“What was the interminable law case in Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-53)? Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, a case stemming from a dispute about distribution of an estate.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Ashcan School: (Also called The Eight and The New York Realists) A term applied, loosely and belatedly, to a group of American realist painters. Although they never actually formed a school, eight painters—Robert Henri (1865-1929), John Sloan (1871-1951), Maurice Prendergast (1859-1927), George Luks (1897-1933), Everett Shinn (1876-1953), William Glackens (1870-1938), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939), and Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)—held an independent exhibition at The Macbeth Gallery in New York in February 1908. Their paintings, which featured prizefights, bars, and city street scenes, departed from the artistic conventions of the turn of the century and were greeted with a storm of critical disapproval. These depictions of the working-class milieu—romantic and vital, but also squalid and brutal—shocked viewers used to genteel and fashionable pictures. The exhibition and the work of the artists, however, exerted an enormous influence on the development of American realistic painting.
The original eight came to be associated with other painters, including Walt Kuhn (1880-1949), one of the organizers of the Armory Show, and George Bellows (1882-1925), whose work, of all of the painters of the school, has perhaps retained the most critical interest.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“dictatorship: In modern usage, absolute rule unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other political or social factors within the state. The original dictators, however, were magistrates in ancient Italian cities (including Rome) who were allocated absolute power during a period of emergency. Their power was neither arbitrary nor accountable, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictators after the beginning of the second century BC, however, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman emperors conformed more to our image of the dictator as an autocrat and near-despot.
In the twentieth century the existence of a dictator has been a necessary and (to some) definitive component of totalitarian regimes: thus Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Mussolini’s Italy were generally referred to as dictatorships. In the Soviet case the very word and idea of dictatorship were legitimized by Marx’s idea of the historical necessity of a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ which would follow the revolution and eradicated the bourgeoisie.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, readings/research, united states history
“totalitarianism: A dictatorial form of centralized government that regulates every aspect of state and private behavior. Although the term was originally intended to designate fascist and communist regimes, totalitarianism is mainly associated with characterizations of the Soviet Union. Its proponents do not agree on when, if ever, the Soviet Union ceased to be totalitarian, but they tend to converge on the view that at some point the political leadership was all powerful and totally illegitimate. For many commentators, the Soviet Union entered a new phase after the abandonment of mass terror on Stalin’s death. However, others operating within the totalitarian paradigm point to institutional continuity, KGB harassment of dissidents, and the ever present possibilities of arbitrary state power until 1989. The total and sudden collapse of the Soviet Union since then casts doubt not only on this school, but perhaps on the whole concept of totalitarianism. In the 1970s, a new school of Sovietology emerged which pointed to evidence both for popular support for the regime and for widespread dispersion of power, at least in implementation of policy, among sectoral and regional authorities. For some of the ‘pluralists,’ this was evidence of the ability of the regime to adapt to include new demands. However, totalitarian theorists claimed that the failure of the system to survive showed not only its inability to adapt but the formality of supposed popular participation. See also Arendt.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, readings/research, united states history
“Pontiac’s Rebellion: (1763-66), Indian uprising against the British, named after one of its leaders, Ottawa chief Pontiac. After the French and Indian War, the tribes north of the Ohio River, finding the British victors less generous than the French and unprotective of Indian lands, resolved upon war. Detroit and Fort Pitt withstood sieges in 1763, but the Indians captured many other British posts and spread terror along the Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland frontiers. In 1764 the British subdued the Shawnees and the Delawares in Pennsylvania. Lacking allies, Pontiac submitted in 1766 and was pardoned.”
Excerpted from: Rosenbaum, Robert A. The Penguin Encyclopedia of American History. New York: Penguin, 2003.
“Cree: One of the major Algonquian-speaking Indian peoples of an immense area from Western Connecticut to Eastern Alberta. They acquired firearms and engaged in the fur trade with Europeans beginning in the 17th century. There were two major divisions: the Woodland Cree, whose culture was essentially an Eastern Woodlands type, and the Plains Cree, bison hunters of the Northern Great Plains. Social organization in both groups was based on local bands. Among the Woodland Cree, rituals and taboos relating to the spirits of game animals were pervasive, as was fear of witchcraft. Among the more militant Plains Cree, rites intended to foster success in the bison hunt and warfare were common. Today over 100,000 Cree live in scattered communities in Canada.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Crazy Horse: (1843?-1877) Sioux Indian chief. Refusing to abide by an 1868 treaty granting the Sioux a large reservation in the Black Hills, Crazy Horse led his warriors in continued raids against enemy tribes as well as whites. In 1876 he joined with Cheyenne forces in a surprise attack against General George Crook in Southern Montana, forcing Crook’s withdrawal. He then united with Chief Sitting Bull near the Little Bighorn River, where he helped to annihilate General George Armstrong Custer’s troops. In 1877, his tribe weakened by cold and hunger, Crazy Horse surrendered to Crook; removed to a military outpost in Nebraska, he was killed in a scuffle with soldiers.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“The Coushattas (pronounced coo-SHAH-tuh), or Koasatis, lived in what is now the state of Alabama, especially where the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers merge to form the Alabama River. They were a Muskogean-speaking people and were closely related to the Creek tribe in history, language, and culture. The Coushattas lived near another Muskogean people, the Alabamas. Both Coushattas and Alabamas were part of the Creek Confederacy. The Coushattas, village farmers, are classified, along with these other tribes, in the Southeast Culture Area.
