Archive for category: History

Utilizing lectures, the assigned readings, films, and reflections please respond to the following question in a 4-6 page double spaced essay. Your essay will be evaluated on the basis of your ability to make statements, substantiate those statements with evidence and other forms of logic, and provide analysis of the issues addressed in the question.

1. Utilizing examples from the readings contained in the book From Coveralls to Zoot Suits, and the material posted on the modules, and lectures, write an essay in which you identify and analyze the different components of the Chicana/o Movement (land, labor, political representation, educational reform, protests against the draft, and cultural pride).
   1. Identify how the Chicana/o Movement was a result of activism by a new generation of Mexican American activists. Include in your analysis legal and organizational precedents leading up to WW II.
   2. Asses how the movement was fomented by the Mexican American experience during WW II both at home and abroad. Make sure to include in this portion of your analysis how Chicana women gained important spaces at home during the war effort.
   3. Evaluate how this new generation of activists openly repudiated the failed promises of assimilation and how this rejection to an assimilationist strategy resulted in a new sense of identity, one that attempted to reclaim a rich indigenous past to reclaim an almost obliterated history, culture, and language.
   4. Analyze how Chicano Artists developed a visual discourse, a discourse through which artists presented the history of the movement and at the same time expressed central issues to Chicano communities.

1. In the Middle Ages/Renaissance, feudalism stratified society. How was dance expressed in the upper and lower classes?
2. What was Catherine de Medici’s role in the evolution of ballet?
3. Watch the Royal Ballet video on the evolution of ballet and describe how the technique evolved.
4. George Balanchine started the first formal school of American ballet with Lincoln Kirstein in 1934. Where and how did these two individuals meet?  What were their roles in launching the school?
5. Describe Balanchine’s neoclassical style of ballet and how does the dance Agon illustrate this style.
6. Which Balanchine dancer was the first artistic director of the Miami City Ballet? What were some of his most notable ballets while he was working with Balanchine.
7. 7. Both in Alonzo King’s Writing Ground and La la la Human Steps Amelia, there is an exploration of the female in society and her emotions. In these pieces, what themes and emotions are expressed in each? This is your reflection.  (Answer in 100 words)
8. Martha Graham’s technique includes contraction/release of the spine, which became a signature of her approach. How was this connected to the expression of emotion, according to Graham?
9. In Mary Wigman’s Witch Dance, she portrays raw emotion. How does it reflect German Expressionism, an artistic movement that flourished during her time?
10. In the Moor’s Pavane, Jose Limon takes a modern look at the dances of the Renaissance. What were Limon’s creative objectives in this piece?
11. 11. In Kurt Jooss’s iconic The Green Table, how is the anti-war message expressed in dance? What war was he referring to? (answer in 100 words)
12. Name an important work by Pina Bausch and why it’s historically significant. (answer in 100 words)
13. 13. Describe the contribution of Merce Cunningham to the post modern dance movement? Why are his works/approaches significant to dance history?  (answer in 100 words)
14. Describe Trisha Brown’s choreographic objective and methodology in her piece Set/Reset?
15. Define Steve Paxton’s contact improvisation method and how it reflected his aesthetic.
16. Deborah Hay is a postmodern dance artist working today. In her work, Figure a Sea, what are some of the tools she uses to help dancers generate movement? (hint: in the video posted in the Power Point)
17. What are the objectives of Ohad Naharin’s Gaga method?
18. 18. Rennie Harris and Crystal Pite work in completely different genres. Compare/contrast their approaches to choreography.  What are their similarities and differences? (answer in 100 words)
19. Select the video you liked the most and describe how it illustrates your definition of dance.(answer in 100 words)
20. What was Jack Cole’s contribution to Jazz dance?
21. In the video Hellzapoppin, what is the commentary being made on race/class?
22. Describe Bob Fosse’s style of jazz dance?
23. Master Juba, Bojangles and Savion Glover are important figures in tap dance. Please summarize their contributions to the genre. (answer in 100 words)
24. What are the differences between Modern and Contemporary Dance as they are practiced today?

Assignment 4: Complete a written paragraph for both Chapter 6 & 7.

For Chapter 6: Watch the Closer Look on Augusta of Primaporta (6-18). How does the representation of this first Roman emperor differ from earlier portraits of the Republican period?

For Chapter 7: Discuss the difference between longitudinal and central plan churches. Use examples to illustrate your answer.

When it comes to the history of women in wartime Canada, the Second World War has so far attracted the most attention from scholars. Perhaps surprisingly, given the otherwise abundant scholarship on Canada’s Great War, those interested in women’s and girls’ experiences during the First World War have had a more limited historiography upon which to draw. Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw’s edited collection, A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service, brings together twelve new and recent articles that begin to address this scarcity.

