In the Shadow of The Birth of a Nation
In the Shadow of The Birth of a Nation

Author: Melvyn Stokes

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-03-14

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 3031047370

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This collection brings together many of the world’s leading scholars on race and film to re-consider the legacy and impact of D.W. Griffith’s deeply racist 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation. While this film is often cited, there is a considerable dearth of substantial research on its initial impact and global reach. These essays fill important gaps in the history of the film, including essential work on its sources, international reception, and African American responses. This book is a key text in the history of the most infamous and controversial film ever made and offers crucial new insights to scholars and students working in film history, African American history and the history of race relations.

The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation

Author: Michael T. Martin

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780253042354

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Over one hundred years since it premiered on cinema screens, D. W. Griffith's controversial photoplay The Birth of a Nation continues to influence American film production and to have relevance for race relations in the United States. This work challenges the idea the United States has moved beyond racial problems and highlights the role of film and representation in the continued struggle for equality.

In the Shadow of Liberty
In the Shadow of Liberty

Author: Kenneth C. Davis

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2016-09-20

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1627793127

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Did you know that many of America’s Founding Fathers—who fought for liberty and justice for all—were slave owners? Through the powerful stories of five enslaved people who were “owned” by four of our greatest presidents, this book helps set the record straight about the role slavery played in the founding of America. From Billy Lee, valet to George Washington, to Alfred Jackson, faithful servant of Andrew Jackson, these dramatic narratives explore our country’s great tragedy—that a nation “conceived in liberty” was also born in shackles. These stories help us know the real people who were essential to the birth of this nation but traditionally have been left out of the history books. Their stories are true—and they should be heard. This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum.

From the Shadow of Empire
From the Shadow of Empire

Author: Olga Maiorova

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2010-08-17

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0299235939

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As nationalism spread across nineteenth-century Europe, Russia’s national identity remained murky: there was no clear distinction between the Russian nation and the expanding multiethnic empire that called itself “Russian.” When Tsar Alexander II’s Great Reforms (1855–1870s) allowed some freedom for public debate, Russian nationalist intellectuals embarked on a major project—which they undertook in daily press, popular historiography, and works of fiction—of finding the Russian nation within the empire and rendering the empire in nationalistic terms. From the Shadow of Empire traces how these nationalist writers refashioned key historical myths—the legend of the nation’s spiritual birth, the tale of the founding of Russia, stories of Cossack independence—to portray the Russian people as the ruling nationality, whose character would define the empire. In an effort to press the government to alter its traditional imperial policies, writers from across the political spectrum made the cult of military victories into the dominant form of national myth-making: in the absence of popular political participation, wars allowed for the people’s involvement in public affairs and conjured an image of unity between ruler and nation. With their increasing reliance on the war metaphor, Reform-era thinkers prepared the ground for the brutal Russification policies of the late nineteenth century and contributed to the aggressive character of twentieth-century Russian nationalism.

Birth of a Nation
Birth of a Nation

Author: Gerard Loughran

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2010-02-12

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 0857732056

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Launched in Nairobi in 1960, three years before the birth of independent Kenya, the Nation group of newspapers grew up sharing the struggles of an infant nation, suffering the pain of its failures and rejoicing in its successes. Marking its 50th anniversary in 2010, the Nation looks back on its performance as the standard-bearer for journalistic integrity and how far it fell short or supported the loyalty demanded by its founding slogan 'The Truth shall make you free'. The Aga Khan was still a student at Harvard University when he decided that an honest and independent newspaper would be a crucial contribution to East Africa's peaceful transition to democracy. The "Sunday Nation" and "Daily Nation" were launched in 1960 when independence for Kenya was not far over the horizon. They quickly established a reputation for honesty and fair-mindedness, while shocking the colonial and settler establishment by calling for the release of the man who could become the nation's first prime minister, Jomo Kenyatta, and early negotiations for 'Uhuru'. The history of the 'Nation' papers and that of Kenya are closely intertwined; in the heat of its printing presses and philosophical struggles, that story is told here: from committed beginnings to its position today as East Africa's leading newspaper group.

