Book Review of Improved Earth: Prairie Space as Modern Artefact, 1869-1944 by Rod Bantjes

In this short but suggestive study, sociologist Rod Bantjes examines how contending visions of modernity shaped the social and physical landscapes of the Canadian prairies. "[B]oth statesmen and prairie farmers were infused with the modernist spirit of innovation, the will creatively (and destructively) to transform their worlds," Bantjes argues. His provocative view of farmers as agents of modernity reflects recent scholarship that seeks to explore "multiple modernities," or the notion that ideas and practices of modernism must be regarded not as monolithic but rather as contested and multivocal, and must be examined in their historical and geographical contexts.

Insurrectos cubanos deportados hacia Canarias y Fernando Poo (1869): un ejemplo de deportación política

[ES] Aproximación a la deportación política: causas, circunstancias que la rodean y caracterización del fenómeno, para ello nos centramos en un proceso concreto: la deportación de insurrectos cubanos en 1869 con dirección a Fernando Póo y que afecta directamente a las Islas Canarias, lugar utilizado tradicionalmente como destierro. En este sentido, intentamos acercarnos a las controversias y reacciones que genera el fenómeno de la deportación, en la población, en general así como en los grupos de poder político de las islas, en particular.

What's Happening? Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg Argue About Art And Life

In 1961 Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) exchanged a number of letters in which they argued about the definition of their avant-garde practices as Happenings. Kaprow, who first introduced this "root-metaphor," as he would later call it, describes with it the necessity of the respective activity to be as far removed as possible from all motives, materials, and formats conventionally connected to art. Oldenburg, who at the time of this exchange was just as active in the New York performance scene as Kaprow, disagrees with his colleague's removal of their practice from the artistic sphere. Oldenburg is also dissatisfied with the fact that Kaprow, through his writings, launches a critical discourse that follows his own definition of the Happening. The two artists thus argue just as much about the positioning of their practices with respect to art as over the authority to establish such a position. This essay traces their argument through their written conversation and in doing so exposes the immense influence Kaprow's rhetoric had on the subsequent art-historical canonization of their respective practices: Oldenburg's more ambivalent position is today amalgamated with Kaprow's theoretical stance.

Rede beim Schluß der ersten israelitischen Synode zu Leipzig am 4. Juli 1869

geh. von M. Lazarus. Nebst d. Ansprache d. Löw