Robert Darnton: Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984–)

“When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730s held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the eighteenth-century version of Little Red Riding Hood did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions Robert Darnton answers in this classic work of European history in what we like to call ‘The Age of Enlightenment.'”

First published in 1984
Publisher Basic Books, New York, 1990
ISBN 0465027008
298 pages

Reviews: Roger Chartier (Journal of Modern History, 1985), David E. Apter (American Journal of Sociology, 1985).
Commentaries: Darnton (Journal of Modern History, 1986), Dominick LaCapra (Journal of Modern History, 1988), Philip Stewart (Journal of Modern History, 1994).

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James H. Johnson: Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (1996)

Beginning with the simple question, “Why did audiences grow silent?” Listening in Paris gives a spectator’s-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James H. Johnson recreates the experience of audiences during these rich decades with brio and wit. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the political, musical, and aesthetic factors that produced more engaged listening. Johnson shows the gradual pacification of audiences from loud and unruly listeners to the attentive public we know today.

Drawing from a wide range of sources–novels, memoirs, police files, personal correspondence, newspaper reviews, architectural plans, and the like–Johnson brings the performances to life: the hubbub of eighteenth-century opera, the exuberance of Revolutionary audiences, Napoleon’s musical authoritarianism, the bourgeoisie’s polite consideration. He singles out the music of Gluck, Haydn, Rossini, and Beethoven as especially important in forging new ways of hearing. This book’s theoretical edge will appeal to cultural and intellectual historians in many fields and periods.

Publisher University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1996
Volume 21 of Studies on the History of Society and Culture series
ISBN 0520918231, 9780520918238
384 pages

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Dana Diminescu (ed.): Social Science Information journal, Special issue: Diasporas on the Web (2012)

“One of the major changes affecting diasporas the world over since the 1980s has been the increasing number of communities scattered throughout physical space, along with new forms of presence, regrouping, interaction and mobilization within digital territories.

This change calls for a renewal in epistemological approaches. The topics under study, as well as the conceptual and methodological tools used to analyse them, need to be reconsidered in the face of this evolution of diasporas. The articles published in this issue of SSI1 bear witness to such an effort: researchers and engineers involved in the e-Diasporas Atlas project have sought to find the most appropriate concepts, tools and methods to explore the Web of diasporas, based on a number of case studies. This work represents a vast new area of investigation, which is still under way.

In this introduction, we examine the different conceptual tools used during the research, analyse their relevance for the different diasporic communities on the Web and present the methodological chain developed within the e-Diasporas Atlas project as well as the most important findings.” (from the Introduction)

With contributions by Dana Diminescu, Anat Ben-David, Yann Scioldo-Zürcher, Houda Asal, Marta Severo and Eleonora Zuolo, Teresa Graziano, Ingrid Therwath, Priya Kumar, Tristan Bruslé, Kristina Balalovska, Francesco Mazzucchelli

Social Science Information, December 2012; 51 (4)
Publisher: SAGE, on behalf of Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris
ISSN 0539-0184
245 pages
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e-Diasporas Atlas project page (includes working papers and interactive graph)

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