In the Shadow of Statues
In the Shadow of Statues

Author: Mitch Landrieu

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0525559469

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The New Orleans mayor who removed the Confederate statues confronts the racism that shapes us and argues for white America to reckon with its past. A passionate, personal, urgent book from the man who sparked a national debate. "There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it." When Mitch Landrieu addressed the people of New Orleans in May 2017 about his decision to take down four Confederate monuments, including the statue of Robert E. Lee, he struck a nerve nationally, and his speech has now been heard or seen by millions across the country. In his first book, Mayor Landrieu discusses his personal journey on race as well as the path he took to making the decision to remove the monuments, tackles the broader history of slavery, race and institutional inequities that still bedevil America, and traces his personal relationship to this history. His father, as state legislator and mayor, was a huge force in the integration of New Orleans in the 1960s and 19070s. Landrieu grew up with a progressive education in one of the nation's most racially divided cities, but even he had to relearn Southern history as it really happened. Equal parts unblinking memoir, history, and prescription for finally confronting America's most painful legacy, In the Shadow of Statues contributes strongly to the national conversation about race in the age of Donald Trump, at a time when racism is resurgent with seemingly tacit approval from the highest levels of government and when too many Americans have a misplaced nostalgia for a time and place that never existed.

The Birth of Whiteness
The Birth of Whiteness

Author: Daniel Bernardi

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780813522760

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As indelible components of the history of the United States, race and racism have permeated nearly all aspects of life: cultural, economic, political, and social. In this first anthology on race in early cinema, fourteen scholars examine the origins, dynamics, and ramifications of racism and Eurocentrism and the resistance to both during the early years of American motion pictures. Any discussion of racial themes and practices in any arena inevitably begins with the definition of race. Is race an innate and biologically determined "essence" or is it a culturally constructed category? Is the question irrelevant? Perhaps race exists as an ever-changing historical and social formation that, regardless of any standard definition, involves exploitation, degradation, and struggle. In his introduction, Daniel Bernardi writes that "early cinema has been a clear partner in the hegemonic struggle over the meaning of race" and that it was steadfastly aligned with a Eurocentric world view at the expense of those who didn't count as white. The contributors to this work tackle these problems and address such subjects as biological determinism, miscegenation, Manifest Destiny, assimilation, and nativism and their impact on early cinema. Analyses of The Birth of a Nation, Romona, Nanook of the North and Madame Butterfly and the directorial styles of D. W. Griffith, Oscar Micheaux, and Edwin Porter are included in the volume.

In the Shadow of the Sword
In the Shadow of the Sword

Author: Tom Holland

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2012-05-15

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 0385531362

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The acclaimed author of Rubicon and other superb works of popular history now produces a thrillingly panoramic (and incredibly timely) account of the rise of Islam. No less significant than the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Persian invasion of Greece, the evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. Just like the Romans, the Arabs came from nowhere to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion—except that they achieved their conquests not over the course of centuries as the Romans did but in a matter of decades. Just like the Greeks during the Persian wars, they overcame seemingly insuperable odds to emerge triumphant against the greatest empire of the day—not by standing on the defensive, however, but by hurling themselves against all who lay in their path.

Closely Watched Films
Closely Watched Films

Author: Marilyn Fabe

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0520279972

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"Through detailed examinations of passages from classic films, Marilyn Fabe supplies the analytic tools and background in film history and theory to enable us to see more in every film we watch"--Page [4] of cover.

Shadow and Act
Shadow and Act

Author: Ralph Ellison

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0307797376

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With the same intellectual incisiveness and supple, stylish prose he brought to his classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both black and white America. His range is virtuosic, encompassing Mark Twain and Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson and Charlie Parker, The Birth of a Nation and the Dante-esque landscape of Harlem−"the scene and symbol of the Negro's perpetual alienation in the land of his birth." Throughout, he gives us what amounts to an episodic autobiography that traces his formation as a writer as well as the genesis of Invisible Man. On every page, Ellison reveals his idiosyncratic and often contrarian brilliance, his insistence on refuting both black and white stereotypes of what an African American writer should say or be. The result is a book that continues to instruct, delight, and occasionally outrage readers thirty years after it was first published.