Contained within are familiar and important questions about women and war: for example, the changing dimensions of women’s work is the focus of several chapters. But the collection also introduces readers to unique and innovative approaches to gender and conflict. As a case in point, one of the volume’s more intriguing chapters features Amy Tector’s use of disability studies to explore the concern about “authoritative” women and “emasculated” men (303). Suzanne Evans’s exploration of women’s markers of grief is similarly fascinating. Tying all of these interdisciplinary articles together is Glassford and Shaw’s excellent introduction, which provides a thorough overview of the existing literature of women and the First World War and neatly weaves together the articles’ common themes.

The central question that runs throughout^ Sisterhood of Suffering and Service is that of the war’s transformative effect. Did the war profoundly change women’s and girls’ places in their families, communities, and workplaces? How lasting were those changes? If there is any sort of consensus across the volume, it is that, despite dramatic changes in women’s lives, traditional gender norms were not significantly challenged. Furthermore, even women’s new and exceptional roles operated within the confines of acceptable femininity. The authors of this volume explore the adherence to domesticity and maternalism from the perspective of university women (Terry Wilde), voluntary nurses (Linda J. Quiney), young girls (Kristine Alexander), paid workers (Kori Street), indigenous women (Alison Norman), in poetry written by women (Lynn Kennedy and Vicki S. Hallett), and through the lens of social policy (Desmond Morton).

Yet transformation is a complex question. The volume’s best chapters are those that go beyond societal prescriptions about gender roles to examine women’s individual experiences. As Margot I. Duley states in her article about the Newfoundland Women’s Patriotic Association, women’s and girls’ experiences of war were both “paradoxical and profound” (70). Diaries, memoirs, and literary works reveal that transformation may have happened on a more personal level, even within the boundaries of gender norms. The poignant stories contained in Terry Bishop Stirling’s chapter on Newfoundland nurses demonstrates this well. Several chapters also remind us that transformation took on different dimensions across class, race, age, marital status, and region. Kori Street, for example, reveals the contrast between middle- and working class women who took up wartime paid labour. For the former, war work was a temporary patriotic duty; for the latter, the war provided much needed opportunities to support their families, and they feared the loss of those opportunities at \war’s end.

Glassford and Shaw readily admit that their collection has conspicuous holes – most notably, the absence of any analysis of Quebec women or girls. Nevertheless, the volume (and the included bibliography) opens the door to the kinds of questions that need to be asked about women, girls, and gender during the First World War.

To deter The Empire of Japan’s assault on China, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt placed economic sanctions on the island nation.  The timetable of Japan’s conquest of China before they run out of U.S. provided commodities, such as steel, rubber, and oil, had to be accelerated, which means likely U.S. intervention.  Japan planned and then carried out their sneak attack of U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor, December 7th 1941.  Germany and Italy honored their alliance with Japan and they declared war on the U.S. as well.  America had been at peace on December 6th 1941 and within the end of the week, the U.S. was entirely involved in World War II.

The U.S. had to mobilize for war by enlisting over 15 million military personnel (both volunteers and drafted), and by a call up of both women and minorities to work in the war effort industries (build tanks, planes, guns etc…).

The U.S. engages its enemies on far away battle fronts, both in Europe and the Pacific theater of operations.

In the Pacific, the U.S. strategy was to seize island strongholds to get near enough to Japan to strike them and compel them to surrender.  Small islands in the Pacific ocean become the site of bloody battles (Tarawa -3,000+ casualties / Iwo Jima-7,000 marines killed / Okinawa – 12,000 Americans killed).  The closer U.S. drew to Japan the worst the fighting became.    

Two U.S. Marines in their lose fitting combat utility uniforms make their way through a bare and harsh war scared terrain.  There are smashed remains of trees completely bare of leaves or vegetation.  Both Marines have helmets.  The one in front is hunched over while moving through the area.  He holds a rifle.  the Marine behind him has his tommy machine gun elevated as if to fire at some distant target.     

Instead of carrying out a planned invasion of Japan itself, President Harry Truman decided to use a new secret weapon: the atomic bomb.  On August 6, 1945 a B-29 bomber, known as the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.  Three days later another Bomber dropped an Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki.  Japan soon after surrendered to the U.S. On September 2nd, 1945, World War II was over.

 Did Harry Truman make the right decision to use atomic bombs to end the war?  Civilian cities had been targets throughout the war.  The Germans bombed British cities, Japan bombed Chinese cities, the British and U.S. bombed German cities.  The German city of Dresden was fire bombed by the allies in 1945 that resulted in over 40,000 deaths. However, there is something frightening about one bomb and 80,000 people in Hiroshima killed instantly (Nagasaki-40,000).  Another difference is the radiation fall out that kills days, months, and even years after the incident.   

In one paragraph, voice your opinion over the notion of the justification of the decision to use the atomic bomb.  This is a subjective response and I would ask everyone to be comfortable with disagreement as students are to respond to comments from their fellow students.  This is meant to be a productive place to voice differing conclusions while considering the opinions of others.