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r6 - 05 Jul 2012 - 16:17:04 -
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Maya To Houdini
Most houdini users are FX people. Audio waveforms driving particle sims driving fluid sims driving cloth sims driving shaders driving particles etc.
The lighting and shading team at Dr.D were most definitely NOT FX people. A lot were former Animal Logic lighters used to their maya/mayaman/prman pipeline, others came from SPI and katana, others from... other things. The interesting thing was that everyone was keen to learn how houdini compared as a lookdev tool to other solutions, this page will deal mainly with that.
Caveats before we launch in; this is a re-edit of a page I made almost a year ago, I've not touched houdini much since leaving Dr.D. Memories are hazy and frankly, coloured; Happy Feet 2 was one of the most stressful projects any of us had worked on, so its difficult to view the tools objectively. But I'll try. Also, we used a heavily customised pipeline; 3delight rather than mantra, super custom SOHO scripts, proprietary geo format, custom lights, heavily ptc based... it got about as far away from native houdini and mantra as is possible. All that said, I think we all became reasonably conversant in houdini and what it can offer to lighters. Lets go!
learning houdini, houdini apprentice
Houdini traditionally had several criticisms levelled at it:
difficult to get
difficult to find documentation
difficult interface
All 3 points are definitely addressed now.
difficult to get
- you can
download the apprentice version directly from sidefx
. its an untimed, save enabled version of houdini master (the equivalent of maya unlimited). For $99 you can add HD rendering and remove watermarks, but for learning the free version is fine.
difficult to find documentation
The built in documentation is better than maya's docs in most cases, and there's now a wealth of video tutorials available on vimeo and youtube. For a few years this was created by a vocal minority (especially
Peter Quint on Vimeo
), Sidefx have really stepped up lately and made an incredible amount of content available. Impressively they've tried to cater to new users with the
first steps series
of videos, pdfs and scenes, as well as advanced users with the
masterclass series
that explains how the new pyro solvers work from first principles.
For an absolute bare basics 'I have an hour free, lets try this' lesson, the
go procedural pdfs
are a good place to start.
If all that isn't enough, Sidefx often run free workshops worldwide. They're getting very aggressive that everyone should know about houdini, keep an eye open.
difficult interface
- Houdini v9 released in 2006 overhauled the interface to a modern pyqt style. The old interface was brittle and unintuitive, the current system is drag-n-drop everywhere, shelves and buttons where you expect, handy tooltips... it feels like they had a look at maya and went 'ok, we'll do that as a bare minimum, then add some extra niceness'. It's much less scary than when I had a peek at houdini v2 many years ago!
basics: maya transforms and shapes vs houdini /obj and sops
Hopefully you get the difference between a shape and a transform in maya. A shape can be a simple poly shape, or it can be the result of many operations in the construction history of a shape, which ultimately outputs a shape. The transform takes your shape, and moves/rotates/scales it in the world.
Something you might have noticed is the way maya displays the transform -> shape -> construction history is messy and inconsistent. The outliner is very transform centric, and by default specifically hides shape and construction history nodes. If you enable them, shapes appear parented under transforms, but history nodes just get thrown into a huge list after the transform nodes. The hypergraph lets you toggle between the transform node view and the DG node view, but it resets its layout each time you switch, and the connections at the DG level can get VERY hard to follow... the general vibe is 'this is complicated. Look, don't touch'.
Houdini has the same basics, but the methods for displaying and interacting are different in a few important ways. Transforms are treated as containers. Inside those containers are the nodes that are wired together to make a final shape. The final node is the shape, and that is what is moved by the transform. In essence that's the same as maya, but while maya implies it via the outliner and hypergraph, Houdini makes it explicit, and it does this via how things are displayed in its node graph. By default the node graph displays all the transforms, similar to hypergraph. Double click on a transform and you dive inside it, revealing the nodes of its construction history.
Once inside the node network for an object, the difference to maya becomes more clear, in fact becoming more like nuke. While maya uses nodes, and has a few kind-of-ok tools for modifying them, houdini and nuke assume the user experience is ALL about nodes, so both offer similar important features:
the node layout is saved, so when you return, its as you left it
you get post-it notes, backdrops, node colour tools to help you tidy and navigate your node graph
data flow is kept as thin and clean as possible between nodes, so it should be easy to follow how data moves
you can branch node networks, disable many nodes at once, rewire this to that... you can experiment with nodes in a way maya makes difficult, almost impossible
It's that last point that's quite interesting; whenever you have to dive into the construction history of maya, its with a grimace and the script editor close by. Nothing is easy, lots of stuff requires scripts to be wired together properly, its effort. Houdini actively encourages you to dive in, try adding another node, disable that node, see what happens, add a note saying 'this could be made better...'. It encourages a playground environment for node operations that maya lacks.
Also, similar to how its easy in nuke to take a few nodes, add a few parameters, then collapse it into a tool or gizmo you can re-use, houdini lets you do exactly the same. The clean self contained node networks, the core concept of collapsing/expanding containers, means you can create a little node network to achieve a certain effect, drag it to your shelf, and know you can re-use it later without writing a line of code. The barrier for developing tools and features in houdini is MUCH lower than maya, where you really need a reasonable level of mel or python to be productive as a TD.
Rops vs render globals (esp render dependencies)
The 'nodes are important' motto extends to rendering and render layers. Unlike maya which (until recently anyway) had a single render globals window, Houdini uses another node view, where each node represents a render process. Each node contains what you'd expect a render engine needs to know; a list of objects, a list of lights, a camera, frame range, render settings etc.
So if you have a render represented as a node, what does wiring them together do? This creates a dependency, so if you ask the last node to render, all the previous nodes in the graph will be rendered first, one after the other. A typical render node chain might involve first baking shadows, then an indirect point cloud, then branch off into seperate bg/mg/fg render layers. You can even insert controller nodes into these trees to further dictate how the nodes render; frame by frame for one node, or make an entire branch of render nodes do the entire framerage first, and so on. Its very powerful.
takes vs render layer overrides
So if each ROP node takes the place of a render layer, how do render layer overrides work? Houdini has this split into a separate system called 'takes'. Functionally its almost identical to render layer overrides; you create a new take, then associate object attributes with that take, and change them to your bidding. Switching to another take will change those values back to their default. In terms of implementation, maya watches for attribute changes automatically, and makes their title orange to show they've changed in that renderLayer, ie, watching for changes is always implicitly 'on'. Houdini goes the other way; by default when you switch into a take all parameters become grayed out. The idea being that if they're grayed out, their at their default state, and aren't affected by this take. You need to right-click on a parm, choose 'include in take', and it becomes active and able to be modified. Alternativey you can turn on 'auto takes', which will immediately link parameters to a take.
A few niceties of houdini takes vs maya render layer overrides; you can open the take list panel which shows you all the parameters associated with each take. you can parent takes to takes within the takelist panel, so that you can have one set of basic overrides, and many other takes will inherit from that take. Takes are intentionally seperated from renders because they're useful for general work; hence the name, 'takes'. You can setup a scene, then, movie set style, go for 'take1', and edit the scene non distructively, then create take2, do another run of changes, take3, take4...
Lastly, to associate these takes with a render, there's a 'render with take' drop-down on each render node, where you specify which take to use.
mantra vs mentalray vs prman, ipr, that sorta thing
While its easy to complain about maya's mentalray integration, one thing that it's always been good at is speed of translation; its very quick from the time you hit render to the time you see the viewport start to update. My limited understand of the maya-to-mentalray engine is that its fast compiled code, uses in-memory translation, and is heavily optimised.
Houdini uses a system called SOHO to do its houdini-to-renderer translation (Scripted Output of Houdini Objects), which is a python based system. Its designed to be generic enough that support for any renderer can be easily written, and for it to be easily modified by td's. However it /is/ in python, therefore it /is/ noticably slower than maya-to-mr. People who have only used maya and mentalray are often surprised at how slow other renderers are. Houdini and mantra can be an order of magnitude slower again.
That said, houdini/mantra IPR is very good, about as good, if not better, than maya/mentalray, and AFAIK there's no equivalent for mayaman/mtor. It approaches the arnold demo's in terms of how interactive and fluid the process is; move geo, lights, cameras, modify shader parameters, it all happens in near realtime, doing progressive refinement. Also note that mantra has 2 modes; micropoly, a very prman style mode, and pbr, a very arnold style mode. both appear quite powerful.
Also, because of SOHO's generic nature, it ships with built-in support for prman and mentalray, albeit not many people use the mentalray binding. Rumours abound of v-ray and arnold connections in the works.
houdini viewport shading vs maya viewport shading
This is a strange one; I've never been a big fan of full textured lit viewports, but its nice to know maya can handle that if required; at the very least it can do a reasonable attempt at translating even a complex shader network. Houdini right now doesn't offer this. Shaders are built in shops (shader-operators), using a node based visual programming system closer to slim/ICE/shaderman than hypershade. This is both good and bad. Hypershade can be thought of as a hard-to-use compositor, letting you link and layer colours together, and is relatively forgiving. Shops and its even more techy sibling, Vops, are creating mini programs, and as such they're much more strict about data types, and what can be connected to what.
