Associate Pr
ofessor Alison McKee has been invited to participate in the Spring 2015 University Scholar Series to chat about her recently published book on “woman’s films” of the 1940s — movies that focus on love, desire, and loss against the backdrop of World War II.
For a fun and informative talk that is open to the SJSU community and the public, please join her on Wednesday, February 25, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Martin Luther King Library, Room 225/229.
Oda Schottmueller performing one of her solo mask dances in Berlin, ca. 1938.
Congratulations“Solo Dancing in Central Europe and Early Modernism,” in On Stage Alone, edited by Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy, University Press of Florida, 2013.
This article discusses different kinds of solo dance and dancers in Central Europe from about 1905 to 1940 and describes the remarkable inventiveness of dancers in developing a mode of dance performance that is now very rare and difficult to master in our time.
Congratulations to Karl Toepfer on the publication of: “Perverse Erotik und die Vision der ekstatischen Stadt” (translated into German by Dorothea Loebbermann), in Metropolenzauber. Sexuelle Moderne und urbaner Wahnsinn, edited by Gabriele Tietze and Dorothea Dornhof, Vienna: Bohlau 2014.
This article discusses different approaches to research on perverse sexuality during the Weimar Republic and the discovery that accurate, comprehensive knowledge of the this subject depended on participation in rather than detachment from the forms of behavior the researchers explored.
“Hero und Leander,” photo by Manasse, Vienna (1930), from Erich Wulffen, Die Erotik in der Photographie, Berlin: Verlag für Kulturforschung (1931), 11. This voluptuously staged photo of a scene from ancient Greek myth nevertheless exudes a seductive aura of modernity as it contrasts the reclining or “defeated” male figure with the rising or “yearning” female figure, reversing the conventional or “classical” representation of “active” male identity contrasted with “passive” female identity. However, the image also suggests that female ascent comes at the sacrifice of male beauty. Unlike much Nacktkultur photography and indeed some artworks of the pre-War era, the staged photography of the Weimar Republic tends to show little, if any, inclination to represent “Adam and Eve” couples who are equal in their emanation of power.
Congratulations Karl Toepfer on the publication of his review!
“The Movement of History in the Movement of Bodies” (review of New German Dance Studies, edited by Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht) at H-Net 2014.
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36587
Alla Nazimova as Salome in the film Salome (1922)
Congratulations, Karl Toepfer for your recent publication: “Dance, Fashion and Music Hall Scenes in European Silent Films of the 1920s,” Costume as Cinematic Spectacle, edited by Marta Uhlirova, London: Koening, 2014.
This article discusses the conventions and innovations in the use of costumes to construct dance scenes in European silent films of the 1920s; the article also shows how cinematic techniques operate in relation to choreography and costume choices. The book as a whole contains numerous fascinating articles about costume and fashion in the movies, accompanied by an abundance of luxurious illustrations.
