Klezmer, a type of Eastern European Jewish secular music brought to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, originally functioned as accompaniment to Jewish wedding ritual celebrations. In the late 1970s, a group of primarily Jewish musicians sought inspiration for a renewal of this early 20th century American klezmer by mining 78 rpm records for influence, and also by seeking out living klezmer musicians as mentors. Why did a group of Jewish musicians in the 1970s through 1990s want to connect with artists and recordings from the early 20th century in order to "revive" this music? What did the music "do" for them and how did it contribute to their senses of both individual and collective identity? How did these musicians perceive the relationship between klezmer, Jewish culture, and Jewish religion? Finally, how was the genesis for the klezmer revival related to the social and cultural climate of its time? I argue that Jewish folk musicians revived klezmer music in the 1970s as a manifestation of both an existential search for authenticity, carrying over from the 1960s counterculture, and a manifestation of a 1970s trend toward ethnic cultural revival. I implicitly argue that both waves of klezmer popularity in America are reflections of the long project of Jews negotiating identities as both American and Jewish—the attempt to fit in from the margins while maintaining or being ascribed certain ethnic differences—in the United States throughout the 20th century. / Master of Arts

This dissertation examines attempts at the revival of Buddhism in India from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Typically, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism in 1956 is seen as the start of the neo-Buddhist movement in India. I see this important post-colonial moment as an endpoint in a larger trajectory of efforts at reviving Buddhism in India. The term "revival" itself arose as a result of a particular understanding of Indian history as having had a Buddhist phase in the distant past. Buddhism is also seen in the historiography as a British colonial discovery (or "recovery") for their Indian subjects viz. a range of archaeological and philological endeavors starting in the early decades of the nineteenth century. I argue that there was a quite prolific Indian discourse on Buddhism starting from the late nineteenth century that segued into secret histories of cosmopolitanism, modernity, nationalism and caste radicalism in India. In this context I examine a constellation of figures including the Sri Lankan Buddhist ideologue and activist Anagarika Dharmapala, Buddhist studies scholars like Beni Madhab Barua, the Hindi writer, socialist, and sometime Buddhist monk Rahula Sankrityayana, the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru and Ambedkar himself among others, to explicate how Buddhism was constructed and deployed in the service of these ideologies and pervaded both liberal and radical Indian thought formations. In the process, Buddhism came to be characterized as both a universal and national religion, as the first modern faith system long before the actual advent of the modern age, as a system of ethics that espoused liberal values, an ethos of gender and caste equality, and independent and rational thinking, as a veritable civil religion for a new nation, and as a liberation theology for Dalits in India and indeed for the entire nation. My dissertation is about the people, networks, ideas and things that made this possible. / History

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-166).

Prague as space, inside of which music of various genres is being created and performed, linked to different values, being created on foundations of distinct concepts and serving as a medium of various strategies, is characterized by fluid and difficult to grasp soundscape (Shellemay 2006). This environment allows the creation and negotiation of traditions (Glassie 1995), moving into different directions. One of them, which have a recursive character and serves its actors as the construction of meaning and carrying out sociocultural change for its actors, is connected with the concept of folklore. The presented fieldwork examines this part of contemporary Prague soundscape in the field, framed by one of the music and dance events. The regular event, named by the organizers "Folklorní mejdlo", defines itself as a connection of the world of modernity, which is currently offered in the metropolis, and the world of traditions, authenticity and folklore. The fieldwork aims its focus on the way the concepts of authenticity and legitimacy are negotiated, its assigning to individual actors and objects and generally how the actors of the event undertake the construction of folklore and how the final product looks like. This work, with its approach to music as a social act (Turino 2008) endorses the...

This thesis uses qualitative research methods to elaborate on Ralph Blizard’s legacy in the old-time music community. The aspects of Blizard’s legacy that were examined include his style of fiddling and the actions he took to preserve traditional Appalachian old-time music. This thesis discusses the old-time music revival in the late 20th Century and Blizard’s role in the revival. This thesis used documentary research, archival research, and personal interviews. Documentary and archival research took place at the Ralph Blizard Museum in Blountville, Tennessee, and the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University. I conducted personal interviews with Blizard’s musical colleagues and members of his family. This thesis shows that Blizard’s legacy in old-time music is defined the actions he took to help preserve the sound of traditional Appalachian old-time music just as much as it is defined by his style of fiddling.

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This thesis seeks to explore the influence of Henry Jenner as one of the most prominent figures of the Celtic Revival in Cornwall and in the wider Celtic community. To contextualise this, it will examine the image of the Celts as a people in the first half of the twentieth century and the assertion of Celtic identity in that period through the Celtic Revival. The opening chapter examines the concepts of nations and nationalism, particularly Celtic nationalism. The second chapter focuses on the Victorian era as a motivating force for Henry Jenner and others to ‘write back’ against a long and insidious discourse of discrimination. Chapter Three goes on to look at how the political situation in both Britain and Ireland came to influence the nature of Celtic identity assertion and also the extent to which Jenner’s own political views impacted on the nature of Cornwall’s Celtic Revival. In Chapter Four the impact of tourism on Cornwall, and on Cornish identity, is examined, particularly how the image of Cornwall as a Celtic nation created by Jenner and others was embraced and manipulated by that industry. Chapter Five looks at the consequences of image manipulation on tourist-dependent regions. The final chapter concentrates more specifically on the work of Jenner and the Old Cornwall Societies, and the thesis concludes by appraising the influence of the ideas and beliefs of Henry Jenner on our contemporary vision of Cornwall. It focuses particularly on how the predominance of memory created a haunted identity which was embraced by the burgeoning tourist industry and examines how this identity has subsequently impacted on the economic well-being of the region. But it also concludes that Jenner’s legacy endures in so many of the positive images of, and statements about, Cornwall today.

This dissertation critically examines the question of language revival in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Hebrew literature. Focusing on major texts that participate in the political and aesthetic endeavor of reviving Hebrew as an exclusive national language, this study traces the narrative of revival and explores the changes and iterations it underwent in the course of several decades, from the 1890s to the early 1920s. Informed by a wide range of critical literary theory, I analyze the primary tropes used to articulate the process whereby Hebrew came to inhabit new discursive roles. Building on close readings of canonical texts by authors ranging from Ahad Ha’am and Mikha Yosef Berdichevsky to Hayim Nahman Bialik, Rachel Katznelson, and Yosef Hayim Brenner, I argue that while modern Hebrew literature largely rejected the philological assumption that Hebrew was a dead language, it nevertheless produced a discourse around the notion of “revival,” in a manner that deferred the possibility of perceiving Hebrew as fully living. My readings show that while many of these texts contemplate linguistic transformation in terms of revitalization or birth, the national mission of language revival is in fact entwined with mourning, and ultimately produces the object of revival as neither dead nor fully alive. Dwelling on the ambivalence and suspension of that moment, and examining a range of nuances in its articulation, I explore the roles that Hebrew language and literature play in nationalization, Zionism, and the constitution of a new Hebrew subjectivity.