This image of Illinois State Normal University was taken in 1914 by Haines Photo Company. The image shows the Gymnasuim (now Cook Hall), the Manual Arts Building, Main Building, and the Thomas Metcalf Training School. The orginal print is 10 x 34 inches and is a gelatin silver print, making it extremely senstive to light.
The Coliseum (Coloseum, Colosseum), was built during the reign of Emperor Vespasiano c. 72 AD and dedicated in 80 AD by his son Titus. The popular name of Coliseumcame about because the immense oval stadium was situated next to a colossal statue of Nero. The original name of this ancient Roman sports arena, the largest arena of its kind, is The Amphitheatrum Flavium.
Over 160 ft high with eighty entrances, the Coliseum could hold upwards of 50,000 spectators. Public events such as gladiator fights, mock naval battles and wild animal hunts were held at the Coliseum. During the staged fights as many as 10,000 people were killed. Fighters were slaves, prisoners or volunteers. Spectators saw persecuted Christians killed by lions. After 404 AD gladiatorial battles were no longer held, but animals such as lions, elephants, snakes and panthers continued to be massacred in the name of sport until the 6th century.
This portrait of Louis XVI (ruled 1774-1792) attempts to capture the majesty of absolutist kingship and includes the ubiquitous fleur-de-lys, symbol of the French crown. Louis was more a hapless king than a bad one, and his desire to be loved by his subjects led to his dismissal of several reform ministers who might have saved France from the financial crisis that led to revolution in 1789. Upon hearing of the storming of the Bastille, Louis is reputed to have asked, "is it a revolt?", to which an aide responded: "No sire, it is a revolution." Revolutionaries in 1789 would keep Louis XVI on the throne, though they transformed him from an absolutist to a constitutional monarch.
Sienna in Central Italy was a major European banking center during the Middle Ages. Siennese merchant-bankers had offices in all the major trading centers. In the mid-fourteenth century the citizens decided to enlarge the cathedral by turning the existing structure into the transept of a new building.
They had begun work on the nave when the Black Death struck in 1348. The population was greatly reduced—it is conceivably that half the population died—and the project was never completed.
Today, the outer shell serves as a wall for a parking lot. It is generally assumed, based on evidence from China in the 1890s, that the disease was the bubonic plague; but scholars are now challenging that assumption because the symptoms and spread of the disease do not match modern outbreaks of bubonic plague.
Built by Louis XIV from 1669 to 1686, the chateau of Versailles outside of Paris served as the household of the royal family, the seat of French government, and a social center where France's highest nobles congregated. Magnificence rather than comfort was the goal, as Versailles symbolized the centralizing tendencies and personal power of Louis XIV. Life at Versailles revolved around elaborate rituals and court etiquette (it was the height of rudeness to knock on the door; rather, one scratched the door with the little finger on the left hand) in which courtiers expressed their deference for the king in return for pensions, sinecures, government positions, and other favors. The brilliance of Versailles loses some of its luster when one recalls that the tax burden for supporting the court fell mostly on France's impoverished peasants.
The past is present.
Fifty year old cars rumble along narrow, pot-holed streets quaint to the outsider's eye. Nostalgia awakened -- recollections of similar Buicks or Packards on Route 66, long supplanted by superhighways and SUVs. Clouds of dust, evidence of the restoration of Carpentier's City of Columns, of urban renewal in progress.
Havana asks us: go slowly, for the past is present. The city, not yet
super-sized, welcomes.
Beginning in 2002, ISU students have had the opportunity to travel to Cuba on study tours sponsored by the Department of History, the Unit for Latin American Studies, and the Office of International Studies. Students explore Cuban history, issues of race and identity, culture, and politics. The Department believes such experiential learning is an important element in education and encourages undergraduate and graduate students to participate in its innovative study abroad programs.
The French Revolution of 1789 transferred sovereignty from the king, Louis XVI, to the nation. In so doing, it turned Louis into a constitutional monarch who exercised executive power in France. Louis was never reconciled to his diminished role, and he especially opposed the Revolution's "attack" on the Catholic Church, which nationalized church property, granted religious freedom, and called for the election of bishops and priests. Louis' hostility to the Revolution led to an attempt to flee France to join the foreign armies led by the Austrian emperor, the brother of Louis' wife, Marie-Antoinette. Louis was captured at the border town of Varennes and put back on the throne. On August 10, 1792, radical revolutionaries attacked the Tuileries Palace in Paris, overthrew Louis XVI, and declared France a Republic. Louis was subsequently tried; this picture shows his execution on January 21, 1793—an act that made it impossible for the Revolution to reconcile with its opponents and that serves as a potent symbol of modern republicanism.
Sienna in Central Italy was a major European banking center during the Middle Ages. Siennese merchant-bankers had offices in all the major trading centers. In the mid-fourteenth century the citizens decided to enlarge the cathedral by turning the existing structure into the transept of a new building.
They had begun work on the nave when the Black Death struck in 1348. The population was greatly reduced—it is conceivably that half the population died—and the project was never completed.
Today, the outer shell serves as a wall for a parking lot. It is generally assumed, based on evidence from China in the 1890s, that the disease was the bubonic plague; but scholars are now challenging that assumption because the symptoms and spread of the disease do not match modern outbreaks of bubonic plague.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of August 1789 proclaimed the liberty and equality of all men. In this allegorical depiction of the declaration, one sees a celebration of nature, from which the "imprescriptible rights" stem, and an announcement of the "happiness of liberated humanity." At the bottom rests the mason's level, symbol of equality, topped by the Phrygian cap, worn by revolutionaries as a sign of liberation from slavery.
The universality of the French declaration of 1789 destined it to serve as the model for the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. At the time of its promulgation, however, the declaration created bitter debate over the meaning and extent of rights: did the declaration mean Protestants, Jews, women, blacks—groups who were historically discriminated against?
In 1936, writer James Agee was assigned to do a story on sharecroppers in the Deep South for Fortune Magazine. Agee asked acclaimed documentary photographer, Walker Evans to accompany him to Hale County, Alabama, where the two men lived with and befriended three families, including the Gudgers. Although Fortune rejected the story, it appeared in book form in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a rambling, Marxist ethnography which did not meet with critical acclaim until the 1960s.
Evans’ photographs have also been heralded as masterpieces in documentary art. Throughout the 1930s, sharecroppers and tenant farmers were a popular subject matter for photographers, such as Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and others hired by the Farm Security Administration to document the devastating effects of the Great Depression on America’s poor. Unlike other photographers, however, Evans insisted that his subjects pose or present themselves to the camera as they wished to be seen, and he shot facing them directly, without sentimental affectation or manipulation. Annie Mae Gudger, aged 27, was married to George Gudger and was the mother of four children in 1936.
In the early nineteenth century, the emerging middle classes in America used portraiture to make visible their new-found gentility and respectability. Such portraits became lucrative business for itinerant artisans, like Erastus Field. Mr. Joseph Moore, a hatmaker, dentist, and professor of religion, lived with his wife and children in Ware, Massachusetts. The portrait lacks the dimensionality, depth, and richness of elite portraiture, but through more “primitive” paintings such as these, the Moores were able to present the markers of their social status: their neat clothes with fine lace detail, as well as their carpet, curtains, and painted or wallpapered walls, all luxuries available only to the wealthy a generation or two before.
