) it was the Christian capital of a reduced Roman empire. Its rulers aspired to preside over a unified Mediterranean state with a common faith and a humane law code. We call this the Byzantine empire - though they still called it the Roman empire. It survived until 1453 when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks.
Byzantium 330-1453, a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, assesses the effects of Constantine's decisions. It brings back...
Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 12:05
SOURCE: Times (UK) (10-19-08)
A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, completed just months after she came to the throne, has been found in a dusty and dirty condition in a country house in East Sussex.
Elizabeth became queen 450 years ago next month. The picture shows her as a simply dressed woman in her mid-twenties with a pale face. It is a far cry from later portraits where she is depicted in full regalia after defeating the Spanish Armada.
Its discovery is being hailed by historians because only two other portraits of Elizabeth in the first few years of her reign are known to exist. There are many from later in her reign, including 10 in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Even more tantalising is that x-rays of the painting have revealed another, earlier picture of the queen beneath.
“The assumption is that the artist – and we do not know who he is – did an initial portrait, and either he or the queen did not like it,” said Philip Mould, a London art dealer...
Elizabeth became queen 450 years ago next month. The picture shows her as a simply dressed woman in her mid-twenties with a pale face. It is a far cry from later portraits where she is depicted in full regalia after defeating the Spanish Armada.
Its discovery is being hailed by historians because only two other portraits of Elizabeth in the first few years of her reign are known to exist. There are many from later in her reign, including 10 in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Even more tantalising is that x-rays of the painting have revealed another, earlier picture of the queen beneath.
“The assumption is that the artist – and we do not know who he is – did an initial portrait, and either he or the queen did not like it,” said Philip Mould, a London art dealer...
Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 10:02
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (10-19-08)
In one of the 'Newsreel' sections that punctuate their 1934 collaboration Scottish Scene, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Hugh MacDiarmid quote an unidentified writer in the Scots magazine as saying: 'We have had to bear with some tragic attempts at the filming of Scottish history. There was one that dealt with Mary Queen of Scots, where that lady paraded in a Glengarry and a very abbreviated kilt.'
Personally, I have no problem with this, particularly when the modern alternative is Samantha Morton (no relation) in unflattering black to the ankles.
We are as a people curiously obsessed with presumed 'distortions' of our national story, not just in fiction and feature films – Brigadoon to Braveheart – but also in what purports to be serious history.
A storm of protest surrounds the forthcoming BBC television history of Scotland. No one has actually seen the programmes yet, but almost everyone has heard, and been shocked by, the news that it begins with the...
Personally, I have no problem with this, particularly when the modern alternative is Samantha Morton (no relation) in unflattering black to the ankles.
We are as a people curiously obsessed with presumed 'distortions' of our national story, not just in fiction and feature films – Brigadoon to Braveheart – but also in what purports to be serious history.
A storm of protest surrounds the forthcoming BBC television history of Scotland. No one has actually seen the programmes yet, but almost everyone has heard, and been shocked by, the news that it begins with the...
Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 09:39
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-19-08)
The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, has urged churches to use hits by bands such as U2 and the Beatles in their services.
In a book backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, he argues that pop music writers can convey deep theological concepts in a way that is more accessible to the younger generation.
Hundreds of evangelical churches have already turned to guitar-based songs instead of traditional hymns, but the bishop suggests that clergy still need to be more creative in appealing to non-churchgoers.
Artists highlighted for exploring Christian themes in their music include Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and John Lennon, who famously claimed the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
"For many people the language of the Bible has become inaccessible and yet pop song writers can make a connection with people because their language is fresh," he said.
"They are able to open our imagination to a way of...
In a book backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, he argues that pop music writers can convey deep theological concepts in a way that is more accessible to the younger generation.
Hundreds of evangelical churches have already turned to guitar-based songs instead of traditional hymns, but the bishop suggests that clergy still need to be more creative in appealing to non-churchgoers.
Artists highlighted for exploring Christian themes in their music include Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and John Lennon, who famously claimed the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
"For many people the language of the Bible has become inaccessible and yet pop song writers can make a connection with people because their language is fresh," he said.
"They are able to open our imagination to a way of...
Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 09:07
SOURCE: NYT (10-17-08)
The megamillion-dollar question that hovers over Oliver Stone’s queasily enjoyable “W.,” his Oedipal story about the rise and fall, fall, fall of George W. Bush is: why? Neither a pure (nor impure) sendup of the president nor a wholesale takedown, the film looks like a traditional biopic with all the usual trappings, including name actors in political drag — Josh Brolin plays the frat boy who would be king, while Richard Dreyfuss creeps around in a Dick Cheney sneer — alternately choking on pretzels and spleen, and reciting all the familiar lines and lies. History is said to repeat itself as tragedy and farce, but here it registers as a full-blown burlesque.
