Mediators in the International Marketplace: U.S. Advertising in Latin America in the Early Twentieth Century

2003 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Scanlon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Advertising Agency ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Local Cultures

In the early twentieth century, companies relied on advertising to inform international audiences about their products and services, just as they do today. The J. Walter Thompson Company, a New York–based advertising agency, entered the global stage early, and by 1928 Thompson advertisements had appeared in twenty-six languages in over forty countries. Reaching international audiences and expanding their tastes required an understanding of local cultures and the ways in which they conducted their businesses, and advertisers often had to act as mediators for their clients. The J. Walter Thompson Company's efforts in Argentina provide an excellent case study of how both “local” and “global” messages of consumption were understood–and often misinterpreted–when they were transmitted to other countries from the United States.

“The Hora Staccato in Swing!”: Jascha Heifetz's Musical Eclecticism and the Adaptation of Violin Miniatures

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-431
Author(s):  
JOSHUA S. WALDEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Tin Pan Alley ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
History Of

AbstractJascha Heifetz (1901–87) promoted a modern brand of musical eclecticism, recording, performing, and editing adaptations of folk and popular songs while remaining dedicated to the standard violin repertoire and the compositions of his contemporaries. This essay examines the complex influences of his displacement from Eastern Europe and assimilation to the culture of the United States on both the hybridity of his repertoire and the critical reception he received in his new home. It takes as its case study Heifetz's composition of the virtuosic showpiece “Hora Staccato,” based on a Romany violin performance he heard in Bucharest, and his later adaptation of the music into an American swing hit he titled “Hora Swing-cato.” Finally, the essay turns to the field of popular song to consider how two of the works Heifetz performed most frequently were adapted for New York Yiddish radio as Tin Pan Alley–style songs whose lyrics narrate the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. The performance and arrangement history of many of Heifetz's miniatures reveals the multivalent ways in which works in his repertoire, and for some listeners Heifetz himself, were reinterpreted, adapted, and assimilated into American culture.

scholarly journals “The Great Palace of American Civilization”: Allen Eaton’s Arts and Crafts of the Homelands, 1919-1932

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Diana Greenwold
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
Old World ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

Allen Eaton’s Arts and Crafts of the Homelands exhibition premiered in Buffalo, New York in 1919, where it drew record crowds to the Albright Gallery. Iterations of the display soon opened in Albany, Rochester, and then in several other cities across the United States. Arts and Crafts of the Homelands showcased European craftwork of local immigrant groups to celebrate a model of early twentieth-century American pluralism. This article examines the aims of exhibit organizers, immigrant presenters, and native-born visitors to these exhibitions. The structure of the displays—which highlighted domestic tableaux of old-world objects—obfuscated the contemporary contributions of immigrant groups to American cultural and economic forums. I argue, however, that local groups took advantage of the exhibit’s performance spaces to assert their active presence in American public life. 

Music and Institutional Advertising

2021 ◽  
pp. 351-370
Author(s):  
Rika Asai
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electric Utility ◽  
Advertising Agencies ◽  
Advertising Agency ◽  
Long Time

This chapter explores music and advertising in the United States during the golden age of radio using the 1946–1947 season of Echoes of New York as a case study. As a radio-variety program sponsored by New York electric utility Consolidated Edison, Echoes is an example of institutional advertising, a form of advertising designed to shape public perception of the company, rather than to sell specific products. The company entrusted the important task to its long-time advertising agency, McCann-Erickson. Drawing on scripts, scores, memos, and financial documentation, this chapter considers broadcast entertainment’s creation and perpetuation of formulaic construction in program format as well as the gradual streamlining of McCann-Erickson’s musical activities in a typical work week. The chapter highlights the role of Con Edison’s all-male company chorus, the Edisoneers, as a physical and aural representation of the message Echoes sought to impart. In focusing on the work of producing music for institutional advertising, this chapter contributes to studies that have illuminated the foundational position of advertising agencies in driving the form and content of programming during the radio era.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

American Legal Thought in Transatlantic Context, 1870-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rabban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Historical School ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Sociological Jurisprudence

Most American legal scholars have described their nineteenth-century predecessors as deductive formalists. In my recent book, Law’s History : American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History, I demonstrate instead that the first generation of professional legal scholars in the United States, who wrote during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, viewed law as a historically based inductive science. They constituted a distinctive historical school of American jurisprudence that was superseded by the development of sociological jurisprudence in the early twentieth century. This article focuses on the transatlantic context, involving connections between European and American scholars, in which the historical school of American jurisprudence emerged, flourished, and eventually declined.

“The Principal Russian Church in America”: from the History of Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the City of New York

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Vladimir Pechatnov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ministry Of Finance ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Foreign Ministry ◽  
The City

Based on previously unearthed documents from the Russia’s State Historical Archive and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire the article explores the history of the first Russian Orthodox parish in New York City and construction of Saint-Nickolas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the city. It was a protracted and complicated interagency process that involved Russian Orthodox mission in the United States, Russia’s Foreign Ministry and its missions in the United States, the Holy Governing Synod, Russia’s Ministry of Finance and the State Council. The principal actors were the bishops Nicholas (Ziorov) and especially Tikhon (Bellavin), Ober-Prosecutor of the Holy Governing Synod Konstantine Pobedonostsev and Reverend Alexander Khotovitsky. This case study of the Cathedral history reveals an interaction of ecclesiastical and civil authorities in which private and civic initiative was combined with strict bureaucratic rules and procedures.

scholarly journals PLAYING ON UNCLE SAM'S TEAM: AMERICAN CHILDHOODS DURING WORLD WAR I

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mischa Honeck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
World War I ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood

If World War I has interested historians of the United States considerably less than other major wars, it is also true that children rank among the most neglected actors in the literature that exists on the topic. This essay challenges this limited understanding of the roles children and adolescents played in this transformative period by highlighting their importance in three different realms. It shows how childhood emerged as a contested resource in prewar debates over militarist versus pacifist education; examines the affective power of images of children—American as well as foreign—in U.S. wartime propaganda; and maps various social arenas in which the young engaged with the war on their own account. While constructions of childhood and youth as universally valid physical and developmental categories gained greater currency in the early twentieth century, investigations of young people in wartime reveal how much the realities of childhood and youth differed according to gender, class, race, region, and age.

The Informational Economy of Vaudeville and the Business of American Entertainment

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-446
Author(s):  
Samuel E. Backer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Informational Economy ◽  
Analyze Data

In the early twentieth century, vaudeville was the most popular theatrical form in the United States. Operating before the rise of mechanically reproduced entertainment, its centralized booking offices moved tens of thousands of performers across hundreds of stages to an audience of millions. Designed to gather and analyze data about both audiences and performers, these offices created a complex informational economy that defined the genre—an internal market that sought to transform culture into a commodity. By reconstructing the concrete details of these business practices, it is possible to develop a new understanding of both the success of the vaudeville industry and its influence on the evolution of American mass culture.

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