For example, procedural textures, single colours, images on disk, are NOT the same thing, and can't be used interchangeably, at least not directly. You can dive deep into the shaders and mess around, but if you're used to loading a maya blinn, setting a pure diffuse colour, no wait, i'll replace that with a ramp, no wait, i'll replace that with a layered texture, THEN a ramp, no wait, noise feeding the ramp feeding the layered texture etc... you can't easily do that stuff in houdini.
What you CAN do though is design shaders from the ground up. Vex, mantra's shading language, is VERY similar to renderman's shading language SL, so its much easier to steal bits of shader code from siggraph papers and whatnot.
But back to the viewport question; again from my limited understanding, maya uses the internal render to bake out chunks of your hypershade network, which are fed into the realtime viewport. Houdini doesn't offer this. Instead, houdini uses GLSL directly, again a language very similar to renderman SL, but designed for realtime viewports. Thing is, houdini currently doesn't do a live re-creation of your vex shader into a glsl shader; thats up to you. You can have a kindasorta simialr glsl shader, and have it refer to image paths of your real shader, but you can't get it to preview procedural textures in the viewport, for example. Maybe in the future, but not now. That kinda sucks.
So the default houdini shaders come bundled with a generic GLSL shader that looks up diffuse/spec/refl/opacity maps if they exist, or just display simple user-chosen colours if they don't. You could probably try and write your own GLSL shader to match your amazing VEX shader, but really, is it THAT important? Still, maya wins here, and max craps over both maya and houdini.
interface; panel tear off copies, pinned panels, maximize viewports
I always forget maya has that 'copy tab' button at the bottom of the attribute editor, houdini has it too, keyboard shortcut ctrl-shift-c. Because houdini has you jumping between different networks a lot more than maya (scene network, SOPS, ROPS, SHOPS, and if you're getting fancy CHOPS, COPS, DOPS etc), you often want to keep a render parameters window handy while doing other things. Most panels in houdini are context aware, so they'll keep changing to match the curent selection. There's a pushpin icon in the top corner of every panel, having this pressed in will keep it 'pinned', so it won't change when you change selection. This also holds true for network views, so you can have a seperate network editor that always stays on ROPs, while the others follow your selection.
alt-' or ctrl-b will maximize a viewport, takes a while to stop hitting spacebar...
python, drag anything into the console
something that irked me for a while is that there's nothing like maya's mel output window in houdini. Ie, everyone seems to learn mel the same way; you do a sequence of actions, look at the mel editor to see the commands that have been echoed, copy them, and start working up a melscript to do your bidding. this works because the 99% of the maya UI is written in mel; its what makes it so flexible (and also so slow...). Houdini's python interface doesn't allow you to interactively see commands as you run them, so it takes some digging around at first to understand whats going on.
That said, once you get your head around it, python in houdini is quite nice. That should be a full page by itself really, but a nice trick is that you can drag anything into the houdini python console, and it'll appear as a proper python object path. Thats not just objects and lights, but bits of the interface too.
project structure, relative lack thereof
There's no builtin project settings ala maya, its up to you to define it. Houdini again shows its unixy heritage here, and expects you to define variables, the names and paths are up to you. They can either be defined from the shell if you have pipeline tools in place, or within houdini itself. Eg, you might define $TEX for your textures, $SHD for shadow maps, $BTY for beauty renders, $SHOT for the master shot folder etc.... houdin will define $HIP for you, which is the folder where the current .hip file is saved.
use http paths for textures, neat trick
cute trick of houdini; when defining paths to textures, they can be relative paths, or explicit paths, or paths with variables, or if you're feeling saucy, a direct http link. Nice for portable demos when sharing hip files on forums and in email.
mplay vs fcheck/renderview (note it doesn't save images by default!)
mplay is houdini's standalone image viewer and flipbook tool, and its craps all over fcheck, sorry autodesk. LUT support, floating point, aov's, gain/gamma/brightness... its remarkably good. It behaves simlar to renderman style tools in that you tell your mantra/renderman rop to display to mplay (rather than to an exr or other image file), and it communicates with the renderer via a network port, directly displaying the render result. This has an important implication; maya and the renderview will always save an image to disk, as well as display to the UI; mplay never saves images to disk unless you explicitly go 'file -> export images' or similar. If you're like me, and like to use the renderview saved images as a log of your work, mplay is working without a safety net. If it or houdini crashes, your images are lost.
implicit linear workflow everywhere
Well, it is. Mplay defaults to a viewer gamma of 2.2, internally mantra is all linear light. That's nice.
other interesting houdini features for lighter/lookdev types
some of these are probably mentioned above, but to summarise:
buy a single seat of houdini, you get essentially unlimited mantra rendering on your farm. that's pretty sweet. (you still need to export your houdini scene into a .ifd per frame, to do this requires a license, so you'd need a few of these if you run lots of jobs on your farm)
houdini ships with a simple farm manager for free called hqueue. hard to find info on people using it in production though.
houdini has a built in node based compositor. its not nuke, but fine in a pinch.
similarly, buy a single seat of houdini, you can use mplay on any machine on your network, as many as you want.
sidefx offer
mantra cloud rendering via amazon
sidefx do daily builds of their software, and respond very quickly to bug reports.
the gradually being phased out way of interfacing to houdini via the command line treats your scene like a unix shell. this is fun and intuitive. cd /obj/ball1; ls; rm null etc.
ok ok houdini is awesome. anything bad?
Yeah, a few things.
nodes are great/nodes are awful
the 'nodes are awesome' motto it shares with nuke means it can suffer the same cry of horror as nuke: 'oh god, its full of nodes!' picking up a shot from someone else can be daunting at first, as you have to get your headspace into how they've setup their node network. even with annotations, coloured nodes, groups etc, other people's work can be tricky to decipher. only made worse by...
nodes within nodes within nodes
at least nuke comps, for the most part, are big flat graphs. if there's a show-wide comp template, you have a fighting chance of being able to follow the node flow. houdini on the other hand forces shape node graphs inside transform containers, shader graphs on their own page, and render graphs somewhere else again. if you have a lot of interdependency, you find yourself diving in and out of networks like a dolphin on crystal meth, or opening several node graphs and trying to follow connections between graphs. shader graphs are the worst, if left unchecked you can get 10 levels deep into shader graphs, like playing a node version of nethack.
no unified object/render graph
same as above, but mentioned for emphasis. this is katana's big win; everything a lighter would want is all exposed in a single graph. in houdni you're always jumping between the /obj graph where your cameras/objects/lights are, and /rop where your render nodes are. you get limited gui tools to help confirm if your object render list really exists in the scene, or if your light has been renamed, or if this shader override will work. katana (from what I've been told anyway) makes all this mostly transparent.
lighting is not a focus
- sidefx have made it clear with their latest release that they're focused on serving the needs of fx rather than the needs of lighters, and its totally the right decision. their market is almost entirely fx, there's no benefit for them right now to devote a lot of resources to lookdev and lighting. thats not to say its neglected, what is available in houdini now is very good, but going forward it seems maya and katana can push more feature for lighters in the short term. whether maya and katana can do everything else houdini can do... probably not.
mantra is slow
i've not used it in production, but reports from everyone who's put it head to head against other renders say its slow. still, hey, its free.
heavy scenes in maya are heavy scenes in houdini
- no fancy deferred loading/rendering tricks like in katana; if you try to assemble a monster shot of 50,000 chars, terrain, fireworks, fluid sim, you'll be waiting a while for houdini to load it all.
- 09 Sep 2011
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Hundreds of families came together for a huge picnic on a Sutton estate.
'The Big Lunch' included a puppet show, zumba, drumming workshops, and a bouncy castle.
Around 350 people were at the event at the Benhill Estate on Sunday, June 1.
Not PC: A young girl tries on a policeman's hat
No strings attached: Puppets perform for children on the estate
The Benhill Estate
The public picnic is designed to bring communities together and tackle isolation.
Pauline Nathan, one of the organisers, said: "We have held Big Lunches since 2009.
"This was our sixth time and it was easily our best yet.
"It is great to see so many people on the estate come together for a fun-filled day."
The Big Lunch is led by the Eden project and takes place up and down the UK on the first Sunday in June, with roughly 4 million people taking part this year.

subset: commoncrawl


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Textainer Group Holdings Limited (NYSE:TGH) ("Textainer" or the "Company"), the world's largest lessor of intermodal containers based on fleet size, today announced that, subject to market and other conditions, it intends to offer up to 5,000,000 of its common shares and Halco Holdings Inc ("the selling shareholder") intends to offer up to 2,500,000 of the Company's common shares in a registered underwritten public offering. Textainer has granted an option to the underwriters, exercisable for 30 days to purchase up to an additional 1,125,000 of its common shares at the public offering price, less the underwriting discount. The Company intends to use all of the net proceeds from this offering for capital expenditures and general corporate purposes. The Company will not receive any of the proceeds from the sale of common shares by the selling shareholder. BofA Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Securities and Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. The common shares will be offered pursuant to an effective shelf registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). A copy of the preliminary prospectus supplement and related base prospectus for the offering have been filed with the SEC and may be obtained by visiting EDGAR on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. Alternatively, copies of the preliminary prospectus supplement and the related base prospectus may be obtained by contacting: BofA Merrill Lynch, 222 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10038, attention: Prospectus Department, or e-mail email@example.com; Wells Fargo Securities, attention: Equity Syndicate Department, 375 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10152, phone: (800) 326-5897, email: firstname.lastname@example.com; or Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, attention: Prospectus Department, One Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010, by calling toll-free (800) 221-1037 or by emailing firstname.lastname@example.com. This press release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security of the Company nor will there be any sale of any such security in any jurisdiction in which such offer, sale or solicitation would be unlawful. Any offer for the Company's common shares will be made only by means of a prospectus supplement and related base prospectus or by a free writing prospectus in accordance with SEC rules.