Mr. Stone’s take on the president, as comic as it is sincere, is bound to rile ax-grinders of every ideological stripe, particularly those who mistake fiction for nonfiction. History informs its narrative arc from Texas to Iraq, but it should go without saying that this is a work of imagination, a directorial riff on...
Mr. Stone’s take on the president, as comic as it is sincere, is bound to rile ax-grinders of every ideological stripe, particularly those who mistake fiction for nonfiction. History informs its narrative arc from Texas to Iraq, but it should go without saying that this is a work of imagination, a directorial riff on...
Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 22:09
SOURCE: NYT (10-16-08)
“Grant and Lee in War and Peace,” which opens on Friday at the New-York Historical Society, is a rejiggering of an exhibition mounted last year by the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, where it was called “Lee and Grant.” The flip-flop in billing is partly a nod to local bias and to the fact that Grant is, after all, buried right here in New York, where he was a bit of a substance abuser and lost a fortune on Wall Street — he was one of us, in other words — while in Richmond they prefer the white-bearded patriarch who seemingly had no faults at all. But the title switch is also a reflection of the way these two generals, implacable opponents on the battlefield, have been linked by posterity in push-me-pull-you fashion, so that the reputation of one can’t go up unless the other’s sinks.
For most of the last 140 years Lee, or a romanticized version of him, has been on top. This Lee is the tragic and valorous embodiment of the Lost Cause, a mythic South that fought not...
For most of the last 140 years Lee, or a romanticized version of him, has been on top. This Lee is the tragic and valorous embodiment of the Lost Cause, a mythic South that fought not...
Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 21:58
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (10-18-08)
One of the world's most aggressive literary agencies, overseen by super-agent Andrew Wylie, scored a double coup by taking over representation of deceased Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño just as an unpublished novel by him was discovered.
Wylie's agency has been offering the manuscript of The Third Reich at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. Publishers were said to be fighting over the novel from an author whose stock hit new highs in the English-speaking world after the success of The Savage Detectives, said by the New York Times to be one of the best 10 books last year.
The Bolaño estate's previous agent, Carmen Balcells, reportedly had no idea that the new, unpublished novel existed and said that it certainly had not been on his computer when he died in 2003. His Spanish publisher, Jorge Herralde, also had no knowledge of it.
The Third Reich is said to have been written in the early 1990s before Bolaño began to work on a computer...
Wylie's agency has been offering the manuscript of The Third Reich at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. Publishers were said to be fighting over the novel from an author whose stock hit new highs in the English-speaking world after the success of The Savage Detectives, said by the New York Times to be one of the best 10 books last year.
The Bolaño estate's previous agent, Carmen Balcells, reportedly had no idea that the new, unpublished novel existed and said that it certainly had not been on his computer when he died in 2003. His Spanish publisher, Jorge Herralde, also had no knowledge of it.
The Third Reich is said to have been written in the early 1990s before Bolaño began to work on a computer...
Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 16:26
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (10-18-08)
The poet whose verse was more feared by the Ottoman Empire than insurgents' bullets has won the belated honour of a "day of celebration" in the country he romanticised, Greece.
Nearly 200 years after George Gordon, Lord Byron, invoked the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae to "dream that Greece might still be free", the government in Athens has announced a Byron day on the anniversary of the writer's death.
Readings, drama and school outings will celebrate the role of the peer, who partly redressed a reputation for bisexual immorality by dying while preparing to serve in the Greeks' revolutionary navy. More practically, he used his inherited fortune as the 6th Lord Byron to fit out the rebels' fleet.
The new feature of the modern Greek calendar will fall on April 19, the date Byron died in 1824 at Messolonghi in Western Greece. He had chosen a high profile target to attack in the shape of the Ottoman fortress at Lepanto, scene...
Nearly 200 years after George Gordon, Lord Byron, invoked the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae to "dream that Greece might still be free", the government in Athens has announced a Byron day on the anniversary of the writer's death.
Readings, drama and school outings will celebrate the role of the peer, who partly redressed a reputation for bisexual immorality by dying while preparing to serve in the Greeks' revolutionary navy. More practically, he used his inherited fortune as the 6th Lord Byron to fit out the rebels' fleet.
The new feature of the modern Greek calendar will fall on April 19, the date Byron died in 1824 at Messolonghi in Western Greece. He had chosen a high profile target to attack in the shape of the Ottoman fortress at Lepanto, scene...
Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 16:20
SOURCE: Daily Telegraph (UK) (10-18-08)
The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great made two extraordinary decisions which changed the world.
