Adult Education and Victorian Civic Culture

Adult Education and Victorian Civic Culture PDF

Author: Jana Sims

Publisher: Inst of Education

Published: 2015-04-30

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9781782770251

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Mechanics’ Institutes were the first systematic attempt to provide adult education for skilled working-class men in the science and arts of their trade. The story of the Institutes in the industrial north and midlands is well documented, but far less is known of their south-eastern counterparts. Beginning with an introduction to the story of the Mechanics’ Institute Movement from its beginnings in 1823, the book traces the influences of the movement on developments in adult education to modern times. It highlights and explores the importance of each MI in its locality, arguing that every such institution was a unique creation of its membership and environment, and that most developed beyond their educational role to become a community centre serving the local literary, intellectual and cultural needs. Demonstrating the vibrancy of a regional Mechanics’ Institute Movement that was sensitive to the areas’ particular training needs, as well as to the intellectual and cultural desires of its communities, the book concludes with a consideration of the achievements and influence of these south-eastern Mechanics’ Institutes, and assesses the possible lessons that can be learned. Adult Education and Victorian Civic Culture will appeal to all students of history, history of education, and those interested in local civic history and culture.

Self-Help and Civic Culture

Self-Help and Civic Culture PDF

Author: Anne B. Rodrick

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1351149466

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First published in 2004. The nineteenth century witnessed a flowering of the culture of self-improvement that was reflected in a plethora of institutes, societies and journals that sprang up across Britain with the goal of spreading knowledge and learning to a wide spectrum of society. The prophets of self-improvement believed that not only was self-improvement a laudable goal in its own right, but more importantly, it would contribute towards a general improvement in society. In an age in which direct participation in the political processes was restricted to a minority, education and self-improvement could act as an alternative force by creating a sophisticated and knowledgeable population. In other words, self-improvement was also seen as a way of creating active and responsible citizens. Focusing on the city of Birmingham, and drawing on both local and national sources, Self Help and Civic Culture explores the changing nature of self improvement and citizenship in Victorian Britain. By approaching the concept of citizenship from a new perspective, provincial identity and its relationship to wider ideas of 'Englishness' and 'Britishness', a distinct ideal of citizenship is elucidated that adds further nuance to current scholarship. By drawing together various issues of citizenship, self-improvement, class and political power, this work brings a new perspective to the on-going attempts to determine who could claim the full rights, duties, privileges and responsibilities of the larger social body, thus illuminating the relationship between culture and power in nineteenth century England.

Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland

Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland PDF

Author: Diarmid A. Finnegan

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2016-09-12

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0822981777

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The relationship between science and civil society is essential to our understanding of cultural change during the Victorian era. Science was frequently packaged as an appropriate form of civic culture, inculcating virtues necessary for civic progress. In turn, civic culture was presented as an appropriate context for enabling and supporting scientific progress. Finnegan's study looks at the shifting nature of this process during the nineteenth century, using Scotland as the focus for his argument. Considerations of class, religion and gender are explored, illuminating changing social identities as public interest in science was allowed—even encouraged—beyond the environs of universities and elite metropolitan societies.

An Exhibition History of Victorian Leeds

An Exhibition History of Victorian Leeds PDF

Author: Rebecca Wade

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2023-06-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1837646821

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An Exhibition History of Victorian Leeds is a groundbreaking account of the city’s cultural history through its public exhibitions. Offering a vivid analysis of these striking displays in appropriated spaces, it explores Leeds’ relationship with fine and decorative arts, industrial culture and the sciences over the course of the nineteenth century. This significant contribution to urban history establishes Leeds’ importance to the development of British art and design, collecting practices and museum culture, firmly situated in their regional, national and international contexts. From temporary exhibitions in music halls and cloth halls, hospitals and military barracks emerged the networks and structures that informed the development of the city’s permanent cultural institutions. The book closes with the first comprehensive history of the establishment of Leeds Art Gallery, its inaugural exhibitions and founding donations, which would go on to form one of the strongest collections of fine art in the country.

Nature and culture

Nature and culture PDF

Author: Samuel J. M. M. Alberti

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 152612954X

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This is a vital new work; the first to take the University of Manchester’s Museum as its subject. By setting the museum in its cultural and intellectual contexts, Nature and culture explores twentieth-century collecting and display, and the status of the object in the modern world. Beginning with the origins of the Manchester Museum, accounting for its development as an internationally renowned university museum, and concluding at its major expansion at the turn of the millennium, this book casts new light on the history of museums. How did objects become knowledge? Who encountered museum objects on their way to museums? What happened to collections within the museum? How did visitors use and respond to objects? In answering these questions, Nature and culture illuminates not only the history of one institution, but also contributes to wider discussions in the history of science, cultural history and museology.

