The Sephardi Jewish Community of Shanghai 1845-1939 and the Question of Identity.

From 1845 Baghdadi Jews settled in Shanghai via India and, over a century of existence, their numbers possibly never exceeded eight hundred. During this period they were exposed to great changes in their social, economic and political environment. Traditionalists believed that loyalties to the customs of their Baghdadi forebears, and occasionally even to Judaism itself, were being threatened. In this thesis the actions the Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai took to preserve their Jewish identity is examined, and changes in ethnic identity in Shanghai between 1845-1939 are analysed. Particular attention is paid to: their choice and the significance of the label 'Sephardi'; the religious and communal institutions they established in order to preserve their identity; their contribution to the economic development of the International Settlement; the reasons for their tenacious endeavours to be accepted as British subjects while remaining loyal to their religion; their reluctance to identify with the Zionist movement and their demonstration of solidarity with their co-religionists who sought refuge in Shanghai from Nazi persecution. Notwithstanding the obstacles encountered in consulting documents preserved in the Shanghai archives, this thesis draws on a wide range of primary material, notably: the Shanghai Police Department Records, Foreign, Colonial and India Office Files, the Central Zionist correspondence with Shanghai, American Joint Distribution records, and newspapers printed in China, and in India. Particular use has been made of the Israel's Messenger, the first Jewish periodical and the only Sephardi journal to be published in China. Factual information rather than the opinions of its editor, Nissim Ezra Benjamin Ezra, has been taken into account. Despite a widespread search the communal records have not come to light. Consequently emphasis has been placed on the available documentation and on interviews with people who once lived in the community. These data have been particularly useful in understanding such phenomena as value systems and modes of thought. Of course, memories fade or become coloured over time. Nevertheless, frequently there has been a consensus among informants, or information given by any particular individual has been logically consistent, so that confidence in the data would appear to be justified. It will be shown that the hopes and beliefs of the founding fathers, as expressed by David Solomon Sassoon - that the traders who left Baghdad to settle in new countries would remain true to the tenets of the Jewish religion and to the traditional observance of Baghdadi Jews in particular - were partially fulfilled. This demonstrates nevertheless the flexibility achieved by so many Jewish communities in the Diaspora, which remained faithful to their essential beliefs and values, and in so doing, assured their survival. It is hoped this addition to the considerable body of literature which documents the history of Jewish communities in the East, will promote an understanding of the economic development and social transformation of the Shanghai Sephardi community, and will also contribute to the history of foreign communities in China and Shanghai

Themparks: Alternative Play in Contemporary Australian Poetry

Themparks is a creative and critical thesis consisting of a book of poems—The Bloomin’ Notions of Other & Beau—and two experimental essays that illuminate the praxis behind the book of poems, not by auto-critique, but via a study of other contemporary Australian poets whose poetry involves similar compositional approaches. The Bloomin’ Notions of Other & Beau hijacks the prose poems of Arthur Rimbaud’s famously incomplete manuscript Illuminations and re-verses their content—a “Down Under conceit”—to create “inversions”, radically new poems that are ludic and multiple in form, that complicate authorial subjectivity by employing various methods of (mis)translation and appropriation, and whose subject matter reflects and refracts political and personal fragmentation in twenty-first century Australia. “Themparks”, the first critical essay, is a divagation into thempark by contemporary Australian poet Michael Farrell, the poems of which transpose/depose the structures of poems by John Ashbery; “Themparks” also analyses John Ashbery’s translations of the Illuminations of Arthur Rimbaud via a re-reading of Rimbaud’s famous formulation, “I is an other” (Je est an autre). “Aussi/Or”, the second critical essay, is a disquisition on Stéphane Mallarmé’s late innovative poem Un Coup de dés and its various antipodean versions and (mis)translations written by Christopher Brennan (in 1897), Chris Edwards and John Tranter (both in 2006). Both essays/assays explore the (anti)genre of poetic rewritings of previous poems; both trace certain homosocial poetic lineages from self-consciously “experimental” contemporary Australian poets back through American and Australian postmodernists to early modernist French poets; both raise/raze issues of translation, appropriation, plagiarism, and reproduction while employing—metonymically—some parallel theoretical tropes from psychoanalysis, linguistics, philosophy, and science. The guiding thread—the fil conducteur latent in Mallarmé—between the creative and critical components of this thesis is a poetics of the pun. The pun’s promiscuity highlights the highly libinal nature of language-tampering while working to both associate and dissociate parataxis and parapraxis

