Search results for ""author patricia anne simpson""

The Play World chronicles the history and evolution of the concept of play as a universal part of childhood. Examining texts and toys coming out of Europe between 1631 and 1914, Patricia Anne Simpson argues that German material, literary, and pedagogical cultures were central to the construction of the modern ideas and realities of play and childhood in the transatlantic world.With attention to the details of toy manufacturing and marketing, Simpson considers prescriptive texts about how children should play, treat their possessions, and experience adventure in the scientific exploration of distant geographies. She illuminates the role of toys—among them a mechanical guillotine, yo-yos, hybridized dolls, and circus figures—as agents of history. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from postcolonial, childhood, and migration studies, she makes the case that these texts and toys transfer the world of play into a space in which model childhoods are imagined and enacted as German. With chapters on the Protestant play ethic, enlightened parenting, Goethe as an advocate of play, colonial fantasies, children’s almanacs, ethnographic play, and an empire of toys, Simpson’s argument follows a compelling path toward understanding the reproduction of religious, gendered, ethnic, racial, national, and imperial identities, emanating from German-speaking Europe, that collectively construct a global imaginary.This foundational and deeply original study connects German-speaking communities across the Atlantic as they collectively engender the epistemology of the play world. It will be of particular interest to German studies scholars whose research crosses the Atlantic.

Read more less

In The Erotics of War in German Romanticism, Patricia Anne Simpson explores the ways early nineteenth-century German philosophers, poets, and artists represent war and erotic desire. The author argues that gender is connected to a larger debate about the construction of the self in relation to a community at a time that this definition is under revision. She analyzes the culture of war as it shapes the bonds of fraternal, familial, and eventually national identity. Simpson defines the "erotics" of war as discursive attempts to assert the priority of ethical identity and citizenship over individualized desire. The seemingly ancillary problem of female desire emerges not as a marginal issue, but as the focal point of a debate about identity. Casting a wide evidentiary net, this study draws examples from literature, the visual and decorative arts, journalism, and military journals to demonstrate the centrality of war to national discourse in the early nineteenth century.

Read more less

The Play World chronicles the history and evolution of the concept of play as a universal part of childhood. Examining texts and toys coming out of Europe between 1631 and 1914, Patricia Anne Simpson argues that German material, literary, and pedagogical cultures were central to the construction of the modern ideas and realities of play and childhood in the transatlantic world.With attention to the details of toy manufacturing and marketing, Simpson considers prescriptive texts about how children should play, treat their possessions, and experience adventure in the scientific exploration of distant geographies. She illuminates the role of toys—among them a mechanical guillotine, yo-yos, hybridized dolls, and circus figures—as agents of history. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from postcolonial, childhood, and migration studies, she makes the case that these texts and toys transfer the world of play into a space in which model childhoods are imagined and enacted as German. With chapters on the Protestant play ethic, enlightened parenting, Goethe as an advocate of play, colonial fantasies, children’s almanacs, ethnographic play, and an empire of toys, Simpson’s argument follows a compelling path toward understanding the reproduction of religious, gendered, ethnic, racial, national, and imperial identities, emanating from German-speaking Europe, that collectively construct a global imaginary.This foundational and deeply original study connects German-speaking communities across the Atlantic as they collectively engender the epistemology of the play world. It will be of particular interest to German studies scholars whose research crosses the Atlantic.

Read more less

What is the role of aesthetic expression in responding to discrimination, tragedy, violence, even genocide? How does gender shape responses to both literal and structural violence, including implicit linguistic, familial, and cultural violence? How might writing or other works of art contribute to healing? Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing beyond Rwanda explores the possibility of art as therapeutic, capable of implementation by mental health practitioners crafting mental health policy in Rwanda. This anthology of scholarly, personal, and hybrid essays was inspired by scholar and activist Chantal Kalisa (1965–2015). At the commemoration of the nineteenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, organized by the Rwandan Embassy in Washington DC, Kalisa gave a presentation, “Who Speaks for the Survivors of the Genocide against Tutsi?” Kalisa devoted her energy to giving expression to those whose voices had been distorted or silenced. The essays in this anthology address how the production and experience of visual, dramatic, cinematic, and musical arts, in addition to literary arts, contribute to healing from the trauma of mass violence, offering preliminary responses to questions like Kalisa’s and honoring her by continuing the dialogue in which she participated with such passion, sharing the work of scholars and colleagues in genocide studies, gender studies, and francophone literatures.

Read more less