The first, in 313, was to end the persecution of Christians and to declare Christianity a legal religion in the Roman empire. The second, in 324, was to found a new city on the site of Byzantium, which he dedicated in 330 and called Constantinople. Today it is the vast city of Istanbul.
Constantinople flourished and by the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great (527-65) it was the Christian capital of a reduced Roman empire. Its rulers aspired to preside over a unified Mediterranean state with a common faith and a humane law code. We call this the Byzantine empire - though they still called it the Roman empire. It survived until 1453 when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks.
Byzantium 330-1453, a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, assesses the effects of Constantine's decisions. It brings back together many of the widely scattered objects which are...
The first, in 313, was to end the persecution of Christians and to declare Christianity a legal religion in the Roman empire. The second, in 324, was to found a new city on the site of Byzantium, which he dedicated in 330 and called Constantinople. Today it is the vast city of Istanbul.
Constantinople flourished and by the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great (527-65) it was the Christian capital of a reduced Roman empire. Its rulers aspired to preside over a unified Mediterranean state with a common faith and a humane law code. We call this the Byzantine empire - though they still called it the Roman empire. It survived until 1453 when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks.
Byzantium 330-1453, a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, assesses the effects of Constantine's decisions. It brings back together many of the widely scattered objects which are...
Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 15:35
SOURCE: National Security Archive (10-17-08)
Washington, DC, October 17, 2008 - The new documentary film on the Bush administration's interrogation and detention policies, "Torturing Democracy," will air on Washington D.C.'s WETA-TV tonight at 10 p.m.
Produced and written by eight-time Emmy winner and National Security Archive fellow Sherry Jones, the documentary has drawn major online buzz as well as New York Times coverage of PBS's failure to find a national scheduling spot for the film before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.
Reviewers have described the film as a "compelling example of video story-telling" that "delivers impressively on a promise to connect the dots in an investigation of interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody."
Slate.com selected a key revelation in the film as the Slate "Hot Document" this week - a previously unpublished December 2002 draft of "standard operating procedure" at Guantanamo which shows that...
Produced and written by eight-time Emmy winner and National Security Archive fellow Sherry Jones, the documentary has drawn major online buzz as well as New York Times coverage of PBS's failure to find a national scheduling spot for the film before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.
Reviewers have described the film as a "compelling example of video story-telling" that "delivers impressively on a promise to connect the dots in an investigation of interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody."
Slate.com selected a key revelation in the film as the Slate "Hot Document" this week - a previously unpublished December 2002 draft of "standard operating procedure" at Guantanamo which shows that...
Friday, October 17, 2008 - 18:19
SOURCE: LAT (10-16-08)
Disney's California Adventure is poised for a $1-billion makeover that's designed to give the troubled theme park the main thing it lacks -- an emotional connection to keep people coming back.
The sweeping overhaul will transport visitors to the California of the 1920s, when Walt Disney first arrived in Hollywood. In the same way that Disneyland's Main Street evokes Disney's hometown of Marceline, Mo., a refocused California Adventure will follow the young animator's journey to Los Angeles.
The sweeping overhaul will transport visitors to the California of the 1920s, when Walt Disney first arrived in Hollywood. In the same way that Disneyland's Main Street evokes Disney's hometown of Marceline, Mo., a refocused California Adventure will follow the young animator's journey to Los Angeles.
Friday, October 17, 2008 - 16:55
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Ed (10-15-08)
He won’t be taking part in tonight’s presidential debate, but Abraham Lincoln was on the campus of Hofstra University on Tuesday for a series of historical re-enactments focused on race relations and women’s rights.
An actor portraying the nation’s 16th president spoke about the Civil War and slavery. Other actors and Hofstra students also portrayed the abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe; the suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone; and the civil-rights advocates Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Also represented were Shirley Chisholm, Patsy Takemoto Mink, and Bella Abzug, female presidential hopefuls more than 30 years before Hillary Clinton.
Most of the vignettes were staged in “revival tents” reminiscent of the Circuit Chautauqua, the 19th-century adult-education movement.
Cynthia J. Bogard, director of Hofstra’s Center for Civic Engagement, told The New York Times that the event, dubbed, “Democracy in Performance...
An actor portraying the nation’s 16th president spoke about the Civil War and slavery. Other actors and Hofstra students also portrayed the abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe; the suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone; and the civil-rights advocates Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Also represented were Shirley Chisholm, Patsy Takemoto Mink, and Bella Abzug, female presidential hopefuls more than 30 years before Hillary Clinton.
Most of the vignettes were staged in “revival tents” reminiscent of the Circuit Chautauqua, the 19th-century adult-education movement.
Cynthia J. Bogard, director of Hofstra’s Center for Civic Engagement, told The New York Times that the event, dubbed, “Democracy in Performance...
Friday, October 17, 2008 - 16:08
