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Американистика: актуальные подходы и современные исследования: межвуз. сб. науч. трудов. Выпуск 8. ISBN 978-5-88313-890-0
This edition features articles on current issues in American history, since colonial times and including the beginning of the XXI century. The collection brought together specialists from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kursk, Orel, Saransk, Saratov, Krasnodar, Bryansk, Kirov, Yaroslavl, Kaliningrad, as well as colleagues from Belarus (Minsk, Vitebsk) and Ukraine (Kiev). He continues the line on interdisciplinary collaboration and historians, philologists, culture experts, engaged in the study of the United States of America. The issue of articles of interest to its diversity and scientific significance considered in these subjects. Studies reflect the realities of the political and US foreign policy history of XVIII-XXI centuries., as well as such areas of American life, as history, journalism, literature, culture, education, historiography. A number of articles based on archival materials. In the light of new approaches to the study of history It should highlight the narrative, discursive approach, gender studies, Comparative and multidisciplinary, achieve intellectual history.
Folding of the American historical experience proceeded dramaticly, but brought important lessons for the development of all mankind. XXXIV International Conference of the Russian Society for the Study of American Culture, entitled "Display and interpretation of history in the culture of the United States", helped to analyze the dynamics of the processes associated with the perception of the history of North American cultural figures.
In recent years, the theme of blackface has again become a pressing issue in American society because of the scandals that have flared up around prominent instances of its use and the taboo of even mentioning it in public. Blackface is a form of theatrical make-up worn by a performer in minstrel shows as a caricature of the appearance of a black person. First appearing in the 19 century, these popular entertainment performances existed for more than 150 years and became part of general American entertainment culture. Moreover, they played a considerable role in reinforcing and spreading stereotypes about the character and behavior of African Americans. This article reveals the main reasons why any visual and costumed parody of people with dark skin is considered socially unacceptable today. The author considers the problem of contemporary American gangsta rap being offensive to African American women through its use of minstrel show racial stereotypes. Furthermore, the author suggests that the representation of black women in American culture is always closely and inextricably linked with the history of racism and sexism in the U.S.; traditionally, black women were contrasted with the ideal images of white women. Despite the fact that well-known caricatures such as Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel have undergone significant changes due to social and political evolution in the United States, their negative legacy is still found not just in broader American society, but within the African American community itself.
This article is about one of the most radical sects of independents — quakers. The English Govenment considered quakers to be a danger to the state and began to persecute them. As a result a lot of quakers went to the North America and founded their own colony there.
Through the example of the U Street block in Washington, D.C., the noted American urbanist shows that urban “contact zones” in which people disunited by racial, ethic, confessional and class conflicts are living side by side, serve as generators of new adaptive strategies. The inexhaustible source of viability and flexibility of these communities lies in the need for survival in the conditions of “deliberate social complexity”. It is precisely this experience that enables such communities effectively to adapt to the aftermaths of natural calamities and social conflicts.
In this article we are talking about the early development of the educational process in one of England's North American colonies. Pennsylvania attracted many immigrants from Europe by its religious freedom. Moving to a new land, Europeans from different countries brought their way of life, including various systems of education. Therefore, at the end of the beginning of the XVII-XVIII centuries there were several different types of schools. The national education system, which appeared only in the XIX century has absorbed much of the colonists created.
The second issue of the collection of articles is devoted to actual problems and new methods in the history of the USA in modern Russian American studies. The specialists from Moscow, Kursk, Orel, Tambov, Saransk, Astrakhan, Kirov and also from Belarus (Minsk), Ukraine (Kiev) and USA (Pennsylvania, Illinois) created it. It became international as a matter of fact. The mutual cooperation of different specialists in the American Studies: historians, philologists, culturologists, politologists, lawyers will be a special feature of this collection. There are different articles on actual questions. There are articles on domestic and foreign policy of the USA in 18-21 centuries. It has works on the history of American journalism, literature, theatre and law. The authors used new methods of studying: narrative, discourse, gender, interdisciplinary, comparative analysis and computer investigation of statistics. The collection of articles will be interesting and useful to researches, lectures and teachers, post-graduates and students, and also those who are interested in the problems of the USA.
Women have been integral to the development of printing and journalism in North America since the earliest settlers landed in the New World . 26 women worked as printers during colonial period. The women printed in their printing officers not only newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, leaflets, but many blank forms. These included all types of legal documents used in the indenture of apprentices, the sale of slaves or real estate, drawing up of wills and letters of administration, ships' bills of lading, and so forth.
Exploring performances of Russian music at the Metropolitan Opera in New York allows observing the evolutions and paradigmatic changes in American high-brow cultural discourse and analyzing changing structures of repertoire policies and public preferences over the period that covers the entire existence of the Met between 1883 and December 2016. Using the opera’s digital archive, a number of queries on leading Russian composers (Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich) were conducted in order to examine the interrelationship between cultural, political, and musical-historical factors that fed into repertoire dynamics and their reflection in the public space. Within the general operatic context, the Russians could never vie the dominating Italian and German composers. However, Russian authors have consistently taken mid-range positions and their works gained substantial public visibility. Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky emerged as leaders throughout the period of the inquiry, confirming the thesis of reductionist conservatism of the standard opera repertoire at the Met. Modern composers showed different dynamics, with Stravinsky clearly surpassing the Soviet school due to his public stature, a long period of stay in America, particular position as the doyen of 20th century music, and cultural-political involvement during cold war. Indeed, all important premieres of Prokofiev and Shostakovich fall into the period after 1991, and the critical reactions show the centrality of democracy-totalitarianism binomial in the construction of discourses on contemporary Soviet music. Economic and macro-political factors did not necessarily have a direct impact on opera performances: while the Great Depression years expectedly show an ebbing down of operatic activities, the wartime alliance did not translate in a spike in Russian performances. Favorable economic conjuncture of the post-war period and continuous media expansion of the Met ensured the growing quantity and increasing prominence of Russian works within the New York and American society, available to audiences larger than New York's educated public thanks to Met’s Anglicization policy, performances at various venues at home and abroad, and radio, television, and internet broadcasts. The market made Tchaikovsky’s rule supreme, otherwise leading to partial diversification of Russian repertoire, favored by growing internationalization and public stature of the Met. Overall, the transferred imageries included exoticism, high quality expectations (concomitant with growing musical prestige) and often contradictory perceptions of Russia that went beyond the immediate political agenda and fitted the globalizing patterns of “national” opera repertoire and discourse.