Theorizing Palimpsests

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Aslı Iğsız
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Metropolitan Museum ◽  
Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Structural Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

Abstract How do we connect the past with the present to address structural problems? While the pursuit of a cause-and-effect past flowing into the present contributes to the understanding of an event or object, how that past is recalled, represented, related, disconnected, suppressed, and/or obfuscated in any given present matters. This article proposes palimpsests as a critical tool for analyzing the many histories of the present. To illustrate this theoretical practice, the article offers a palimpsestic reading of a museumized object, the Nubian Temple of Dendur, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The structural nature of a history of the present comes into view only when one is able to discern multiple histories, presents, categories, and objects layered together within the palimpsest of history.

Lessons from the Past: Sicilian Mafiosi in New York City and Rosario, circa 1880–1940

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
American City ◽  
North American City ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

From the mid-nineteenth century, many Sicilians, including members of the mafia, were on the move. After sketching the contours of the mafia in Sicily in the nineteenth century, this chapter outlines the parallel history of Italian migration and mafia activities in New York City and Rosario, Argentina, and offers an analytic account of the diverging outcomes. Only in the North American city did a mafia that resembled the Sicilian one emerge. The Prohibition provided an enormous boost to both the personnel and power of Italian organized crime. The risk of punishment was low, the gains to be made were enormous, and there was no social stigma attached to this trade.

scholarly journals Die [Fill in the Blank] Scum

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-93
Author(s):  
Annie Powers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
York City ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

A brief history of the phrase “Die Techie Scum,” which has been appeared as graffiti on San Francisco walls, handed out on postcards, printed on shirts, and yelled at commuters to Silicon Valley. The die [fill in the blank] scum construction has been used frequently in the past thirty years, most often when issues of gentrification are at play, such as “Die Yuppie Scum,” used in protests in New York City in the 1980s.

Riverside Park and Issues of Historic Preservation

1984 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cromley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Historic Preservation ◽  
York City ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
The Other ◽  
Frederick Law Olmsted ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Active Recreation

Riverside Park and Riverside Drive in New York City were designated a Scenic Landmark in 1980 by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, but this designation raises some problems for historians. The Landmark designation is based primarily on the park's status as a Frederick Law Olmsted design. My research shows, however, that only a small part of the park as it stands today was actually designed by Olmsted, and that Riverside Park was rather the result of ad hoc decisions and compromises over several decades. The history of Riverside Park presented in this article is offered as an alternative to the Landmarks Commission's history in its "Designation Report." This alternative history of a "non-Olmsted park" shows that Olmsted's design, based on an aesthetic of nature, is preserved only in the layout of Riverside Drive on the high ground above the Hudson and in the parkland immediately adjacent to the Drive. The many sculptural monuments added to Riverside Park and Drive, beginning with a temporary Grant's Tomb in the 1880s and continuing through the 1920s, are the legacy of a City Beautiful conception of the park as an instrument for cultural uplift and education. In the 1930s yet another conception of parks as active recreation space led to doubling the park's size by landfill and expanding its facilities by building many sports grounds, children's playgrounds, and a tree-bordered promenade. In my conclusion, I consider what it means, to readers of history and to makers of parks policy, to choose one or the other of these histories. If Riverside is "an Olmsted park," preservation policies will take a different form than they will if it is a "non-Olmsted park." From this discussion, I also raise some general questions about the meaning and implications of constructing particular kinds of historical stories.

Survival of Greek Folk Music in New York 1

2018 ◽  
pp. 167-177
Author(s):  
Sotirios (Sam) Chianis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
York City ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Urban Center ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Music ◽  
The Many ◽  
Greek Folk Music

Long America’s premier port and urban center, New York City has always been a fulcrum of musical expression. In “Survival of Greek Folk Music in New York,” esteemed ethnomusicologist and musician Sotirios (Sam) Chianis sets the stage by ably delineating the many forms of Greek regional music from the islands and the mainland. He then traces the long history of music, musicians, venues, and instrument makers in New York. Among his topics are the men’s coffee houses, local Greek record companies and record producers, Greek newspapers, the Greek Musicians’ Union, musical instrument makers, and the rise of bouzouki-based music.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 181-196
Author(s):  
Amy Feinstein
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
York City ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Metropolitan Museum ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽  
Head Of State

The conclusion explores the ways that Stein’s identity as a Jewish and modernist writer was a potent symbol of collaboration and resistance in Vichy France and today. The chapter addresses and historicizes concerns over Stein’s Jewish identity and alleged Nazi-collaboration as raised by Alan Dershowitz and others in the popular press in 2012, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City opened the exhibition, “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.” Although Stein had translated the speeches of Pétain, Vichy’s head of state, her translations were never published and the origins and conclusion of the project remain unknown. In any case, the translation project must be considered alongside Stein’s numerous contributions to publications of the intellectual resistance. Popular claims of Stein’s Nazi collaboration are largely unsubstantiated, historically obtuse, and prone to reading Stein out-of-context, such as a widely-cited passage about being “conservative” in her 1939 memoir Paris France. In their determination to know about Stein’s wartime experiences and writings, the popular media have, nonetheless, affirmed the importance of Jewish identity and modernist style to Stein’s legacy as a writer. This book affirms that too.

scholarly journals Exhibition Review Essay and Reviews

Museum Worlds ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 238-261
Author(s):  
Emily Stokes-Rees ◽  
Blaire M. Moskowitz ◽  
Moira Sun ◽  
Jordan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
York City ◽  
Metropolitan Museum ◽  
Digital Evolution ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽  
Shanghai Museum

Exhibition Review Essay:Exhibition without Boundaries. teamLab Borderless and the Digital Evolution of Gallery Space by Emily Stokes-Rees Exhibition Reviews:The Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy. The Met Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by Blaire M. MoskowitzShanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai; Suzhou Museum, Suzhou; and PMQ, Hong Kong by Moira SunThe Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology. Exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York City (14 February–7 July 2019) and the U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, British Columbia (20 July–24 October 2019) by Jordan Wilson

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document