It is thought that the Coushattas had contact with the Spanish expedition of 1539-43 led by Hernando de Soto, and, after De Soto’s death, led by Moscoso de Alvaro. Other Spanish explorers passed through their territories in the 1500s and 1600s.
In the 1700s, after Rene Robert Cavelier de la Salle’s 1682 voyage of exploration along the lower Mississippi River, the French became established in the region, founding the settlement of Mobile on the Gulf of Mexico in 1710. They became allies and trading partners with many of the Muskogean tribes of the region. Meanwhile, the English were pushing inland from the Atlantic Coast and developing relations with the Creeks living to the east of the Coushattas.
When the French were forced to give up their holdings in 1763 after they lost the French and Indian War against the British, most of the Coushattas dispersed. Some moved to Louisiana. Others joined the Seminoles in Florida, Others went to Texas.
Those that stayed in Alabama threw their lot in with the Creeks and were relocated west of the Mississippi to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) at the time of the Trail of Tears in the 1830s; their descendants still live there today. Descendants of those Coushattas who moved to Louisiana presently have a non-reservation community near the town of Kinder, as well as a recently purchased 15-acre reservation. Those in Texas were granted reservation lands in Polk County along with the Alabamas.
Excerpted from: Waldman, Carl. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York: Facts on File, 1988.
Until I read this reading on St. Augustine, Florida, I was unaware, as the text’s first sentence points out, that St. Augustine “…is the oldest continuously occupied settlement established by Europeans in the United States.” You probably already know, given the theme of this month’s posts, that indigenous peoples in Florida didn’t fare well after the arrival of the Spanish in that state. In fact, they suffered the same devastation as the Taino in the Caribbean.
If you’re interested in this, Raoul Peck, in his series Exterminate All the Brutes, documents all of this compellingly–to say the very least.
In any event, here is the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that attends the reading above. This reading ties in with the the material below: the British briefly gained control of Florida in 1763 after the French and Indian War. Then, during the American Revolution, Spain sided with the Americans and consequently regained possession of Florida. The state became territory of the United States in 1821 under the terms of the Adams-Onis Treaty.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Nipmuc: In the state of Massachusetts, the low coastal plains rise up to an inland plateau. The plateau is separated from even higher country to the west, the Berkshire Hills, by the Connecticut River. On this central plateau, covered with rich topsoil and dense woods, and coursed by swift-flowing rivers, once lived bands of Algonquians. But there were many different bands and villages, but they came to be known together as Nipmucs.
Their name, pronounced NIP-muck, is derived from the Algonquian word nipmaug, for “fresh water fishing place.” The fact that they primarily used inland freshwater lakes and rivers for their fishing rather than the Atlantic Ocean marks their major difference from many other New England Algonquians who lived closer to the coast. In other ways–such as their hunting and farming methods, their tools, and their beliefs–they were much like their other Algonquian neighbors. The Nipmucs were noted in particular for their basketmaking, weaving, and leatherwork.
Historically, too, their story is linked to other area tribes. The Nipmucs were associated in early colonial years with the Massachuset tribe, and many of them also became Praying Indians. But then in 1675, most of the Nipmuc braves joined the Wampanoags and Narragansets in King Philip’s War. At the end of the war, Many Nipmuc survivors joined Algonquian kinsmen, such as the Mahicans on the Hudson River. Others joined Algonquians in Canada.
The Nipmucs have one of the smallest reservations in the East, only 11.9 acres. It is called the Hassanamisco Reservation, after a village and tribal name. The Hassanamiscos once held the territory around what is now Grafton, Massachusetts. Before 1728, the reservation consisted of 8,000 acres. But most of the land was lost when tribal leaders were tricked into selling it for no payment at all. In 1848, the state set aside the tiny piece that now remains.”
Excerpted from: Waldman, Carl. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York: Facts on File, 1988.
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