Alexandra Kollontai Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (Ukrainian: Олександра Михайлівна Коллонтай, Russian: Алекса́ндра Миха́йловна Коллонта́й — née Domontovich, Домонто́вич) (March 31 [O.S. March 19] 1872 – March 9, 1952) was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1923, Kollontai was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Norway. Kollontai, probably before 1900 Biography[edit] Early life[edit] Alexandra Mikhailovna Domontovich was born on March 31 [O.S. Alexandra Mikhailovna – or "Shura" as she was called growing up – was close to her father, with whom she shared an analytical bent and an interest in history and politics. "My mother and the English nanny who reared me were demanding. Alexandra was a good student growing up, sharing her father's interest in history, and mastering a range of languages. "You work! Revolutionary activities[edit] With the onset of World War I Kollontai left Germany due to the German social democrats’ support of the war.
Petrarch Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo Original lyrics by Petrarch, found in 1985 in Erfurt Biography[edit] Youth and early career[edit] Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco and his wife Eletta Canigiani. Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He traveled widely in Europe and served as an ambassador and has been called "the first tourist"[6] because he traveled just for pleasure,[7] which was the basic reason he climbed Mont Ventoux.[8] During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome and Greece. Mount Ventoux[edit] Scholars[14] note that Petrarch's letter[15][16] to Dionigi displays a strikingly "modern" attitude of aesthetic gratification in the grandeur of the scenery and is still often cited in books and journals devoted to the sport of mountaineering. Later years[edit] Giovanni died of the plague in 1361. Works[edit]
William Morris - The Socialist Ideal: Art Some people will perhaps not be prepared to hear that Socialism has any ideal of art, for in the first place it is so obviously founded on the necessity for dealing with the bare economy of life that many, and even some Socialists, can see nothing save that economic basis; and moreover, many who might be disposed to admit the necessity of economic change in the direction of Socialism believe quite sincerely that art is fostered by the inequalities of condition which it is the first business of Socialism to do away with, and indeed that it cannot exist without them. Nevertheless, in the teeth of these opinions I assert first that Socialism is an all-embracing theory of life, and that as it has an ethic and a religion of its own, so also it has an aesthetic: so that to every one who wishes to study Socialism duly it is necessary to look on it from the aesthetic point of view. This, then, is the position of art in this epoch. As an artist I know this, because I can see it.
Maria Lacerda de Moura Maria Lacerda de Moura Maria Lacerda de Moura (16 May 1887, Manhuaçu, Minas Gerais, Brazil – 20 March 1945, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian anarcha-feminist, individualist anarchist, teacher, journalist, and writer.[1] Life[edit] She was born on the Monte Alverne farm in Manhuaçu in Minas Gerais state, Brazil on 16 May 1887. "She was the daughter of Modesto de Araújo Lacerda and Amélia de Araújo Lacerda, freethinkers and educated folk from whom she certainly inherited her strong anticlerical outlook".[2] "Five years after she was born they moved to Barbacena, the town where she started her schooling and by the age of 16 she was training as a primary teacher, the profession to which she was deeply committed[3]". As a teacher and a pedagogue in Barbacena she founded the League Against Illiteracy and worked with other women to help provide housing for the homeless. She later moved to São Paulo and became involved in journalism for the anarchist and labor press. Selected works[edit]
Dr. Susan Blackmore News from Nowhere The book explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. Morris cleverly fuses Marxism and the romance tradition when he presents himself as an enchanted figure in a time and place different from Victorian England. As Morris, the romance character, quests for love and fellowship—and through them for a reborn self—he encounters romance archetypes in Marxist guises. Old Hammond is both the communist educator who teaches Morris the new world and the wise old man of romance. Dick and Clara are good comrades and the married lovers who aid Morris in his wanderings. In the novel, Morris tackles one of the most common criticisms of socialism; the supposed lack of incentive to work in a communistic society. Looking Backward[edit] Morris reviewed the novel Looking Backward in the Commonweal on 21 June 1889. More specifically, Morris criticised the limited nature Bellamy's idea of life. Gender in Nowhere[edit]
Lucía Sánchez Saornil Lucía Sánchez Saornil (December 13, 1895 – June 2, 1970), was a Spanish poet, militant anarchist and feminist. She is best known as one of the founders of Mujeres Libres and served in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista (SIA). Early life[edit] Raised by her impoverished, widowed father, Lucía attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. At a young age she began writing poetry and associated herself with the emerging Ultraist literary movement. By 1919, she had been published in a variety of journals, including Los Quijotes, Tableros, Plural, Manantial and La Gaceta Literaria. Political activism[edit] In 1931, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, who had been working as a telephone operator since 1916, participated in a strike by the anarcho-syndicalist labor union, Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), against Telefónica. Mujeres Libres[edit] Exile and hiding[edit] Lucía's tombstone epitaph reads, "But is it true that hope has died?"