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No way will I spend $12.00 for a 4 5/16" x 81" fingerjointed door jamb. Especially if I need several. I'm thinking about using a $36.00 dollar sheet of 3/4" wood veneer plywood (ie. "sandply") and ripping it into 3.75" wide strips and using contact cement to attach .375" x .75" strips of pine or poplar to the plywood edges with just a hint left above the surface so I can sand them flush. Then I will run it thru the table saw to get the exact width if 4 5/16" with a slight bevel on the edges.
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I just found MDC and have been on it for 5 days straight. So much good info. It may be hard for some to believe, but in SW Florida it is HOT! I am talking 90 degrees plus brutal humidity. Anyone have any ideas they would like to share for summer dinners. We already grill out a lot and I am getting sick of the same old stuff. I have just started to feed my freezer and I stumpted when trying to come up with ideas for my menu this week.
I live in Texas, so I also know hot. I do not use my freezer for meal planning much in the summer, except to have meal starts. I don't cook in the house too much in the summer if I can help it! I will keep muffin size meatloafs, meatballs, frozen burritos, taco meat, already-baked muffins, mini quiche cups (bake in muffin tin), etc..ready for a quick reheat if we need it. We eat alot of different kinds of salads in the summer, or grill, or cook over the fire pit (fajitas, etc.). I'm experimenting more w/a solar cooker this summer, too. Might as well take advantage of that relentless sun! Wraps get eaten alot here in the summer, too. Oh, I do keep a huge amount of home made popsicles in the freezer, starting about a month ago here, lol. I bought a ton of molds and keep the kids well hydrated like that!
Happy Homesteading Homeschooling Homebirthing Beekeeping Dready (& a bit redneck even) Mama to 4 fab kids : dd (23), dd (13), ds (11), dd (5)
It's hot here, too. Summer favorites for us usually utilize our garden -- lots of fresh veggies and salsa! We have tostadas, fajitas, soft fish tacos, salads, stuffed peppers, grilled vegetables. I love cold tuna salad, too -- we'll eat it plain or on lettuce, in wraps or sandwiches. I usually use the crockpot for meat so the kitchen doesn't become unbearably hot.
Welcome to MDC!
I came looking for the same thing....we are experiencing an unusual heat wave (90 degrees in Ohio in May???) and it's too hot to cook in my kitchen. DH & I could live on salads, but my kiddos aren't into them at all. Any more too-hot-to-cook ideas for some extremely picky eaters?
Lisa L&D RN mama to DS#1 (4-01) DS#2 (9-03) DD (10-05) X2, 10-2011
Well, it's not no-cook, but I'm making pizzas on the grill tonight. One will be bbq brisket and cheddar, and the other will be cold w/cold grilled veggies (brocolli, bell peppers, onion,) and it will have sliced cucumbers. I'll spread it w/cream cheese, sprinkle w/garlic powder and call it good. Oh, and I might make one w/cream cheese and strawberries, drizzled w/raw honey from our bees. :o)
Happy Homesteading Homeschooling Homebirthing Beekeeping Dready (& a bit redneck even) Mama to 4 fab kids : dd (23), dd (13), ds (11), dd (5)
What about spring rolls? Even kids who aren't salad eaters will usually eat it wrapped up in a wrapper and dipped in peanut sauce. You can add cold shrimp or chicken.
Happy Homesteading Homeschooling Homebirthing Beekeeping Dready (& a bit redneck even) Mama to 4 fab kids : dd (23), dd (13), ds (11), dd (5)
Central coastal florida here. I've been doing lots of grill like you said. So far I've grilled steak, shish kabobs (chicken) with peanut satay sauce, grilled sweet potatoes slices, quesadillas, and hot dogs
On the cold front:
salads-standard romaine type, chicken salads, egg salad, tuna salad, pasta salad, greek salad, taboulleh salad, potato salad. ( I will boil the stuff for the salads either in the morning before it gets hot or on the grill in a cast iron pot).
deviled egs
spring rolls like someone said are goot
brown rice w/fruit n nuts and almond milk, my lunch most days.
lots of fresh fruit
fridge pickles (cucumbers in vinegar and sugar salt and pepper)
smoothies for breakfast
My new favorite grill meals is teriyaki marinated chicken breasts grilled and grilled pineapple on whole wheat buns.
obstruct livery vehicles
We have also been doing a ton of grilling. We've made salmon, shrimp, burgers, sausages and grilled veggies. I've been pairing these things with pasta/potato salads, green salads, fresh watermelon and cantaloupe. Also, Things cooked on the stovetop don't seem to heat up the house as much as the oven so we've been having fajitas, tacos, and stir fry's quite a bit as well.
I've been doing a lot of cold pasta dishes, like orzo with tomatoes, garlic, spring onions and feta cheese. Or cold sesame noodles with lots of fresh veggies.
Also I;ve found that you can cook food in the crockpot doesn't heat the whole house up.
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The issue of assessment in higher education continues to generate much interest amongst academics and in the educational literature. The assessment policies adopted on specific courses and programmes will have a significant impact on the quality and amount of student learning and major implications in terms of time and resources required from teaching staff. In addition, as noted in our recent resource on using real world examples in teaching, increasing the relevance of our courses and programmes can improve students' motivation and innovative types of assessment that promote skills and learning relevant to students' future professional lives may contribute to this.
The Higher Education Authority's report A Marked Improvement: Transforming assessment in higher education captures some of the reasons why we should pay more attention to assessment issues. Building on the work previously done by the Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange based at Oxford Brookes University, it also includes an 'assessment review tool' that can be used at departmental and programme level.


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About this itemThe back to back Glider holds two children, each facing outwards so they can enjoy swinging.
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BA (Hons) History & History of Ideas
- Entry requirements
A-level: BBB
IB: 33 points overall with Three HL subjects at 655
- Length
3 years full-time or 4-5 years part-time
- Department
Course overview
This degree combines a broader study of history with specific focus on the nature of ideas and their relationship to material and economic conditions, political power-structures, philosophy, art, religion, literature, science, and sexuality.
Why study BA History & History of Ideas at Goldsmiths?
- This programme offers one of the few opportunities in the UK to specialise in the history of ideas at undergraduate level, and focuses on the work of individuals and groups who creatively develop and transform received ideas
- You'll have the opportunity to gain precious industry-standard experience and apply your academic skills within the workplace through our placement scheme
- We offer something different and exciting – we use innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the subject, and will encourage you to explore issues, controversies and themes rather than chronological periods
- We think that you'll enjoy your time in our small and friendly department: we make our students our top priority; you'll work with staff who are enthusiastic researchers as well as being excellent teachers, many being recognised as international leaders in their field
- The degree will give you access to a wide range of careers by developing your critical, analytical and communication skills; we help you think beyond the traditional boundaries of subjects in ways which employers really value
Contact the department
If you have specific questions about the degree, contact Dr John Price
Modules & structure
The degree will appeal to those with an interest in intellectual history who wish to study ideas as they evolved within a historical context, as opposed to on a purely theoretical level such as you would if studying in a philosophy degree. It encourages you to explore links between concepts and their embodiment in historical institutions, offering the opportunity to study salient aspects of Western thought (and some aspects of non-Western thought) in key phases of their historical development.
We emphasise the study of primary texts in their original contexts and the history of their subsequent transmission and reception. In addition to notions of the great thinkers, the programme also looks at current ideas in popular, non-elite and non-literate contexts. You will look at the impact of ideas in a range of diverse areas, such as economic and social conditions, power structures, individual desires and goals, sexuality, gender, the unconscious, art, literature, science, and philosophy.
Level 4
Our focus is on intellectual and religious history, political history, cultural history, the history of identities, medical history and research relevant to the Centre for the Study of the Balkans. All teaching after the first year is research-led. We adopt a broad approach to the study of the past, which emphasises ideas and concepts, narratives and analysis, the study of time, and the use of visual as well as documentary resources.
You take the following modules:
|Module title
|Concepts and Methods in History
|30 credits
|Self, Citizen and Nation
|30 credits
|Dictators, War and Revolution
|30 credits
|Religion, Peace and Conflict
|30 credits
Level 5
At Level 5 you choose two modules in the history of ideas and two in history in general, in line with your own developing interests.
You take 120 module credits:
- 30 credits from the History of Ideas list
- 30 credits from the History of Ideas list, or a related study in History of Ideas
- 30 credits from a list of History modules
- 30 credits from a list of History modules, which may include a Group 2 module, or a related study in History
Level 6
At Level 6 you also take a Special Subject selected from the 40 or so available through the other University of London institutions. These are based on the use of original sources in a detailed study which further develops your skills in understanding and interpreting historical evidence. You also have the option of taking the History and History of Ideas Interdisciplinary Project/Long Essay, which is for BA History and History of Ideas students only.
