The Spanish Gypsy: The History of a European Obsession
Author:
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published:
Total Pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9780271047515
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Modern Spain
Author: Enrique Ávila López
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2015-12-07
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFulfilling the need for English-source material on contemporary Spain, this book supplies readers with an in-depth, interdisciplinary guide to the country of Spain and its intricate, diverse culture. Far from a usual reference book, Modern Spain takes the reader through the country's history, economy, and politics as well as topics that address Spain's popular culture, such as food, sports, and sexuality. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of its content, this book differs from the average typical English manuals that very rarely cover in depth the whole array of interesting issues that define Spain in the 21st century. The vast amount of information makes this book the perfect companion for any reader wishing to learn more about Spain. Packed with current facts and statistics, this book offers an unbiased view of a modern country, making it an ideal source for undergraduate students and scholars.
Historical Dictionary of Spain
Author: Angel Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2017-12-15
Total Pages: 832
ISBN-13: 1538108836
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSince Spain’s transition to democracy there has been rapid economic modernization, the establishment of a functioning liberal democracy, and a cultural renaissance. One area in which ordinary Spaniards have noted a massive change since the 1970s has been in the transformation of the road and rail networks, and also in local amenities—from sporting facilities to centers for the aged. Also impressive is the cleanliness of Spanish cities and the efforts put into town planning. And from the 1980s the country also built a successful public health system. As a result, for the first time since the 19th century Spaniards can largely look toward the West without any sense of inferiority (though, in recent years, confidence has been hit by the deep recession of 2008–2011 and the constant corruption scandals). This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Spain contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Spain.
Enemies Within
Author: María Sierra
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2015-11-25
Total Pages: 235
ISBN-13: 1443886351
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCan citizenship rights be denied to significant groups in a society that regards itself as civilized and self-governing? Is it possible to exclude such people in the name of freedom and reason? Is it plausible to explain classifications that differentiate between first- and second-class citizens as “natural”? This is the paradox inherent in modern politics, born of the revolutions that ended the Ancien Régime in the western world. Throughout the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, liberalism inspired a representative form of government that appealed to citizenship, yet marginalized many social groups, including natives, women, immigrants, workers, slaves and nomads. In the Hispanic dimension of the Atlantic world that this book deals with, modern politics was based on exclusions explained as natural and necessary. In both Europe and America, a distinction was made between the responsible citizen and those “others” in society, potential “enemies within”, who had to be controlled and supervised. This book explains the success of this political operation by analysing the historical construction of figures of alterity that were fundamental to the definition of national civic identities. Its basic premise is that imaginaries that were constructed in the nineteenth century can be found even today in western political conceptions. The cultural complexity of enduring political images is revealed by exploring the inner workings of virtuous figures in relation to their opposites: readers will find the mosaic of representations of civic alterity both recognisable and surprising. The contributors to this volume provide historical perspectives on the debate on political legitimacy in open societies. Reinventing democracies involves understanding the historicity of inherited formulae of governance and considering them, therefore, as amenable to improvement. The readiness to do this is not a threat to democracy but, rather, a commitment to looking for it.
Carmen and the Staging of Spain
Author: Michael Christoforidis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-11-08
Total Pages: 345
ISBN-13: 0190694831
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCarmen and the Staging of Spain explores the Belle Époque fascination with Spanish entertainment that refashioned Bizet's opera and gave rise to an international "Carmen industry." Authors Michael Christoforidis and Elizabeth Kertesz challenge the notion of Carmen as an unchanging exotic construct, tracing the ways in which performers and productions responded to evolving fashions for Spanish style from its 1875 premiere to 1915. Focusing on selected realizations of the opera in Paris, London and New York, Christoforidis and Kertesz explore the cycles of influence between the opera and its parodies; adaptations in spoken drama, ballet and film; and the panorama of flamenco, Spanish dance, and musical entertainments. Their findings also uncover Carmen's dynamic interaction with issues of Hispanic identity against the backdrop of Spain's changing international fortunes. The Spanish response to this now most-Spanish of operas is illuminated by its early reception in Madrid and Barcelona, adaptations to local theatrical genres, and impact on Spanish composers of the time. A series of Spanish Carmens, from opera singers Elena Sanz and Maria Gay to the infamous music-hall star La Belle Otero, had a crucial influence on the interpretation of the title role. Their stories provide a fresh context for the book's reappraisal of leading Carmens of the era, including Emma Calvé and Geraldine Farrar.
