Showing posts with label Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Studies. Show all posts

Thursday, October 27, 2011

School Segregation in Western North Carolina: A History, 1860s-1970s (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies)

School Segregation in Western North Carolina: A History, 1860s-1970s (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies) Review



Although African Americans make up a small portion of the population of western North Carolina, they have contributed much to the area's physical and cultural landscape. This enlightening study surveys the region's segregated black schools from Reconstruction through integration and reveals the struggles, achievements, and ultimate victory of a unified community intent on achieving an adequate education for its children. The book documents the events that initially brought blacks into Appalachia, early efforts to educate black children, the movement to acquire and improve schools, and the long process of desegregation. Personnel issues, curriculum, extracurricular activities, sports, consolidation, and construction also receive attention. Featuring commentary from former students, teachers and parents, this work weighs the value and achievement of rural segregated black schools as well as their significance for educators today.


Friday, September 2, 2011

Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain: Reconciling Philosophy, Literature, Film and Urban Space (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures)

Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain: Reconciling Philosophy, Literature, Film and Urban Space (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures) Review



Driven by a dual analysis, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain looks at French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) in Spain--his more or less direct influence on Spanish letters--and also at Bergsonism in Spain--the more indirect resonance with his methodological posture--articulated through Spanish texts as well as theoretical approaches to film and urban space. Through this twin investigation, one part historical and the other part methodological, Benjamin Fraser seeks to broaden the scope of interest in Bergson's philosophy, to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of Bergson's thought, and to insist upon the relevance of Bergson's methodological premise to two of the most important cultural studies disciplines today--film studies and urban geography.
Following an eclectic and interdisciplinary methodology that the French philosopher himself advocated, Fraser reconciles works by some of the most notable twentieth-century authors and critics with compelling aspects of Bergsonism. From novelists Pío Baroja, Miguel de Unamuno, Juan Benet and Belén Gopegui to filmmakers Víctor Érice (El sol del membrillo), Alejandro Amenábar (Abre los ojos) and Carlos Saura (Taxi), as well as urban theorists Henri Lefebvre and Manuel Delgado Ruiz, this work takes up philosopher Gilles Deleuze's call for a "return to Bergson," pushing past the established boundaries of interdisciplinary to what lies beyond.
Fans of Bergson from all disciplines will also be eager to read English translations of Bergson's lectures at the Ateneo in Madrid the 2nd and 6th of May 1916, included here as an appendix.


Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Bucolic Metaphors: History, Subjectivity, and Gender in the Early Modern Spanish Pastoral (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures)

Bucolic Metaphors: History, Subjectivity, and Gender in the Early Modern Spanish Pastoral (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures) Review



An in-depth examination of the cultural functions of the pastoral in Spain, this study of Montemayor's La Diana and Cervantes's pastoral texts moves away from studies that consider this literature as purely escapist and imitative. Rosilie Hern¡ndez-Pecoraro considerably expands the discussion on the importance of the pastoral genre to early modern Spanish studies and supplements the ways in which these texts have conventionally been considered by Hispanists. She argues that the representations of society that occur in the pastoral tacitly mediate the widespread problems and anxieties felt throughout Spain, from rural poverty and national bankruptcy to the growing and disquieting influence of women in national and local affairs. Taking account of the immense popularity of the genre, the study demonstrates the relevance of this idealist literature to an understanding of how historical events, economic trends, and cultural shifts were processed and internalized by early modern Spanish society.


Thursday, July 28, 2011

Memoirs of Grassy Creek: Growing Up in the Mountains on the Virginia-North Carolina Line (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies, 1)

Memoirs of Grassy Creek: Growing Up in the Mountains on the Virginia-North Carolina Line (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies, 1) Review



Born on January 5, 1907, Zetta Hamby spent much of her life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, and, during a rich, rural life experienced the advent of the telephone, the automobile, electricity, radio, television and the airplane. Families, homes, schooling, amusements, home remedies, weddings and funerals, politics, health, world war, race relations, the telephone-those are among the topics touched on in this firsthand look at rural Appalachia in the early decades of the present century. Sometimes poignant, often humorous, and surely authentic, these chapters are yet another reminder of recent history that is all too quickly being lost.


Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Forest City Lynching of 1900: Populism, Racism, and White Supremacy in Rutherford County, North Carolina (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies, 10)

The Forest City Lynching of 1900: Populism, Racism, and White Supremacy in Rutherford County, North Carolina (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies, 10) Review



Politics in Rutherford County were heated a century ago: the developing textile industry, the growing population, an agricultural crisis and race relations inflamed everyone. Mills Higgins Flack, a leader of the Farmers’ Alliance and the county’s first Populist in the state House, was allegedly murdered on August 28, 1900, by Avery Mills, an African American. This book documents the murder and the lynching of Avery Mills. The author (Flack’s great-great-grandson) considers the phenomena of racial lynching, the Populist movement in the county, the white supremacy movement of the state’s Democratic party and the county’s KKK activities.