You will take:
- History of Ideas Special Subject (60 credits)
- 30 credits from the History of Ideas list (see below), or a related study in History of Ideas
- 30 credits from a list of History modules, or a related study in History
History of Ideas modules have recently included:
Some modules are assessed by means of a dissertation or long essay, others by a conventional three-hour written examination. Assessment for other modules is by coursework portfolios or a combination of coursework and exam.
Credits and levels of learning
An undergraduate honours degree is made up of 360 credits – 120 at Level 4, 120 at Level 5 and 120 at Level 6. If you are a full-time student, you will usually take Level 4 modules in the first year, Level 5 in the second, and Level 6 modules in your final year. A standard module is worth 30 credits. Some programmes also contain 15-credit half modules or can be made up of higher-value parts, such as a dissertation or a Major Project.
Download the programme specification, relating to the 2017-18 intake. If you would like an earlier version of the programme specification, please contact the Quality Office.
Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.
Entry requirements
A-level: BBB
International Baccalaureate: 33 points overall with Three HL subjects at 655
These requirements relate to 2018 entry. For 2017 entry please check the programme specification.
At Goldsmiths we offer innovative and challenging degrees in history, as well as a stimulating environment amongst a diverse and exciting community of students. Many of our students have achieved very high A-level grades, and that is reflected in our standard A-level offer.
But above all we're looking for potential students who can demonstrate the range of skills, talents and interests necessary for this work, either through traditional A-levels or otherwise. We believe that all able students of whatever age and background who have the ability should have the chance to study at Goldsmiths, and we actively encourage applications from students with a wide range of relevant qualifications, especially the access diploma. We also offer a year 0 (foundation year) for students who need more preparation and experience before embarking on the BA. This is a longstanding commitment and practice. Consequently, over many years, a large number of our students have come from non-traditional backgrounds.
If you're interested in applying to Goldsmiths, whether you're currently studying or have been out of education for some time, we'd be delighted to hear from you. If you'd like further advice or have specific questions, please get in touch with the Admissions Tutor listed above.
Equivalent qualifications
We accept a wide range of qualifications equivalent to the ones listed above. This includes:
Access: Pass with 45 Level 3 credits including 30 Distinctions and a number of merits/passes in subject-specific modules
Scottish qualifications: BBBBC (Higher), BBC (Advanced Higher) preferably including History
European Baccalaureate: 75%, preferably including History
Irish Leaving Certificate: H2 H2 H2 H2
If your qualifications are from another country, find out more about the qualifications we accept from around the world.
English language requirements
If English isn't your first language, you'll need to meet our English language requirements to study with us.
For this programme we require:
IELTS 6.0 with a 6.0 in writing and no element lower than 5.5
If you need assistance with your English language, we offer a range of courses that can help prepare you for degree-level study.
Read more about our general entrance requirements.
History at Goldsmiths is ranked 11th in the UK for the quality of our research*, and in the world's elite**
History at Goldsmiths isn't just a sequence of events - we study the past thematically as well as chronologically.
You will be taught by research-active, publishing historians whose wide range of expertise across different periods and many countries will help you to explore the diversity of past human experience through themes like madness, medicine, revolution, religious beliefs, identitities and the body.
You'll be thinking about the way history is informed by a wide range of other subjects and how knowledge of the past can help you to understand the world we live in today.
Find out more about the Department of History.
*Research Excellence Framework 2014, Times Higher Education research intensity subject rankings
**QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017
Skills & careers
Degrees in history and combined subjects develop your critical and analytical skills, your ability to express ideas clearly and your expertise in gathering insights from a range of subjects. Historical research enables you to gather and select from a range of materials – literary and visual. It teaches you to write with imagination and clarity.
Former students have forged careers in journalism and the media, museums and galleries, the Civil Service, teaching and research, law and the commercial world, but the skills learned are also applicable to many more industries and roles.
History at Work
History at Work is an exciting and innovative new initiative which offers some second and third year students taking History single and joint honours programmes the chance to apply their academic skills within the workplace.
Students spend one day a week over one term undertaking a project within a museum, archive or library: places which collect, process and present the 'raw material' of history. These organisations include the Wellcome Library, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, London Transport Museum and the V&A Museum of Childhood.
The project might involve archiving, conservation, building an exhibition, or developing a public engagement project. Students will be invited to apply for places on the programme each February. It should give students a great chance to test out their career ideas, develop skills and increase their employability.
You can explore more of the career options open to you on our dedicated History careers page. Find out more about general employability at Goldsmiths.
Learning & teaching
On this degree you'll attend lectures and seminars where you'll hear about ideas and concepts related to specific topics, and where you'll be encouraged to discuss and debate the issues raised. This will enhance your academic knowledge of the subject, and will improve your communication skills.
But this is just a small proportion of what we expect you to do on the degree. For each hour of taught learning in lectures and seminars, we expect you to complete another 5-6 hours of independent study. This typically involves carrying out required and additional reading, preparing topics for discussion, or producing essays or project work.
This emphasis on independent learning is very important at Goldsmiths. We don't just want you to accept what we tell you without question. We want you to be inspired to read more, to develop your own ideas, and to find the evidence that will back them up. Independent study requires excellent motivation and time management skills. These skills will stay with you for life, and are the kind of that are highly sought after by employers.
Learning and teaching on this degree will take place through:
- Lectures
- Seminars
- Independent learning
- Presentations
- Assessments
Find out more about these learning and teaching approaches.


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October 11, 2010
Germs are everywhere and hands are the perfect transport vehicle. The STOKO REFRESH® touch-free foam dispenser ensures there is no contact with a potentially germ-ridden surface. The system offers reliable SmartSensor™ technology that detects a user''s hand and quickly recovers to dispense again. The dispenser also offers a hygienically-sealed refill with every change out. Product lineup includes moisturizing and anti-bacterial foam cleansers and foaming instant hand sanitizer.


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Escaped Inmate Found In Wildlife Area Of Highland County
A man wanted after escaping from the London Correctional Institution was located Saturday afternoon.
Greenfield police officers confirm they found Spencer Johnson near the county lines of Highland, Fayette and Ross around 2:30 p.m.
Johnson, 28, a Greenfield native, was transferred back to the London Correctional Institution later on Saturday.
Greenfield police told 10TV News that they had received a number of tips that Johnson was staying in a wildlife area south of Greenfield.
On Saturday, they received a tip about someone suspicious near a bike path just south of Greenfield.
They said Johnson surrendered immediately when he was apprehended. Police said they thought he might try to return home so they had been on the lookout for him.
10TV spoke with one of the officers, who found Johnson deep in the brushes.
Greenfield Police Officer Brian McNeil said the high brush, hot weather, and swarms of bugs provided a challenge, but he said they carefully combed the area, spotted Johnson, and arrested him without incident.
"It's definitely a moment of relief because a lot of people had been putting in extra time, tracking down leads. It's just good to know he's back in prison, where he belongs," said McNeil.
Authorities said that Johnson took off from a trash crew near the jail on Aug. 5.
He was being held on a burglary charge.
Authorities said they also believed that Johnson stole a pick-up truck in Madison County during his escape.
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for more information.


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Bad Seeds – Why the ACORN Scandal Matters to Other Nonprofits
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, aka ACORN, was, until the past year, a relatively unknown organization to most Americans. Founded in 1970 and based in New Orleans, Louisiana, ACORN's most visible face is that of a 501(c)(3) public charity ostensibly advocating for low- and moderate-income families in the areas of neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. ACORN also has a non-charitable arm that lobbies for primarily left-wing causes and candidates, as well as dozens of affiliated splinter groups. ACORN's "charitable" division receives millions upon millions of dollars in federal grant money each year.
ACORN's profile increased dramatically during last year's presidential campaign, with then-Senator Obama's candidacy and subsequent victory, himself having been a community organizer with close ties to the group. The problems for ACORN started when numerous chapters were busted for voter registration fraud. Estimates go as high as 400,000 falsely registered voters, including Mickey Mouse and Paul Newman. ACORN's voter registration program is under investigation in 14 states, with over 30 indictments having been handed down so far with likely many more to come.
The latest fiasco for ACORN comes from the most unlikely of sources: a couple of 20-something budding independent journalists who visited various ACORN housing assistance offices around the country, posing as a prostitute and pimp. As of today (September 16, 2009), we know of 4 ACORN offices where workers have been videotaped bending over backwards to help these two kids, dressed like characters from a bad 70's movie, set up a brothel, commit tax fraud and cover up a child sex slavery ring. ACORN insists the whole "sting" is fraudulent, but yet it has fired most of the employees shown on the tapes. To make matters worse, now the federal government has swung into action. First, the Census bureau severed all ties to ACORN (ACORN had been contracted with to assist in the 2010 census). A few days later, the Senate voted 83-7 to cut off all HUD (Dept of Housing and Urban Development) funding from the group's housing division. And just today, the House will consider legislation to strip ACORN of all government funding.
Why are we talking about this? Well, for one, most of the main stream media has been ignoring the story, so many of you may not even be aware of what's going on. But there is a bigger reason: legitimate nonprofits, especially those with programs that help the needy with housing and similar programs, stand to be tarnished in the minds of the donating public by virtue of ACORN's misdeeds.
