1,721,027 research outputs found
Adventurer, saint, celebrity: the Chevalière Deon's transgender selves
No full textNo other trans individual has left us as large a corpus of autobiographical writings as the French diplomat, spy and author the Chevalière Deon (1728-1810), who narrated her transition using a variety of genres: confession, sermon, epistolary exchange, dialogue and memoir. Unfortunately these writings have only recently begun to be studied by historians, and the vast majority remain unpublished. This essay explores how Deon has been represented by clinicians and historians, before exploring her presentation as adventurer, saint, and celebrity. It argues that rather than sifting Deon's archive for a single, enduring, ‘authentic self’, Deon can help us approach trans lives in less restrictive ways
Mr five per cent: the many lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, the world's richest man
No full textAt his death in 1955 Calouste Gulbenkian was one of the richest men in the world, known as "Mr Five Percent" on account of his personal holding of 5% of Middle East oil production. His fortune and art collection are now held by the Gulbenkian Foundation, one of the world's wealthiest philanthropies. The companies he helped to create - Royal Dutch-Shell and Total - count among today's oil "supermajors," and the international oil agreements he brokered continue to shape the economic and political fortunes of Iraq, Venezuela and other oil-producing countries across the globe. Gulbenkian's media-shy persona and preference for back-room deals lent him an aura of mystery which continues to this day. Though acknowledged as one of the heroes of the international story of oil by historians such as Daniel Yergin (author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power"), Gulbenkian's story has yet to be told
Tales of two cities: Paris, London and the making of the modern city, 1700-1900
No full textParis and London have long held a mutual fascination, and never more so than in the period 1750-1914, when they vied to be the world's greatest city. Each city has been the focus of many books, yet Jonathan Conlin here explores the complex relationship between them for the first time.The reach and influence of both cities was such that the story of their rivalry has global implications. It is a history of surprises: Sherlock Holmes was actually French, the can-can was English and the first ever restaurant served English food in Paris. By borrowing, imitating and learning from each other Paris and London invented the modern metropolis.Tales of Two Cities examines and compares five urban spaces - the pleasure garden, the cemetery, the apartment, the restaurant and the music hall - that defined urban modernity in the nineteenth century. The citizens of Paris and London first created these essential features of the modern cityscape and so defined urban living for all of us
Debt, diplomacy and dreadnoughts: the National Bank of Turkey, 1909-1919
No full textThe National Bank of Turkey (NBT) (1909) was an attempt by the new Young Turk regime to assert economic sovereignty: creating a multinational bank able to provide financing free of the diplomatic conditions previously attached to loans by French banks. NBT's role financing naval rearmament and oil development has attracted a good deal of attention from historians. Using the archives of the bank's founders and Ottoman ministers alongside familiar diplomatic sources, this article is the first to combine Ottoman and European perspectives on NBT, challenging the traditional narrative which presents the Ottoman Empire as the helpless ‘victim’ of the fiscal imperialism of France, Britain and Germany in the years before 1914
The amiras and the Ottoman Empire, 1880-1923: the case of the Gulbenkians
No full textThe contribution of the amira or merchant elites of the Ottoman Empire to the empire’s development was highly contested in the decades around 1900. Ottoman Armenian amiras dominated imperial finance and international trade, as well as coordinating the introduction of new crops and industrial technologies. Integrating the Empire in a globalized world, however, led to accusations by non-Armenians that the amiras were guilty of condemning that same Empire to a subservient state of clientage, while fellow Ottoman Armenians increasingly viewed the amiras as unpatriotic collaborators. Drawing on a wealth of new archival material from one leading amira clan, this article attempts to move beyond nationalist narratives, revealing the amiras’ multiple identities as the vanguard of a globalizing world.<br/
The Met: a history of a museum and its people
No full textThis book is a groundbreaking bottom-up history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exploring both its triumphs and its failings. Jonathan Conlin tells the stories of the people who have shaped the museum—from curators and artists to museumgoers and security guards—and the communities that have made it their own. Highlighting inequalities of wealth, race, and gender, he exposes the hidden costs of the museum’s reliance on “robber barons” and oligarchs, the exclusionary immigration policies that influenced the foundation of the American Wing, and the obstacles faced by women curators. Drawing on extensive interviews with past and current staff, Conlin brings the story up to the present, including the museum’s troubled 150th anniversary in 2020. As the Met faces continued controversy, this book offers a timely account of the people behind an iconic institution and a compelling case for the museum’s vision of shared human creativity
Civilisation
No full textA breathtakingly ambitious series that tackled over a thousand years of history, Kenneth Clark's Civilisation was the first color documentary series broadcast in the UK. Eager to show off its new second channel, the BBC had sent its finest directors and crew on an 80,000-mile odyssey in search of the finest examples of human creativity. The resulting thirteen-episode series became a milestone in television history, pioneering the "Presenter-Hero" model of authored documentary. For its fans the series gave hope for the future at a time of civil and political unrest; for its critics the series elicited only despair at its supposedly elitist values. Meanwhile, in the United States the series had an even deeper impact: a flagship for a new public broadcasting service, and the start of a new transatlantic partnership between the BBC and PBS.Forty years on Civilisation has become synonymous with the golden age of the BBC documentary series, even as many television professionals have come to deride it as patronizing and slow. Drawing on interviews with members of the original crew and extensive archival research, Jonathan Conlin goes beyond the g(u)ilt-edged caricature to reveal a series that combined healthy skepticism towards traditional ideas of progress with a genuinely inclusive approach to its audience. Special chapters contrast the British and American response to Civilisation - and consider its legacy to all those interested in putting art and history on the small scree
Lost in transmission? John Berger and the origins of <i>Ways of Seeing</i> (1972)
No full textDirected by Mike Dibb, John Berger’s 1972 BBC2 documentary series Ways of Seeing is a landmark in the history of art history and visual studies as well as the history of arts television. In the absence of scholarship on Berger’s early career and arts television generally, however, art historians have struggled to move beyond nostalgia for a series their younger selves received as an epiphany. Drawing on new archival material and the works of forgotten Marxist exile art historians, this article provides an intellectual pedigree for the series as well as an account of the collaborative process by which Dibb and Berger transformed those ideas into compelling, at times arresting television. The presenter’s charisma and the rhetorical power of the series’ editing, it argued, prevented the series from achieving its intended goal. A humanist as well as a socialist, Berger sought to liberate art from politics, enabling it to narrate universal human experience
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