Intellectual Currents Subject Overview
This section focusses on the historical, sociological, philosophical, economic, political, and scientific context of modernism. Entries cover individuals, coteries, movements, and events. The primary criterion…
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Nazi Modernism
Nazi Modernism is not a contradiction in terms, even if Nazi-era rhetoric and propaganda directed against Entartete Kunst powerfully suggested that this was the case.…
Lin, Yutang (林语堂) (1895–1976)
Lin Yutang (林语堂) was a major figure in the development of twentieth-century Chinese modernity. He was a scholar, inventor, educator and translator, as well as…
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a social and political program advocating an economic system based on equal ownership of production and democratic rule by federated trade unions. Peculiar…
Structuralism
Structuralism, generally described, is a twentieth-century intellectual movement associated with linguistic studies in Europe, despite its vast applicability and many adherents. An initial aim of…
Turing, Alan Mathison (1912–1954)
Alan Mathison Turing is known as the father of modern computer science. Of his early achievements he helped to bring the Second World War to…
Piaget, Jean (1896–1980)
Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Jean William Fritz Piaget pioneered the field of cognitive developmental psychology using empirical methods to study children. Like Walter Benjamin, Piaget…
Plessy vs. Ferguson
Plessy vs. Ferguson is a legal decision made by the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of ‘separate but equal’ laws popular in the…
Technocracy
A broad notion of technocracy can be traced back to ancient Greece. The narrow notion of the term is distinctly modern, inspired by the Industrial…
Malinowski, Bronisław Kasper (1884–1942)
Born Bronisław Kasper Malinowski to a family in the Polish nobility (the szlachta), Malinowski made contributions to anthropology through his text Argonauts of the Western…
Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)
William Gladstone was a British politician who served as prime minister four times during his career, his first premiership lasting from 1868 until 1874. He…
Vaihinger, Hans (1852–1933)
Hans Vaihinger is known chiefly for the fictionalist outlook developed in his 1911 Philosophie des als ob (The Philosophy of As-If), a text that has…
Scheler, Max (1874–1928)
Scheler was a philosopher in the phenomenological school. His mother was Jewish; his father was Protestant. In high school he became a Catholic but abandoned…
Prague Linguistic Circle, The
The Prague Linguistic Circle was a group of linguists, philologists, literary theorists, and cultural analysts who began meeting on a regular basis in 1926 and…
Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834–1896)
Heinrich Gotthard von Treitschke was a historian and political writer in the German Empire. Born in Dresden, Treitschke studied in Leipzig, Bonn, Tübingen, and Freiburg…
Weston, Jessie (1850–1928)
Jessie Laidlay Weston was a British independent scholar and folklorist best known for her influential study From Ritual to Romance (1920), which sought to trace…
Marburg School
The Marburg School is a term used to describe a group of Neo-Kantian philosophers at the University of Marburg in the second half of the…
Blitz
The Blitz during World War II both curtailed and provoked creative expression. Key figures of the modernist movement re-evaluated the politics underlying their aesthetics at…
Plaatje, Solomon Tshekisho (1876–1932)
Born in 1876 in the rural Free State, Sol Plaatje is descended from the Barolong boo-Modiboa, royals who had been deposed in the 1500s. The…
Popular Front
An alliance of left-wing movements in France, the Popular Front (Front Populaire) won the May 1936 elections, leading to the first French government headed by…
Bernays, Edward (1891–1995)
Edward Louis Bernays retains a place in the history of modernity for synthesizing Freudian psychology, political communication (or propaganda) and the media. The fruit of…
Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901)
The Boxer Rebellion (November 1899–September 1901) was a Chinese national uprising against what was seen as the corrupting influence of western ideologies and practices. Initiated…
The Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts movement (BAM) spanned the period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s and is considered an artistic extension of the Black Power movement.…
The Boer War (1899–1902)
The British Empire waged two wars in southern Africa at the close of the nineteenth century. In the First Boer War (or Transvaal War) of…
Négritude
The literary and cultural movement known as négritude was started in Paris in 1932 by Black students from French-speaking colonies in West Africa, the Caribbean…