Over the years, we have worked with hundreds of programs that target the needs of the poor and inner city. The vast majority of these organizations are small, neighborhood-based charities that truly make a difference in the lives of those they serve. Many are community development outreaches of area churches offering faith-based solutions to some of life's most difficult circumstances. What a tragedy it would be to see these hard-working, struggling organizations suffer guilt by similarity. Make no mistake: this story is not going away anytime soon. ACORN, regardless of whatever good things it may have accomplished here or there, is fast becoming a pariah due to one of two things: either its unwillingness to run a tight ship or outright criminal behavior. Either way, it is probably curtains for them.
So how does a legitimate program protect its reputation and funding base? Americans are some of the most generous people on the planet. Billions of dollars are donated each year by families all across America. Witness 9/11, the tsunami, hurricane Katrina…Americans give big. But nothing will shut off the flow of cash faster than the taint of corruption. First, if your organization has any ties whatsoever to ACORN or one of its affiliates, you have a decision to make. Do we stay or do we go? I think you already know our advice: run! Assuming your organization has no ties to ACORN, you need to aggressively reassure your donors that your program is clean and its operations completely transparent. We sincerely hope that good community programs all across the country will rise up and demand accountability and set the record straight that corruption, cronyism and fraud will not be tolerated among their ranks.
You want to protect your organization? Stand up for integrity!
We pray that all the good organizations that accomplish so much survive this scandal unscathed. We believe it will take deliberate action on their part to ensure that outcome.
I just this week received a 501c3 for historic preservation in my community. On page 8 of the booklet I received, it clearly states that my corporation cannot engage in political campaign activities. How come no one brought this up during the recent elections? As I see it it is just another infraction by this more than "shady" group.
I am a Black single Mom who spends two days a week giving, paying, and loading food for single families of all ethnic backgrounds. Most of these families are white fathers with teenage sons whose Mothers have left. It's sad that my hard work will be impacted by the Acorn issues.
Well stated. Thank you for looking after the NP community"at large."
What I want to understand is how a 501(c)3 can be politically active even as lobbyist. I'll lose my non-profit standing if I even mention politics in any form. Why haven't they lost theirs for their lobbying activities?
ACORN is a thorn. Their reputation has been tarnished and just like everyone else whose reputation precedes them; good, bad or indifferent your fan base is affected. Forget political slant, racial overtones, likes and dislikes. It is what it is. They need to clean up their act, right the ship, get rid of bad baggage, admit wrong doing, and let the chips fall where they may. Too many NPOs and churches have been hurt by someone else's mistakes, wrong doing and naivete in spite of their good deeds. ACORN has been marked as such.
By their good works ye shall know them! A good organization carries an aura of good people that work within it and that are helped without. The good ones should produce enough good that they are known for the good that they do and don't have to rely upon the non-profit status as a crutch. Shawn
[…] Bad Seeds – Why the ACORN Scandal Matters to Other Nonprofits […]
Your advice to disassociate from Acorn in the very broad manner in which you state it seems to me to be irresponsible. It seems that all the facts are not out yet , nor are they clear at this point. Your article seems to have a "political" flavor, but I sincerely hope that such was not your intent.


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BROOKSVILLE — By necessity, Hernando County has had to focus the last couple of years on finding money just to operate county government.
But County Administrator David Hamilton wants the County Commission not to ignore an even larger responsibility: Investing in the community through long-term building projects.
On Tuesday, his $90-million capital improvement proposal before the County Commission generated little discussion by a board already shell-shocked from an earlier view of deep cuts proposed for the operating budget.
Not wanting to let the commissioners and community lose sight of the need for capital improvements, Hamilton said Friday that he will be asking the commissioners on July 15 to call for proposals to build a long-sought judicial complex.
The proposals should contain details for where the complex should go and what it should include.
It is a discussion that Hamilton believes the commission and the community should have now, even while money is tight. By tackling challenges such as paying for government buildings and infrastructure such as road improvements, such projects can be investments in the future and a way to jump start the sagging economy.
"What we do today will have an awful lot to say about how we look tomorrow,'' Hamilton said.
He also said he knows that capital improvements are sometimes viewed negatively because they are long-term and expensive. But the board members need to decide if they want to invest dollars they have or take on debt for major projects.
The judicial complex has been discussed for years as the court services now in the Hernando County Government Center are cramped. Also, several county departments are in rented offices around Brooksville.
The complex is the big ticket item in the proposal Hamilton floated with commissioners this week. The draft lists $4-million for site acquisition and $3.5-million for design in 2009. The construction would cost an estimated $39-million and would begin in 2010. Outfitting the building would be another $2.5-million in 2012.
Other major projects proposed include a new parks administration building to pull all park administration and maintenance together. That project is proposed for $5.7-million with design beginning in 2011. Beginning in 2012, the proposal outlines renovations totaling $20-million for the existing county building once judicial services move out.
An expanded animal services facility, a new equipment degreasing facility for the county fleet and several road projects round out the list.
The possible funding for those projects was also presented to the commission. It is a mix of existing capital improvement funds, several special categories of funds which could be used for the judicial complex, two major bond issues over the next couple of years and an increase by three cents in the county's gas tax.
That last item did generate commission discussion, but none of it in favor.
Hamilton said he just put it out there for the discussion but he said he knew, "this is hardly a time to be talking about an increase in the gas tax, not in this political environment … that is something, literally, for down the road.''
Barbara Behrendt can be reached at email@example.com or (352) 848-1434.


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cannot login after hibernate/suspend
hello guys
when my laptop goes to hibernate/suspend mode i cannot log in. I mean when i type my password it does not get typed/displayed in the password input field. All i have to do is restart the machine again.
Does anybody know whats the problem?
Thanks in advance.
What happens when you type the password and press enter?
sorry i could not reply to respond to this coz i was out of station with other assignments... repo, nothing is happening when i type the password and press enter. it is not getting echoed... do you have other suggestions and ideas... pls help
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Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures:
Chapter 1ROOTS AND OTHERS
All cultures nurture myths and fantasies, wonderful paragons with qualities absent in one's own culture or else nightmarish visions of evil from which deliverance or protection is sought. Paragons of beauty or visions of evil were at times transformations of one's own past in a search for roots as models to imitate or to avoid, as memories to praise, venerate, or curse, as those foundation myths which, from time immemorial, defined and at times even justified the acts and beliefs of a nation or civilization. At other times, they were associated with different cultural realms altogether, as though the psychological need for myths could better be met by contrasting one's own world with different ones, with the "empires of evil" of recent political rhetoric or with all these "others" that have populated philosophical and sociological arguments since Jean-Paul Sartre's celebrated l'enfer, c'est les autres (hell is others) of over half a century ago. Whether recollections of beauty or evocations of evil, cultural myths and fantasies lend themselves to imagesin order better to be publicized but also because they are in fact images (albeit initially only mental ones)and are thus easy to transform into representations.
The complexity of modern American culture is such that there are many "others" in its psychological makeup and that the "others" of some are the "us" of others. And it is in fact difficult to argue today for a single or even for a prevalent vision or myth about the past or about the rest of the world. Only in science fiction, with its extraterrestrials and space adventurers, do myths and fantasies exist that may be shared by all segments of American culture. As could be seen with reactions to more than one recent film or television program (the phenomenon is much rarer with books or magazine articles, whose audience is infinitesimal by comparison), one can almost always find a group that feels humiliated and offended by the visual portrayal of evil through some association with that group.
Whether matters were really simpler in the past may be a matter for debate. But there is little doubt that, since the early nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth, there has been a mythical world created (at least in part) and consumed by the dominant cultural streaksEuropean in their roots and Christian, primarily Protestant, in spiritual educationof the United States. To call this mythical world "oriental" is a bit of a misnomer, since India is hardly included and the Far East is part of a different story. But since Edward Said's memorable Orientalism, published in 1978, the identification of the Orient with the Near and Middle East and its Islamic extension into North Africa has been generally accepted. Factually and logically incorrect, the term has prevailed in this restricted sense and incorporates a vast fantasy of an Orient that is both a seminal creator (ex oriente lux, light comes from the east) and a threat from aliens with an "oriental" mind.
This catalogue and the exhibition it accompanies explore several aspects of this "oriental" phenomenon in American art and popular culture. This brief essay offers a few remarks on the sources of the mythical world of a "Near Eastern Orient" and on some of the peculiarly American forms it took. Without claims of exclusivity, I have identified four impulses or processes that have contributed to its shape: Protestant search for the space of the biblical revelation; European aristocratic taste; popular culture as in freemasonry and other fraternal organizations; and the spirit of skeptical curiosity and adventure. In reality, the boundaries between these processes are never clear, and problems arise as soon as one tries to pin one of them down as the single explanation of a work of art or of an activity pertaining to the arts. In a deliberately vague fashion, the presentation of these impulses should be considered only as preliminary thoughts on more or less identifiable aspects of the creation of a very particular visual environment.
The American landscape is covered with biblical references in the names given to rivers, mountains, cities, and villages, as the Promised Land of America often acquired its toponyms from those of God's promise to Israel. There probably is a geography and a chronological development of these place names that surely deserves to be better known, especially in contrast with Native American names or European transfers. And, as the great biblical scholar and explorer of Palestine Edward Robinson implied, his yearning for the specific places mentioned in the Old and New Testaments derived from the ways in which his childhood in Connecticut was infused with an imaginary knowledge of Palestine and its neighbors, Syria and Egypt, so essential in the unfolding of sacred history? While most of the Protestant impulse expressed itself within the boundaries of the United States, it also led to the organization of group pilgrimages, pious individual travels, often ill-fated settlements in Palestine itself in which the spirit of adventure and pious inspiration were often mixed, eventually to the major accomplishments of American Protestantism like the American University in Beirut, any number of medical and educational missions that endured until the middle of the twentieth century, and scholarly institutes like the American Schools for Oriental Research in Baghdad and Jerusalem.