Juana Inés de la Cruz Sister (Spanish: Sor) Juana Inés de la Cruz, O.S.H. (English: Joan Agnes of the Cross) (12 November 1651 – 17 April 1695), was a self-taught scholar and poet of the Baroque school, and Hieronymite nun of New Spain. Although she lived in a colonial era when Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, she is considered today both a Mexican writer and a contributor to the Spanish Golden Age, and she stands at the beginning of the history of Mexican literature in the Spanish language. Early life[edit] A portrait of Juana during her youth in 1666, which states she was 15 at the time, when she first entered the viceregal court She was born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in San Miguel Nepantla (now called Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in her honor) near Mexico City. Juana was a devoutly religious child who often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. Death[edit] Posthumous[edit] Works[edit] Legacy[edit]
How I Became a Socialist, by William Morris - Classic British Essays Poet, artist, designer, and social critic, William Morris was revolted by Victorian culture and the effects of the industrial revolution in England. In his utopian novel News From Nowhere (1890), Morris imagines an agrarian society in which private property has been abolished, social equality has been established, and all people derive satisfaction from their work. In 1894, the year in which he founded the Socialist League, Morris published the essay "How I Became a Socialist" in Justice magazine. Despite the informal, conversational style of his prose, Morris expresses his credo with passion and conviction. How I Became a Socialist by William Morris I am asked by the Editor to give some sort of a history of the above conversion, and I feel that it may be of some use to do so, if my readers will look upon me as a type of a certain group of people, but not so easy to do clearly, briefly and truly. Concluded on page two
Camille Paglia Overview[edit] Paglia has said that she is willing to have her entire career judged on the basis of her composition of what she considers to be "probably the most important sentence that she has ever written": "God is man's greatest idea."[11] Paglia's Sexual Personae was rejected by no fewer than seven different publishers (not unusual, in and of itself), but when finally published by Yale University Press, became a best seller, reaching seventh place on the paperback best-seller list, a rare accomplishment for a scholarly book.[5] 'Paglia called it her "prison book", commenting, "I felt like Cervantes, Genet. It took all the resources of being Catholic to cut myself off and sit in my cell Personal life[edit] For over a decade, Paglia was the partner of artist Alison Maddex.[21][22] Paglia legally adopted Maddex's son (who was born in 2002).[13] In 2007, the couple separated.[23] Education[edit] Career[edit]
Eratosthenes Eratosthenes of Cyrene (Ancient Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης, IPA: [eratostʰénɛːs]; English /ɛrəˈtɒsθəniːz/; c. 276 BC[1] – c. 195/194 BC[2]) was a Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. He invented the discipline of geography, including the terminology used today.[3] Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology; he endeavored to revise the dates of the chief literary and political events from the conquest of Troy. He was a figure of influence who declined to specialize in only one field. Seventeen hundred years after Eratosthenes' death, while Christopher Columbus studied what Eratosthenes had written about the size of the Earth, he chose to believe that the Earth's circumference was much smaller. Life[edit] These works and his great poetic abilities led the pharaoh Ptolemy III Euergetes to seek to place him as a librarian at the Library of Alexandria in the year 245 BC.
William Morris William Morris self-portrait, 1856 William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English artist, writer, textile designer and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and English Arts and Crafts Movement.[1][2] He founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. As an author, illustrator and medievalist, he helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, and was a direct influence on postwar authors such as J. R. R. Life[edit] Early life and education[edit] William Morris was born in Walthamstow on 24 March 1834, the third child and the eldest son of William Morris, a partner in the firm of Sanderson & Co., bill brokers in the City of London. Morris's painting La belle Iseult, also inaccurately called Queen Guinevere, is his only surviving easel painting, now in the Tate Gallery. Red House[edit]
Lynn Conway Lynn Conway (born 1938) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, trans woman, and activist for the transgender community. Conway is notable for a number of pioneering achievements, including the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, which incubated an emerging electronic design automation industry. She worked at IBM in the 1960s and is credited with the invention of generalised dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Early life and education[edit] Conway grew up in White Plains, New York. Although shy and experiencing gender dysphoria as a child, Conway became fascinated and engaged by astronomy (building a 6-inch (150 mm) reflector telescope one summer) and did well in math and science in high school. Early research at IBM[edit] Gender transition[edit] Career as computer scientist[edit] "Clearly a new paradigm had emerged . . .
Enheduanna Regarded by literary and historical scholars as possibly the earliest known author and poet, Enheduanna served as the High Priestess during the third millennium BCE.[1] She was appointed to the role by her father, King Sargon of Akkad. Her mother was Queen Tashlultum.[7][8] Enheduanna has left behind a corpus of literary works, definitively ascribed to her, that include several personal devotions to the goddess Inanna and a collection of hymns known as the "Sumerian Temple Hymns," regarded as one of the first attempts at a systematic theology. In addition, scholars, such as Hallo and Van Dijk, suggest that certain texts not ascribed to her may also be her works.[9] Enheduanna was appointed to the role of High Priestess in what is considered to be a shrewd political move by Sargon to help cement power in the Sumerian south where the City of Ur was located.[10] She continued to hold office during the reign of Rimush, her brother. Archaeological and textual evidence[edit] See also[edit]