Methodist circuit-riders in America, 1766-1844

The Methodist Episcopal Church became the largest religious denomination in the United States during the 1820\u27s. Local expressions of the national body were established in nearly every American community. Methodist expansion was largely a result of the activity of circuitriders. These itinerants traveled and proclaimed the gospel to citizens, many of whom joined the Church and became part of a religious movement which influenced the l development of culture in the United States. The traveling minister in the Methodist Church was noted for his self-sacrificing spirit. He endured hardships in the ministry which few men of the present age can fathom. Richard Hofstadter, the widely respected American historian, once stated, The bulwark and the pride of the early American ~ethodists were the famous circuit-riding preachers who made up in mobility, flexibility, courage, hard work, and dedication what they might lack in ministerial training or dignity. These itinerants, he continued, were justly proud of the strenuous sacrifices they made to bring the gospel to the people. Five hundred of the first six hundred and fifty Methodist circuit-riders retired prematurely from the ministry. Nearly one fourth of the first eight hundred ministers who died were under the age of thirty five. Over one hundred and twentyfive itinerants were between the ages of thirty-five and f~rty-five when they died; and over half of. the eight hundred died before they reached thirty! About two hundred traveling preachers died within the first five years of their entrance into the ministry and nearly two thirds died before they 2 had preached twelve years. The life style of the early Methodist traveling preacher perished in the United States with the settlement and growth of the nations however, his dedication is an inspiration to every generation

General Catalogue 1900

General Catalogue of 1900 Contains course descriptions, University college calendar, and college administration.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/universitycatalogs/1009/thumbnail.jp

Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946

These fascinating letters capture the most traumatic experience of Ezra Pound\u27s life, when he was incarcerated at the end of World War II and indicted for treason. Omar Pound and Robert Spoo have collected and edited the unpublished correspondence between the poet and his wife, combining it with restricted military orders and extensive references to FBI documents, previously unknown photographs, and an insightful introduction, to create the definitive work on this period of Pound\u27s life.https://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/books/1011/thumbnail.jp

The aged south: old age and roots music in the us south, 1900-1945

This dissertation investigates experiences and representations of old age and ageing in roots music of the US South from 1900-1945. During this period, aged musicians and depictions of old age were commonplace in southern roots music. This dissertation assesses the meanings and functions of age and ageing in southern roots music in the context of the drastic economic, technological, political, social, racial, and cultural changes and tensions in the early twentieth century South. This study proposes that the production of ideas about old age in southern roots music figured into a range of anxieties about the modernising ‘New South’, and a corresponding nostalgia for the ‘Old South’. This dissertation posits that the proliferation of older people and ideas about ‘elders’ in roots music also reflected and impacted on some of the realities and beliefs about the changing age demographics and generational dynamics of the era, such as those relating to life expectancy, retirement, pensions, and an evolving sense of ‘age consciousness’. Employing a multi- and interdisciplinary approach, this dissertation revaluates roots music and southern history with new analytical frameworks from the fields of medical humanities and age studies, with a particular focus on how issues of debility, disability, and ageism intersect with other power structures. This dissertation adds the category of age to a growing literature on the cultural significances of early roots music and the mass media by analysing a range of textual, visual, and aural primary sources and synthesising secondary research to explore the age dimension of five domains of southern roots music: old fiddlers’ contests; aged musicians in the broadcasting and recording industries; ‘age masquerade’ on ‘barn dance’ radio; representations of old age on commercial ‘old-time’ and ‘race’ recordings; and folklorists John and Alan Lomax’s research for the Library of Congress into African American music

Report of the President, Bowdoin College 1975-1976

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/presidents-reports/1084/thumbnail.jp

General Catalogue 1898

General Catalogue of 1898 Contains course descriptions, University college calendar, and college administration.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/universitycatalogs/1007/thumbnail.jp

Trinity Reporter, March/April 1976

https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/reporter/2007/thumbnail.jp

The Papers of Thomas A. Edison

This richly illustrated volume explores Edison's inventive and personal pursuits from 1888 to 1889, documenting his responses to technological, organizational, and economic challenges.Thomas A. Edison was received at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle—the World's Fair—as a conquering hero. Extravagantly fêted and besieged by well-wishers, he was seen, like Gustave Eiffel's iron tower, as a triumphal symbol of republicanism and material progress. The visit was a high-water mark of his international fame.Out of the limelight, Edison worked as hard as ever. On top of his work as an inventor, entrepreneur, and manufacturer, he created a new role as a director of research. At his peerless laboratory in Orange, New Jersey, he directed assistants working in parallel on multiple projects. These included the "perfected" phonograph; a major but little-recognized effort to make musical recordings for sale; the start of work on motion pictures; and improvements in the recovery of low-grade iron ore. He also pursued a public "War of the Currents" against electrical rival George Westinghouse. Keenly attuned to manufacturing as a way to support the laboratory financially and control his most iconic products, Edison created a new cluster of factories. He kept his manufacturing rights to the phonograph while selling the underlying patents to an outside investor in a deal he would regret. When market pressures led to the consolidation of Edison lighting interests, he sold his factories to the new Edison General Electric Company. These changes disrupted his longtime personal and professional relations even as he planned an iron-mining project that would take him to the New Jersey wilderness for long periods.The ninth volume of the series, Competing Interests explores Edison's inventive and personal pursuits from 1888 to 1889, documenting his responses to technological, organizational, and economic challenges. The book includes 331 documents and hundreds of Edison's drawings, which are all revealing and representative of his life and work in these years. Essays and notes based on meticulous research in a wide range of sources, many only recently available, provide a rich context for the documents