Victorian Political Culture

Victorian Political Culture PDF

Author: Angus Hawkins

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-05-07

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0191044148

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Victorian Britain is often described as an age of dawning democracy and as an exemplar of the modern Liberal state; yet a hereditary monarchy, a hereditary House of Lords, and an established Anglican Church survived as influential aspects of national public life with traditional elites assuming redefined roles. After 1832, constitutional notions of 'mixed government' gradually gave way to the orthodoxy of 'parliamentary government', shaping the function and nature of political parties in Westminster and the constituencies, as well as the relations between them. Following the 1867-8 Reform Acts, national political parties began to replace the premises of 'parliamentary government'. The subsequent emergence of a mass male electorate in the 1880s and 1890s prompted politicians to adopt new language and methods by which to appeal to voters, while enduring public values associated with morality, community and evocations of the past continued to shape Britain's distinctive political culture. This gave a particularly conservative trajectory to the nation's entry into the twentieth century. This study of British political culture from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century examines the public values that informed perceptions of the constitution, electoral activity, party partisanship, and political organization. Its exploration of Victorian views of status, power, and authority as revealed in political language, speeches, and writing, as well as theology, literature, and science, shows how the development of moral communities rooted in readings of the past enabled politicians to manage far-reaching change. This presents a new over-arching perspective on the constitutional and political transformations of the Victorian age.

Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London

Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London PDF

Author: Geoffrey A. C. Ginn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-04-21

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1351732803

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2018 Choice Outstanding Academic Title ******************************** The Late-Victorian cultural mission to London’s slums was a peculiar effort towards social reform that today is largely forgotten or misunderstood. The philanthropy of middle and upper-class social workers saw hundreds of art exhibitions, concerts of fine music, evening lectures, clubs and socials, debates and excursions mounted for the benefit of impoverished and working-class Londoners. Ginn’s vivid and provocative book captures many of these in detail for the first time. In refreshing our understanding of this obscure but eloquent activism, Ginn approaches cultural philanthropy not simply as a project of class self-interest, nor as fanciful ‘missionary aestheticism.’ Rather, he shows how liberal aspirations towards adult education and civic community can be traced in a number of centres of moralising voluntary effort. Concentrating on Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, the People’s Palace in Mile End, Red Cross Hall in Southwark and the Bermondsey Settlement, the discussion identifies the common impulses animating practical reformers across these settings. Drawing on new primary research to clarify reformers’ underlying intentions and strategies, Ginn shows how these were shaped by a distinctive diagnosis of urban deprivation and anomie. In rebutting the common view that cultural philanthropy was a crudely paternalistic attempt to impose ‘rational recreation’ on the poor, this volume explores its sources in a liberal-minded social idealism common to both religious and secular conceptions of social welfare in this period. Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London appeals to students and researchers of Victorian culture, moral reform, urbanism, adult education and philanthropy, who will be fascinated by this underrated but lively aspect of the period’s social activism.

The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain

The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain PDF

Author: Martin Daunton

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-05-26

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780197263266

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This collection of essays explores the questions of what counted as knowledge in Victorian Britain, who defined knowledge and the knowledgeable, by what means and by what criteria. During the Victorian period, the structure of knowledge took on a new and recognizably modern form, and the disciplines we now take for granted took shape. The ways in which knowledge was tested also took on a new form, with the rise of written examinations. New institutions of knowledge were created: museums were important at the start of the period, universities had become prominent by the end. Victorians needed to make sense of the sheer scale of new information, to popularize it, and at the same time to exclude ignorance and error - a role carried out by encyclopaedias and popular publications. By studying the Victorian organization of knowledge in its institutional, social, and intellectual settings, these essays contribute to our wider consideration of the complex and much debated concept of knowledge.

Regionalizing Science

Regionalizing Science PDF

Author: Simon Naylor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-09-30

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1317316037

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Victorian England, as is well known, produced an enormous amount of scientific endeavour, but what has previously been overlooked is the important role of geography on these developments. This book seeks to rectify this imbalance by presenting a historical geography of regional science.

Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas

Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas PDF

Author: Light Townsend Cummins

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2015-09-18

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1623493293

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Winner, 2016 Liz Carpenter Award for the Research in the History of Women, presented at the Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting At Fair Park in Dallas, a sculpture of a Native American figure, bronze with gilded gold leaf, strains a bow before sending an arrow into flight. Tejas Warrior has welcomed thousands of visitors since the Texas Centennial Exposition opened in the 1930s. The iconic piece is instantly recognizable, yet few people know about its creator: Allie Victoria Tennant, one of a notable group of Texas artists who actively advanced regionalist art in the decades before World War II. Light Townsend Cummins follows Tennant’s public career from the 1920s to the 1960s, both as an artist and as a culture-bearer, as she advanced cultural endeavors, including the arts. A true pathfinder, she helped to create and nurture art institutions that still exist today, most especially the Dallas Museum of Art, on whose board of trustees she sat for almost thirty years. Tennant also worked on behalf of other civic institutions, including the public schools, art academies, and the State Fair of Texas, where she helped create the Women’s Building. Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas sheds new light on an often overlooked artist.