New Perspectives on Imagology
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2022-11-14
Total Pages: 464
ISBN-13: 9004513159
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith this volume, the editors Katharina Edtstadler, Sandra Folie, and Gianna Zocco propose an extension of the traditional conception of imagology as a theory and method for studying the cultural construction and literary representation of national, usually European characters. Consisting of an instructive introduction and 21 articles, the book relates this sub-field of comparative literature to contemporary political developments and enriches it with new interdisciplinary, transnational, intersectional, and intermedial perspectives. The contributions offer [1] a reconsideration and update of the field’s methods, genres, and theoretical frames; [2] trans-/post-national, migratory, and marginalized perspectives beyond the European nation-state; [3] insights into geopolitical dichotomies such as Orient/Occident; [4] intersectional approaches considering the entanglements of national images with notions of age, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity/race; [5] investigations of the role of national images in visual narratives and music.
Sounding Authentic
Author: Joshua S. Walden
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 319
ISBN-13: 0199334668
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSounding Authentic considers the intersecting influences of nationalism, modernism, and technological innovation on representations of ethnic and national identities in twentieth-century art music. Author Joshua S. Walden discusses these forces through the prism of what he terms the "rural miniature": short violin and piano pieces based on folk song and dance styles. This genre, mostly inspired by the folk music of Hungary, the Jewish diaspora, and Spain, was featured frequently on recordings and performance programs in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, Sounding Authentic shows how the music of urban Romany ensembles developed into nineteenth-century repertoire of virtuosic works in the style hongrois before ultimately influencing composers of rural miniatures. Walden persuasively demonstrates how rural miniatures represented folk and rural cultures in a manner that was perceived as authentic, even while they involved significant modification of the original sources. He also links them to the impulse toward realism in developing technologies of photography, film, and sound recording. Sounding Authentic examines the complex ways the rural miniature was used by makers of nationalist agendas, who sought folkloric authenticity as a basis for the construction of ethnic and national identities. The book also considers the genre's reception in European diaspora communities in America where it evoked and transformed memories of life before immigration, and traces how many rural miniatures were assimilated to the styles of American popular song and swing. Scholars interested in musicology, ethnography, the history of violin performance, twentieth-century European art music, the culture of the Jewish Diaspora and more will find Sounding Authentic an essential addition to their library.
The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature
Author: David T. Gies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 906
ISBN-13: 9780521806183
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The Sublime South
Author: Jose Luis Venegas
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 2018-07-15
Total Pages: 333
ISBN-13: 0810137313
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Sublime South: Andalusia, Orientalism, and the Making of Modern Spain is the first systematic study on cultural images of Andalusia as Spain’s “Orient” and the impact they have had on nation-building and modernization since the late nineteenth century. While a wealth of studies have examined how northern Europeans from the Romantic period viewed Spain and Andalusia as Europe’s Orient, little attention has been paid to how contemporary Spanish artists and intellectuals assimilated Romantic legacies to engage in an internal form of orientalism. José Luis Venegas deftly explores Spain’s shifting engagements with oriental identity and otherness by looking, not just beyond national, ethnic, and racial borders, but at a territory that is institutionally embedded in the nation-state while symbolically placed between inclusion and abjection. The Sublime South shifts the focus and scale of Edward Said’s notion of orientalism by examining how it evolves and manifests transnationally, as the result of European colonialism in Africa and Asia, and intra-nationally, in a European yet orientalized country. Finally, Venegas challenges ethnocentric notions of Iberian cultures and fosters an understanding of the encounters between Western and Muslim cultures beyond opposing, and often mutually negating, essentialisms.
