American Salons


Book Description

From New Orleans jazz to Hollywood films, American culture had barely begun its new role on the world stage as the 20th century opened. But in informal gatherings--known as salons--American artists and writers spread the ideas of European Modernism. This work provides a sweeping account of the American encounter with European Modernism up until World War I. 16 pages of plates.




American Salons


Book Description

In American Salons, Robert Crunden provides a sweeping account of the American encounter with European Modernism up to the American entry into World War I. Crunden begins with deft portraits of the figures who were central to the birth of Modernism, including James Whistler, the eccentric expatriate American painter who became the archetypal artist in his dress and behavior, and Henry and William James, who broke new ground in the genre of the novel and in psychology, influencing an international audience in a broad range of fields. At the heart of the book are the American salons--the intimate, personal gatherings of artists and intellectuals where Modernism flourished. In Chicago, Floyd Dell and Margery Currey spread new ideas to Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, and others. In London, Ezra Pound could be found behind everything from the cigars of W. B. Yeats to the prose of Ford Madox Hueffer. In Paris, the salons of Leo and Gertrude Stein, and Michael and Sarah Stein, gave Picasso and Matisse their first secure audiences and incomes; meanwhile, Gertrude Stein produced a new writing style that had an incalculable impact on the generation of Ernest Hemingway. Most important of all were the salons of New York City. Alfred Stieglitz pioneered new forms of photography at the famous 291 Gallery. Mabel Dodge brought together modernist playwrights and painters, introducing them to political reformers and radicals. At the salon of Walter and Louise Arensberg, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia rubbed shoulders with Wallace Stevens, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams. By 1917, no art in America remained untouched by these new institutions. From the journalism of H. L. Mencken to the famous 1913 Armory Show in New York, Crunden illuminates this pivotal era, offering perceptive insights and evocative descriptions of the central personalities of Modernism.




American Art at the Nineteenth-century Paris Salons


Book Description

This book is a study of 19th-century American art within the context of French art as presented at the Paris Salons--annual exhibitions of contemporary art which, at the time, were the most important events in the Western world. 48 color plates; l52 halftones.




Beauty Shop Politics


Book Description

Looking through the lens of black business history, Beauty Shop Politics shows how black beauticians in the Jim Crow era parlayed their economic independence and access to a public community space into platforms for activism. Tiffany M. Gill argues that the beauty industry played a crucial role in the creation of the modern black female identity and that the seemingly frivolous space of a beauty salon actually has stimulated social, political, and economic change. From the founding of the National Negro Business League in 1900 and onward, African Americans have embraced the entrepreneurial spirit by starting their own businesses, but black women's forays into the business world were overshadowed by those of black men. With a broad scope that encompasses the role of gossip in salons, ethnic beauty products, and the social meanings of African American hair textures, Gill shows how African American beauty entrepreneurs built and sustained a vibrant culture of activism in beauty salons and schools. Enhanced by lucid portrayals of black beauticians and drawing on archival research and oral histories, Beauty Shop Politics conveys the everyday operations and rich culture of black beauty salons as well as their role in building community.




Beauty Salon


Book Description

Mario Bellatin’s complex dreamscape, offered here in a brand-new translation, presents a timely allegorical portrait of the body and society in decay, victim to inscrutable pandemic. In a large, unnamed city, a strange, highly infectious disease begins to spread, afflicting its victims with an excruciating descent toward death, particularly unsparing in its assault of those on society's margins. Spurned by their loved ones and denied treatment by hospitals, the sick are left to die on the streets until a beauty salon owner, whose previous caretaking experience extended only to the exotic fish tanks scattered among his workstations, opens his doors as a refuge. In the ramshackle Morgue, victim to persecution and violence, he accompanies his male guests as they suffer through the lifeless anticipation of certain death, eventually leaving the wistful narrator in complete, ill-fated isolation.




Kabul Beauty School


Book Description

Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.




Community-Based Operations Research


Book Description

This edited volume is an introduction to diverse methods and applications in operations research focused on local populations and community-based organizations that have the potential to improve the lives of individuals and communities in tangible ways. The book's themes include: space, place and community; disadvantaged, underrepresented or underserved populations; international and transnational applications; multimethod, cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches and appropriate technology; and analytics. The book is comprised of eleven original submissions, a re-print of a 2007 article by Johnson and Smilowitz that introduces CBOR, and an introductory chapter that provides policy motivation, antecedents to CBOR in OR/MS, a theory of CBOR and a comprehensive review of the chapters. It is hoped that this book will provide a resource to academics and practitioners who seek to develop methods and applications that bridge the divide between traditional OR/MS rooted in mathematical models and newer streams in 'soft OR' that emphasize problem structuring methods, critical approaches to OR/MS and community engagement and capacity-building.




Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century


Book Description

The eighteenth-century salon played an important role in shaping literary culture, while both creating and sustaining transnational intellectual networks. Focusing on archival materials, this book is the first detailed examination of the literary salon in Ireland, considered in the wider contexts of contemporary salon culture in Britain and France.




French Salons


Book Description

Challenging many of the conclusions of recent historiography, including the depiction of salonnières as influential power brokers, French Salons offers an original, penetrating, and engaging analysis of elite culture and society in France before, during, and after the Revolution.