David Mayer – författare

Mayer doesn't want his book to be catagorized in the United States section of any history catalogues. This is the first collection of the most important playscripts and film scenarios of the `toga play' a genre of theatrical melodrama which flourished in the late nineteenth century and which re-emerged in silent cinema and later `epics'.Set in the post-Republican Roman Empire, toga plays and films presented Roman and Jewish heroes, Christian virgins, seductive `adventuresses', insane Emperors, savage lions, and racing chariots. But, as David Mayer shows, the plays also ventured clandestinely into issues of class, gender, religion, immigration, and imperialism and hence shed new light on British and American social and cultural history. Among the restored scripts and scenarios included here - all of which are previously unpublished and generously illustrated - are those of Claudian (1883), the most popular of all Victorian melodramas The Sign of The Cross (1895), and the stage spectacular Ben Hur (1899) and its earliest cinematic version (1907). D.W. Griffith's first toga film The Barbarian Ingomar (1908) is represented by a lengthy selection of film stills.At a time of growing interest in the relationship between Victorian popular theatre and early cinema, this ground-breaking publication brings to light a highly significant - but critically neglected - theatrical and cinematic genre.

Sergei M. Eisenstein's Potemkin, a vivid account of the mutiny of Russian sailors on a Czarist battleship in 1905, is universally acknowledged to be one of the greatest films of all time. Until now, however, Potemkin's astonishing vividness and artistry has never been translated satisfactorily into print. David Mayer's precise, shot-by-shot re-creation of Potemkin, the product of five years' work, is unquestionably definitive. For the student, it is a complete and faithful guide to the film. For the non-initiate, it can be read as a novel,a magnificent story of revolution and repression. With nearly three hundred illustrations, it can be used as a screenplay by film lovers. Mayer's concise introduction analyzes Eisenstein's innovative montage concepts and illustrates them with sequences of frames from the film. Now, with descriptions of each of the more than 1300 shot that make up the authoritative Museum of Modern Art version, even the smallest particulars of Eisenstein's directorial genius can be discovered and studied without losing Potemkin's narrative and visual flow.

Throughout any theatrical production, the director is pivotal to the success of the operation. He or she is entrusted with the responsibility of making decisions that affect the artistic and often financial welfare of the entire production. Covering all the stages of theatrical production, from initial preparation to final performance, this meticulous volume explains, in depth and yet with clarity, how to identify elements of a play that will make for a success, and how to choose and guide collaborators towards putting this into practice.

This volume examines Brazilian labour history, integrating issues of gender, race, and ethnicity by addressing topics such as free and unfree labour in the nineteenth-century Amazon, the transnational contexts of urban sex work, the intersection of 'class' and 'community' in a São Paulo workers' bairro, and the (legal) struggles of sugar cane workers in Pernambuco. At the same time, this volume presents a renewed historiography of movements and organisations (often with an emphasis on transnational dimensions), covering issues from revolutionary syndicalism in Rio, through the role of World War II in the formation of Brazilian populism, to the intervention of US 'free unionism' during the military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina. This volume goes beyond a survey of more recent Brazilian labour history and offers articles that enter into conscious dialogue with the debates and findings of scholarship in other world regions.

Coal has been fundamental for the development of industrial and transport technologies since the nineteenth century. Globalisation, including colonialism, would not have been possible without coal-based energy and thus the exploitation of coal in every part of the world. But coal mining is a labour-intensive activity and mine operators had to find, mobilise and direct workers to these sites to enable exploitation. The recruitment of miners often targeted groups with a perceived inferior status. This turned coal mining communities into dense social spheres characterised by the intricate dynamics of ethnic identifications, interracial relations and class formation. The twelve articles presented in this volume cover cases from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Turkey, the Soviet Union and Western Europe, as well as a broad range of topics, from segregation, forced labour and subcontracting, to labour struggles, discrimination, ethnic paternalism and sports.

Die in diesem Band versammelten Essays sind dem Historiker und Lateinamerikanisten Friedrich Katz (1927-2010) gewidmet. Sie fußen auf einem Symposium, das im Herbst 2011 zu seinen Ehren in Wien abgehalten wurde, und vereinen unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf sein Leben und Werk. Friedrich Katz war einer der großen Sozialhistoriker zur lateinamerikanischen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Seine Arbeiten zur Mexikanischen Revolution zählen zu den grundlegenden Werken über dieses Thema. Er verstand es, in quellenkritischer Tiefe die Besonderheiten Mexikos in die Weltgeschichte einzuschreiben. Andererseits verschlug eben diese Weltgeschichte ihn selbst als Kind von Wien über Berlin, Paris und New York nach Mexiko, nach 1945 wieder nach Wien und Ostberlin und schließlich nach Chicago.The essays collected in this volume are dedicated to the historian and Latin Americanist Friedrich Katz (1927-2010). They are based on a symposium held in his honour in Vienna in the autumn of 2011 and bring together varying perspectives of his life and work. As one of the great social historians of our time, Friedrich Katz had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sources relevant to Latin America’s twentieth century history. His studies of the Mexican Revolution rank foremost among contributions to the field. More than anyone before he succeeded in relating the specifics of Mexico’s history to the broader processes of global history. That same global history impacted repeatedly on Katz’ own life: he was forced to leave Vienna as a child and moved with his family to Mexico, via Berlin, Paris and New York; he returned to Vienna after 1945 only to leave again for East Berlin before finally settling in Chicago.