Leaving aside the remarkable results of this impulse in the creation of a brilliant American scholarship in biblical and, by extension, all Near Eastern studies of times before the Muslim takeover in the seventh century C.E., there occurred a fascinating encounter between the spirit of the New World and the spaces of a very traditional one entering, slowly, into its own form of modernity, whether within the Ottoman Empire, which included Palestine, or in the Egypt of Muhammad `Ali Pasha. Most of the time, the present was simply ignored. Dramatic representations of sacred history, remarkably few in number because of Protestantism's uneasy relationship to a religious imagery usually associated with Catholicism, hardly reflect an awareness of the Orient as it actually was or else are set in a routine Greco-Roman and classical setting. Descriptive sketches are common, especially of Jerusalem seen from the Mount of Olives (see cat. no. 2), which became a sort of cliché for travelers to the Holy Land and, in the late nineteenth century, a painter like James Fairman made a career out Of such representations. Others, like Edward Troye, were driven by the same basic impulse of a Protestant pious market, but they expanded their concerns beyond Jerusalem to the Palestinian countryside and to Damascus or Cairo. In nearly all instances, local inhabitants or "natives" are absent or shown in theatrically standard poses. This Protestant strand, mixed with others, eventually led to the much more complex personality of Frederic Church, and his creation at Olana exhibits his own mix of "oriental" and American impulses, which owes something to the association of an aesthetically satisfying space with the biblical message of a Promised Land as imagined by American Protestantism.
A second impulse is easier to understand and to define, inasmuch as many of its features are still applicable today. Since the Middle Ages, and in ways which varied from period to period and area to area, the arts and habits of the Islamic Orient have been present in European, mostly aristocratic (or, at the very least, wealthy) taste. For many centuries, expensive items in fancy techniques like silk, inlaid metalwork, or carpet weaving came from the East. It can be argued that Islamic art was for centuries the luxury component of life in Christian courts or ecclesiastical establishments. Except for rugs, whose presence was consistent throughout the centuries, this component lost some power during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but it reappeared in the eighteenth century with the fascinating phenomenon of an "oriental" taste for exotic clothes, for luxurious interior decoration of private houses, and especially for collecting objects of art or curios of all sorts from the East.
It is important to separate two strands in this impulse. One is exoticism, which creates forms; the other one is collecting, which gathers objects. Sometimes the two can be found together, as in a painting by William Harnett that exhibits an array of objects from Iran (fig. 1), but it is useful to establish a clear division between the two.
Exoticism is a fascination with something alien which manages to enhance the pleasure of the senses, the comfort of daily life, or the image one projects of one's self. At some level, it can becomeas it had with Jean-Léon Gérôme's paintings and with his American imitators, in Hollywood's wildest inventions, or in advertisinga more dubious form of sensual provocation and titillation. But, in endless movie houses, hotel lobbies, or even private homes, fancy tile or stucco decoration is meant to depict or reproduce, perhaps only to recall, the Alhambra or whatever antiquarian memory some designer happens to possess. Such are often Iranian motifs, relatively rare in general, but curiously present in the huge griffins at the entrance of the Sam Rayburn building in Washington, inspired by Achaemenid art. All these examples are in fact a continuation of the medieval European association of beauty with the ornament of the Islamic Orient.
There are two much more successful expressions of this exotic impulse akin to, if not always derived from, Europe. One, earlier than the period covered by this exhibition, is the case of Washington Irving who, as a consular official in Spain, had been affected by the "Orient" of European Romanticism. He became fascinated by the Alhambra in Granada and transformed it into a romantic historic narrative, which is still a highly readable work of literature and which elaborates, in very tasteful ways, on the sensuous dream of a paradise-like setting. The other one is Louis Sullivan, the great midwestern architect who had acquired in Paris recent books describing Islamic architecture in Egypt and Iran and who transformed some of the design principles of the fourteenth-century madrasa of Sultan Hasan in Cairo for the composition and decoration of the Wainwright building and mausoleum, both in St. Louis. Both Irving and even more so Sullivan went much beyond exoticism into the creation of true works of art of their own (fig. 2). And much later, at the very end of the period discussed here, Frank Lloyd Wright would also, in his projects for Baghdad, be inspired by the "Orient," but within the very different context of his own architectural development.
Collecting is a very different matter. It begins with a tourist's search for memorabilia and ends with a passion for certain categories of objects. Both exoticism and casual collecting had been present since the early nineteenth century, although systematic and thematic collecting did not really flourish until the appearance, late in the nineteenth century, of an art market. It is also important to recall that the artifacts available, legally or not, in the Islamic world included then, as they still do now, works of Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Sumerian, Hittite, and especially ancient Egyptian art. Works of Islamic art usually fell in the category of ethnographic artifacts and had not yet graduated to the status of art objects. In the shape of relatively recent rugs, old and new brass, ceramics, textiles, and "antiques" of all types, the Orient provided materials for the acquisitive instincts of rich men and women, and the wealth of American museums owes a great deal to all the pilgrims or simply curious travelers who brought back, as they still do, thousands of artifacts from the rich lands of the Islamic Orient. They enhance galleries and living rooms with items whose value lies primarily in being collectibles rather than in expressing something meaningful about the worlds that produced them.
Whatever their wider consequences, the first impulse was limited to a highly educated group and the second to a wealthy one. The third impulse, on the other hand, is more difficult to identify and to explain, but it certainly had and still has a broader and more popular appeal. Its most interesting expression for our purposes is the symbolism and pageantry of American social clubs that has issued from freemasonry. By the end of the nineteenth century, they had adopted a consistent Near Eastern "oriental" coloring. Shriner halls, for example, bear the names of Syrian or Iraqi and Egyptian cities, the fez and the operetta-like attire of Zouave and spahi soldiers are used in parades and in ceremonies, while stars, crescents, and scimitars are included in the panoply of signs and symbols carried by members of these fraternal societies or printed on their literature. The sources of these developments lie in part in the mystical acknowledgment that truth and wisdom come from the East. But the interesting point is that this particular "East" is a simpleminded vision of the contemporary, Islamic East, as it was proclaimed and paraded, among other places, in the World's Fairs of the nineteenth century. It is in the latter that belly dancing made its appearance as a public performance and entered thereby into the ways of displaying the sensuous East. The Orient has become a toy, a game, a required masquerade away from normal and real life. This is the Orient that has dominated the world of advertising until our own times and in much of the movie industry. Curiously poised between desire and repulsion, beauty and ugliness, it is an Orient that answers deep psychological and social needs.
The fourth attitude toward the Orient is that of the skeptic visitor, open-hearted or mean, curious yet unaffected, always critical rather than sympathetic. There is Herman Melville, fed on images of a beautiful Holy Land, yet discovering in it what he called the "unleavened nakedness of desolation." To be true, his own personal uncertainties about his faith may have affected his negative reaction to the world where that faith had been revealed and played out its drama. But no such uncertainties troubled Mark Twain during his long tour of Europe and the Middle East with some seventy middle-aged men. Only the Sphinx and the American consul in Beirut remained unscathed by Twain's characteristically good-natured, but often quite mean, amusement at everything he saw, from the peculiar behavior of his fellow travelers to the holy places, the landscape, or the natives he encountered. It is true, of course, that, even more than today, the occasionally greedy obsequiousness of tourist servicing and the constant presence of beggars were the only contact a visitor had with the inhabitants of foreign places. Yet, beyond the sarcasms, evenly spread over compatriots and natives, these accounts demonstrate little interest in the people, much more in monuments, especially pious or historical ones, although even they receive their fair share of criticism. The Orient only matters as providing illustrations for some significant moments in the long history that led to the American Promised Land, and its very misery is a demonstration of the latter's success. By itself, it was dirty and ignorant, even savage, without the redeeming values of commonly accepted artistic treasures found in Europe. There is no sense of aesthetic quality in the remains seen by Twain, with some exception for Ancient Egypt. And yet, in a fascinating description of the ways in which his fellow travelers bought local clothes wherever they went, Twain raves about how all of them "turned out" in Constantinople (Istanbul), dressing up in "turbans, scimitars, fezzes, horse-pistols, tunics, sashes, baggy trousers, yellow slippers. Oh, we were gorgeous," he exclaims. In fact, they must have looked like members of a fraternal order and, as Twain remarks, the yellow dogs of Turkey must have all died laughing at the sight of this motley company.
This last episode ties together several of my impulses in the making of the fantasy world from the Orient: It is the Protestant search for the Holy Land, which explains why this group of men went on their tour ("We were at home in Palestine," writes Twain). Skeptical criticism is mixed with an exotic masquerade in local clothes, even though Twain himself may not have indulged in it. What is missing is the acknowledgment of quality that characterizes the exotic and collecting impulses. It may simply have been unstated in Twain's objective to amuse.
