The modernist encounter with classical tragedy challenges received notions about tragic form and tragic sensibility: that it is incompatible with modernity (George Steiner) and that it is primarily a European/Eurocentric legacy. In engaging with classical Greek tragedy, modernist writers and theatre-makers (from T. S Eliot, W. B. Yeats, H. D., Ezra Pound, Edward Gordon Craig, and Isadora Duncan, to George Abyad, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, and the later postcolonial iterations of Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona) create a set of relationships that radically rewrite ideas of influence and tradition and gesture towards an understanding of tragedy as a form of theatricality rather than as a play-text. This theatricality, read in conjunction with primitivism and orientalism, is not a quest for authenticity or for the lost humanism of the classics but helps to construct an experimental laboratory in translation, in performance, and in adaptation. From the Cambridge Ritualists to the later postcolonial readings, modernism helps to revision tragedy as part of world theatre.

That in our social work we need to constantly hold under review these two questions. Whose reality counts? and Whose knowledge is worth knowing?

To say that the 1960s were a time of upheaval for Americans is, by now, a cliché. Yet for American Catholics in particular, the disruption was twofold. In addition to all of the profound social and political changes that one associates with “the Sixties,” Catholics found themselves faced with a Church that was undergoing a transformation. The Second Vatican Council, which one church historian has described as the “most significant religious event” in five centuries, begat striking alterations in the ancient Church. It was, according to another, “the defining event of the Catholic Sixties.” In the same year that the Council concluded – 1965 – President Lyndon Johnson decided to commit 200,000 troops to fight the war in Vietnam.

J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites, like his English Suites, all follow the same basic format: prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, with various modern dances known as “galanteries” placed in the penultimate position. Bach insisted that his students study a number of suites to develop an intimate knowledge of these various genres of stylized dances. Writings by his North German contemporaries—especially Johann Gottfried Walther’s Musicalisches Lexikon (1732) and Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739)—offer some sense of how Bach may have understood the characters and styles of each dance type. Bach’s suites often exemplify elements of unity across the various movements, with musical motives or figures introduced in the prelude that recur in various ways across a suite. These elements of unity suggest the influence of a technique of musical variation discussed in Friedrich Erhardt Niedt’s Musikalische Handleitung (1706). The chapter closes with a complete analysis of Cello Suite No. 4 (BWV1010), illuminating harmony, form, motives, and possible Christian symbolism in the Prelude.

Recounting the experiences of Wu Ruyin and his son, Wu Weiying, who between them held the title of Marquis of Gongshun in succession from 1599 to 1643, this chapter and the preceding one address two overarching issues. First, they explore how institutions and administrators persevere amidst crisis. It may be tempting to caricature late Ming bureaucrats as obdurately clinging to the past, but men like Wu Ruyin and Wu Weiying adapted to new demands by incorporating new technologies and new ways within established frameworks. Few felt the need to abandon the “institutions of the imperial forefathers.” Second, these chapters examine the place of merit nobles in late Ming society. Wu Ruyin and Wu Weiying were not men of the people, but by function of their social circles, they actively engaged in the capital’s broader cultural activities, and by virtue of their jobs as senior military administrators, they commanded surprisingly detailed information about common soldiers and officers, war captives and refugees, and even rumors circulating through Beijing. This chapter first examines Wu Ruyin’s role as the emperor’s representative in ceremony, which included officiating at rituals, offering prayers, and hosting banquets, and second, considers his experiences as a military administrator in a time of acute challenges.

This chapter traces the transmission, performance history, and reception of J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites up through the dawn of the recording era. Composed around 1720, the Cello Suites circulated for their first century only in manuscript copies and were therefore only known by people with connections to the composer’s students. Various books and reference materials highlight the Sonatas and Partitas and Cello Suites in works lists and appraisals of the composer’s work, but these pieces were not widely played. The first published editions appeared starting in the 1820s, initially presenting the Cello Suites as instrumental studies. Subsequent editions with extensive editorial expressive markings and sometimes with added piano accompaniment aspired to adapt the Cello Suites to suit contemporaneous tastes, serving to usher them gradually into the concert hall. Starting around the 1860s, individual movements or groups of movements (and rarely complete suites) were performed in concerts primarily in Germany, England, and France. These performances were initially met with a mixed critical reception: While some concerts received rave reviews, other critics considered the Cello Suites to be historical curiosities or to be better suited for instrumental study than concert performances.

Antiwar protest and debate about morality both increase with the US invasion of Cambodia. The killings at Kent State University unleash protests at numerous Catholic colleges and universities. An increasing number of clergy, religious, and even bishops speak out against the war. Pressure builds on the hierarchy to issue a definitive statement of the morality of the war. At year’s end, the bishops issue their “Resolution on Southeast Asia,” which finally does so.

Using Wu Jin’s tenure as Marquis of Gongshun from 1449 to 1461, this chapter explores issues of ability and difference in a time of upheaval at the Ming court. It traces the Wu family as it shifted from immigrant family at the empire’s western edge to members of the capital elite. The chapter also explores the divergent experiences of other Mongolians and merit noble families within the Ming polity.