{"product_id":"dances-with-darwin-1875-1910-rae-beth-gordon-9780754652434","title":"Dances with Darwin, 1875-1910: Vernacular Modernity in France","description":"Examining the extraordinary influence of Darwin's theory of evolution on French thought from 1875 to 1910, Rae Beth Gordon argues for a reconsideration of modernism both in time and in place that situates its beginnings in the French café-concert aesthetic. Gordon weaves the history of medical science, ethnology, and popular culture into a groundbreaking exploration of the cultural implications of gesture in dance performances at late-nineteenth-century Parisian café-concerts and music halls. While art historians have studied the ties between primitivism and modernism, their convergence in fin-de-siècle popular entertainment has been largely overlooked. Gordon argues that while the impact of Darwinism was unprecedented in science, it was no less present in popular culture through the popular press and popular entertainment, where it constituted a kind of \"evolutionist aesthetic\" on display in the café-concert, circus, and music-hall as well as in the spectator's reception of the representations on the stage. Modernity in these sites, Gordon contends, was composed by the convergence of contemporary medical theory with representations of the primitive, staged in entertainments that ranged from the can-can, Missing Links, and epileptic singers to the Cake-Walk. Her anthropology of gesture uncovers in these dislocations of the human form an aesthetic of disorder a half century before the eruptions of Dada and Surrealism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Rae Beth Gordon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0754652432\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780754652434\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Routledge\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/28\/2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 330\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.41lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReference and Research Bk News\u003c\/i\u003e 05\/01\/2009 pg. 236","brand":"Rae Beth Gordon","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48136155562239,"sku":"9780754652434","price":225.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_32635821-a926-4985-a049-bb30857c788e.jpg?v=1770160879","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/dances-with-darwin-1875-1910-rae-beth-gordon-9780754652434","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}