Leaving aside skeptical and critical curiosity, which is rare, and an intellectual search for information, which is laudable but rarely appreciated by a culture as a whole, we are left with two broad thoughts to explain the American involvement with the "Orient," as it appears in the exhibition. One is that the Orient was the maker of a game to play, of ways in which one could acquire, for however short a time, another personality or another experience, both personality and experience being primarily sensuous and, at some extreme, desirable but forbidden. The other one is that it continued to provide, as it had for centuries, the texture of beauty for an appropriate setting for life. But the life to be led in that setting was regulated by rules other than those of the "Orient." The latter was always something "other," a past from which one has escaped or the theatrical performance of a slightly wicked vision of pleasure.
Chapter 2
Looking at The Snake Charmer by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (cat. no. 5) is an intense experience. Vivid and full of intriguing detail, it implies a titillating story. So seductive is the image, in fact, that many viewers have succumbed to a desire to touch the boy's naked body. As a result, the painting is now under a protective layer of glass. The visual seduction, moreover, is not confined to vicarious pleasures of the flesh. The unwary museum visitor is also enticed into thinking that the story is somehow "true," for such images seem to record reality as it presents itself to the naked eye. This, one might suppose, is what the Orient is really like. But what is the "Orient"? Who says it is "really" like that? And what agendas does it serve to make such claims?
Because the painting invokes these complicated questions, it was chosen as the cover for Edward Said's book Orientalism, which analyzes the processes by which the West studies, describes, creates, and controls the "Orient," keeping it in a subordinate role by representing it in a demeaning light. While Said propounded his thesis in reference primarily to literary evidence, art historians extended his insights by considering the visual arts, most particularly nineteenth-century French paintings like The Snake Charmer. The ensuing scholarship has generated an increasingly nuanced appreciation of the imperialistic agendas, gender inequities, and racial prejudices that underlie such depictions of the erotic, exotic East and the processes of power that they make manifest.
Graphic and dramatic images like Gérôme's Slave Market (cat. no. 4) and Moorish Bath (fig. 1) or Henri Regnault's Summary Execution (fig. 2) depict an Orient of naked harem girls and tyrannical despots, which served to fascinate, titillate, and ultimately flatter the nineteenth-century French viewer. Such pictures can only be understood with reference to France's protracted colonial machinations in North Africa, and to French cultural and visual traditions. France reduced the Orient to colony, concubine, and indolent heathen, betraying the complex attitudes of an entangled imperialist.
This ideological stance was represented by means of a visual tradition based on the human figure. This mode of expression lends itself well to Orientalist attitudes and even fosters them, for in its rendering of "truth" in corporeal terms, it represents the world as an echo of the human self. The rest is "other." These are basic variables of Orientalism, and by extension, they often stand for aggregate selves such as empires and colonies.
This visual language, moreover, enjoyed the cumulative credibility of antiquity and the Christian tradition, both of which often represented truth by means of the heroic and enshrined male body. It was thus well suited to Orientalist attitudes. It combined the power vested in cultural heroes with the voyeuristic potential of the nude female form to describe the hierarchies embedded in and propagated by the imperialistic milieu of France. Dignified by tradition and history, then, French Orientalist painting conveyed and extended the conviction that power and glory, first vested in the body of Christ, also resided in the body politic of France, while the Orient became the feminized and exotic vessel for colonial energies.
Political circumstances and fundamental aesthetic principles operative in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century provide contrast and counterpoint to the French case. America had not completely shed its subordinate status as a former colony. It had no sustained relationship with the Orient (that is, with any political entity under that larger rubric), and its imperialistic activities were largely confined to the North American continent, where depredations on native peoples were rationalized as exploration and Manifest Destiny. Elites and aesthetes sought "refinement" abroad or equated it with imported artifacts and cultural traditions of greater antiquity than their own. In general, sober Protestants avoided representations of the human body, which were thought to be immodest and even idolatrous, choosing instead landscape as a vehicle for visual expression. Meanwhile, the body politic was virtually dismembered in the Civil War, a conflagration ignited in part by the atrocities of institutionalized slavery. Inevitably, Americans generated Orientalisms resonant with but quite different from their French counterparts.
It would be impossible to understand the idiosyncrasies of American Orientalism without reference to France because of the unique cultural status France enjoyed at the time and the pedagogical dimension of that position. French artists, bureaucrats, and other citizens promulgated certain standards of art and culture, and the visual language they utilized was what many aspiring artists sought to master. They often learned it in Paris, at the École des Beaux-Arts and numerous independent ateliers. As a government-funded school of art and a wing of the establishment, the École epitomized the dominant visual culture in France. Gérôme, the painter of The Snake Charmer, was one of its most prominent teachers for the last half of the century, and he introduced students from many countries to this academic canon. Under his tutelage, fledgling artists were indoctrinated to the western art historical tradition and taught how to draw and paint the human figure with anatomical precision (fig. 3).
Students of Gérôme who studied this peculiar visual language were quite diverse, and they painted pictures that bore the imprint of the teacher even as they betrayed other sensibilities. The painting of Osman Hamdi Bey, for example, exhibits many of the hallmarks of French academic painting (fig. 4): the ethnographic detail, the deft rendering of the human body, the balanced composition. Having studied with Gérôme as well as Gustave Boulanger, Osman Hamdi was well versed in the traditions of French Orientalism. Nevertheless, when he returned to his home in Ottoman Turkey, he chose not to depict despots and harem girls or nude women in the bath. Instead he presented decorous and elegant images of people seeking change and simultaneously suffering the impact of the West. His painting, in effect, was a way of "speaking back" to French artists intent on portraying the Orient in their own image (see Çelik essay, pp. 77-97).
Similarly, the American painter Frederick Bridgman absorbed Gérôme's advice and criticism but nevertheless painted differently than his mentor (see Allen essay, pp. 59-75). His Siesta (cat. no. 6), a quiet reprise of the famous French painting Odalisque with a Slave (fig. 5), demonstrates his fluency in the French tradition, but, like Osman Hamdi, Bridgman imbued his work with a distinctive flavor. Eschewing the blatantly erotic, he invoked the Orient to describe a desirable world in which women are proper, beautiful, and reticent. This is Orientalism in an American mode.
Clearly, there are many ways to represent the Orient, and each is subject to conditions of time and place. All of these images are partial and contrived; none is "true" or "accurate." Instead, they must be recognized as time-bound constructs, used to give shape to disorderly aspirations and cross-cultural perceptions. The term "Orient" itself was a construct, one that strategically homogenized and circumscribed diverse cultures and traditions for western convenience. I use it here, in echo of nineteenth-century parlance, to refer to the idea behind the imagery, not to validate its distortions or perpetuate its currency.
Much of the material included in this exhibition, especially that dating from before the turn of the century, reflects the diverse perspectives and activities of a small but powerful cohort: the white male elites of the northeastern United States. As I construct a narrative of this material for exhibition purposes, it will perhaps seem that I am extending or condoning the status that these groups enjoyed at the expense of others. This is not my purpose. What I am assembling here, effectively for the first time, are simply the loudest voices within the dominant culture at a particular time and place. When I posit a worldly, wise France or an indoctrinated America, I am not intending to essentialize either country in terms of the privileged and powerful, but rather to acknowledge the inordinately large role that such individuals played and the ideological collusions that they shared. Indeed, there are many other voices to be heard before we understand the nuances and complexities of American Orientalism; Zeynep Çelik's essay in this catalogue, for example, amplifies the previously silenced voices of Ottoman women to complement the myopic stories told by the organizers of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. There is much more to be done along these lines.
In the meantime and as an initial foray into the study of American Orientalism, this exhibition and essay attempt to trace a process by which a concept of the Orient was created by a few and then elaborated to many more throughout the United States. The exhibition begins with the gilt-framed paintings of the Hudson River school artist Frederic Church and effectively ends with a national cult figure, Rudolph Valentino, star of The Sheik. The story initially transpires in the Moorish smoking rooms of millionaires and continues in the cozy Turkish corners of middle-class parlors, assembled by means of judicious purchases from Sears Roebuck.
Along the way, the focus shifts from "high" art to the media of mass production, reflecting what I see as the trail of Orientalist imagery through society and over time. I am not deliberately or inadvertently leaving out either the popular culture of the nineteenth century or the high art of the early twentieth century. There are a few examples of both included in the exhibition, which are intended to acknowledge the complex roots of mass media as well as the new directions that painting took after the turn of the century. For the present purposes, however, I am focusing elsewhere, in an effort to demonstrate the larger migration of Orientalist imagery from unique objects to mass-produced materials. In so doing, I am highlighting some basic trends in the visual evidence. While there obviously existed material manifestations of "popular culture" in the late nineteenth century (including illustrated books and magazines, simple advertisements, and engaging forms of public entertainment), early-twentieth-century Americans produced and were assaulted by a much more vivid and vast array, including photographs, color prints, pictorial advertisements, and movies. Orientalist imagery proliferated in this context of heightened visuality, and the locus of it simultaneously shifted. Thus, by the time advertisements doubled as colorful wall decorations in middle-class homes, and silent movies engaged the attention of the American public, there was no significant tradition of Orientalist painting left; indeed, it had already begun to wane by the time of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
These diverse materials encompass a multifaceted process that I refer to as "Orientalism" throughout this essay. While this term was actually used in the mid-nineteenth century, our collective understanding of it was profoundly altered with the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978. Subsequent scholarly contributions have further nuanced its connotations and implications. In light of these developments, I have used "Orientalism" to refer to the myriad ways that people represent and employ the "Orient" for diverse personal, social, and cultural purposes. In my opinion, these purposes range from imperialism and denigration to celebration and nostalgia; possibilities are as various as individuals and circumstances. Orientalism is not a monolithic or static phenomenon but rather a conflicted and multivocalic process that can only be understood cumulatively and retrospectively. In talking about Orientalist visual imagery in this manner, then, it is critical to be specific about time, place, and players.
In the case of American Orientalism, the period from 1870 to 1930 was complex and formative. It was a time when the United States emerged from the devastation of the Civil War and sought to join what were thought to be the "civilized" nations of the world. Political, cultural, and psychic horizons were expanding in relation to a variety of "others," including Native American peoples, France, and the Orient. As Americans proceeded along their self-appointed path of "progress,' they encountered rapid industrialization and urbanization, territorial expansion, and economic upheaval. Victorian values were being eroded by the changes, and men and women both moved uncertainly toward the future.
In this era of transformation, the Orient was a useful construct that enabled people both to revisit the past and to envision the future. It allowed people to declare their convictions and affirm their values. It also offered opportunities to imagine, vicariously experience, and ultimately incorporate new options into their lives. Thus, the Orient was both a tool for self-scrutiny and a foil for social change.
What distinguishes this period and this phase of Orientalism from earlier ones is the abundance of visual evidence of American attitudes? Prior to this time there had been literary evidence of American convictions about the Islamic world, but there was considerably less visual representation of the region. In the postbellum period and the early decades of the twentieth century, however, Orientalist imagery proliferated in the form of paintings, prints, decorative arts, advertisements, photographs, films, fashion, and a variety of performing arts. In part, this resulted from increased travel opportunities and expanding national horizons, but it was also indicative of the efflorescence of mass media and the development of a department store culture. From this explosion of imagery, people were assembling for themselves representations of the Orient that were increasingly vivid and varied.
The images changed over time, subject to domestic needs and social pressures. In the decades after the Civil War, the Orient was conceived primarily as a traditional and monolithic culture in an unadulterated natural setting. As such, it was a distant screen upon which the Protestant narrative could be reenacted, American values could be projected, and nostalgia could be expressed. In paintings of the 1870s and 1880s, one is struck not by the exoticism of the imagery so much as its comfortable familiarity for a Victorian audience. Some images suggest a wistful review of what America once looked like; others seem to universalize the values of the dominant culture in America simply by presenting them in oriental garb. In effect, this Orient served to reassure nineteenth-century elites that everyone was or should be like them and that, if necessary, they were prepared to show how things should be done.
As the century drew to a close, the Orient was remodeled for new consumers. The "real thing" was brought home and displayed in the form of live ethnographic exhibits at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Here, the Orient was constructed not as potentially like America but rather as demonstrably and thankfully different. "Realistic" villages from Egypt and Algeria, for example, were displayed along with other cultures of the world on the Midway Plaisance, and fair-goers visited them with a mix of curiosity and condescension. From the lofty vantage point of "civilized" man sailing around on the technologically superior Ferris wheel, this Orient was belittled and demeaned by anthropologists, fair organizers, and ultimately, the American public.
Thereafter, in the early twentieth century, when women began to enjoy more social latitude and Americans were collectively and individually discovering "the body," the Orient was reimagined around sex. As a catalyst and surrogate for enacting desire, oriental imagery appeared on diverse consumer products and in the entertainment industry as the backdrop for new and titillating personal experiences. Such was the nature of the Orient in the collective imagination that it sustained this extraordinary variety of interpretations, fluctuating between being flatteringly like and reassuringly different, as echoes of self and incarnations of other.
This exhibition offers an opportunity to correlate this new corpus of material evidence with a sophisticated analytical apparatus. This is extraordinarily difficult to undertake within the context of an exhibition catalogue, for one is faced with the rhetorical challenge of telling a new story in an accessible and self-conscious manner while simultaneously exposing its underpinningsarguably mutually exclusive processes. In light of that difficulty, other essays have been included to complement this one, and extensive commentary has been embedded in catalogue entries in order to segregate the documentation of new materials from the theoretical consideration of their genesis and transformation. It is hoped that this structure will serve to highlight the implications of this material and identify opportunities for further research of diverse kinds.
Clearly, there is evidence of Orientalist attitudes in the paintings, prints, and posturings of turn-of-the-century Americans. The diachronic arrangement of this material and its correlation with political and social developments suggest that visual Orientalism served as a preface to, or part of, the consolidation of the power that America sought in the emerging world order of the early twentieth century. Early imagery viewed the Orient, whereas subsequent renditions emphasized its inhabitants. Ultimately, it would appear that American Orientalism was essentially a therapeutic mechanism as well as a creative process whereby people might construct models of behavior and society and then move into the spaces of power that they had constructed.
The material evidence of these processes stands in peculiar and significant relationship to the literary evidence, I think. Among the American Orientalist paintings in this exhibition, one does not find sanctimonious pictures of "indolent" or "childlike" natives or visions of lustful Turks, though one reads about such "Orientals" frequently in nineteenth-century literature. In fact, wherever we have adequate documentation to comment, it suggests that painters often went to the Orient presuming such stereotypes, but once there, they painted other things. In effect, they painted the settings for their own role-playing. While this role-playing takes the form of picturesque views and costume studies of "Oriental" players, it is also literally manifest in images of cross-cultural dressing and in the charged and ritualized masquerades of fashion, freemasonry, and world politics that transpired in the wake of increased world travel. The visual character of this material is important, for it provides a transition between word and action and enables the insertion of the self into a new worldview.
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text:
TEL AVIV (Feb. 24)
Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok greeted the signature of the Israeli-Egyptian armistice today as a momentous event in the Middle East and the first fruit of Jewish statehood.
The Foreign Minister recalled that the agreement was the first Arab-Jewish ac-cord signed since that reached by Dr. Chaim Weizmann and the Emir Feisal more than two decades ago for the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. He paid tribute to the "realism of the Egyptian Government" which made the agreement signed on Rhodes today possible, and said Israel was confident Egypt would not have cause to regret her initiative in ending hostilities. The entire Middle East, he added, would soon become aware of its indebtedness to Egypt for taking a new course.
The efforts of the Israeli delegation at Rhodes, Shertok said, had been aimed |at upholding and safeguarding Israel's national security end territorial integrity and to explore every possibility of a compromise that would achieve an effective armistice as a prelude to permanent peace.
He pointed out that Israel, under the armistice, has "unimpaired control of the entire territory of the Negev" with particular freedom of action in the Eastern part. Israel, however, made the sacrifice of agreeing that the invading forces temporarily occupy an important strip of Palestine territory and that the Israeli forces evacuate some of the areas occupied by them during the war.
"The wisdom of these concessions, which will arouse criticism, will be vindicated if the armistice leads to a lasting peace," the Foreign Minister commented. "They do not constitute a commitment regarding the eventual peace settlement." He warmly praised Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, U.N. acting mediator, and Brig. Gen. William Riley, his chief of staff, and said their contribution to the cause of peace was now "concrete and decisive."
Replying to correspondents' questions, Shertok said he understood that in the future Egypt will not interfere with Israel-bound traffic going through the Suez Canal or Israel-bound ships making calls at Egyptian ports.
The Israeli delegation to the forthcoming Transjordan-Israeli armistice negotiations has not yet been named, Shertok said, adding that the Trans Jordanians would have to provide credentials to prove they also represent Iraq.


text:
1634: The Baltic War
2. There are over three and a half million copies in print of his New York Times best-selling Honor Harrington series, arguably the most popular series in science fiction today.
3. This alternate history series has over three-quarters of a million copies in print, and three novels in the series have been New York Times best sellers.
4. Best-selling author Eric Flint has a large and still growing audience. His 1632, the first book in the series, was a smash hit, with over 95,000 copies sold and an 89% sell through. Publishers Weekly called it "gripping and expertly detailed." Everyone who read 1632 will be anxiously awaiting the arrival of this sequel.
5. Full-color series brochure
6. Special kit mailing
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8. Co-op available
9. Teaser for 1635: The Dreeson Incident
10. Special backlist discounts
11. Trade advertising with new hardcover
The Baltic War which began in the novel 1633 is still raging, and the time-lost Americans of Grantville—the West Virginia town hurled back into the seventeenth century by a mysterious cosmic accident—are caught in the middle of it.
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden and Emperor of the United States of Europe, prepares a counter-attack on the combined forces of France, Spain, England, and Denmark—former enemies which have allied in the League of Ostend to destroy the threat to their power that the Americans represent—which are besieging the German city of Luebeck.
Elsewhere in war-torn Europe, several American plans are approaching fruition. Admiral Simpson of Grantville frantically races against time to finish the USE Navy's ironclad ships—desperately needed to break the Ostender blockade of the Baltic ports. A commando unit sent by Mike Stearns to England prepares the rescue the Americans being held in the Tower of London. In Amsterdam, Rebecca Stearns continues three-way negotiations with the Prince of Orange and the Spanish Cardinal-Infante who has conquered most of the Netherlands. And, in Copenhagen, the captured young USE naval officer Eddie Cantrell tries to persuade the King of Denmark to break with the Ostender alliance, all while pursuing a dangerous romantic involvement with one of the Danish princesses.
- Baen |
- 1072 pages |
- October 2008
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