Richard Wagner. Die Entstehung einer Marke. Bd. 7. Wagner in der Diskussion. Trans. Michael Halfbrodt. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012.
Vazsonyi, Nicholas
May 25, 2012
Department of Languages
Year: 2012
Vazsonyi, Nicholas
May 24, 2012
Richard Wagner: Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Paperback 2012.
All modern artists have had to market themselves in some way. Richard Wagner may just have done it better than anyone else. In a self-promotional effort that began around 1840 in Paris, and lasted for the remainder of his career, Wagner claimed convincingly that he was the most German composer ever and the true successor of Beethoven. More significantly, he was an opera composer who declared that he was not composing operas. Instead, during the 1850s, he mapped out a new direction, conceiving of works that would break with tradition and be literally ‘brand new’. This is the first study to examine the innovative ways in which Wagner made himself a celebrity, promoting himself using every means available: autobiography, journal articles, short stories, newspaper announcements, letters, even his operas themselves. Vazsonyi reveals how Wagner created a niche for his works in the crowded opera market that continues to be unique.
An, Yanming
February 21, 2012
Engineering, Development and Philosophy: American, Chinese and European Perspectives. Edited by Steen H. Christensen, Carl Mitcham, Bocong Li, and Yanming An. Springer, 2012
This inclusive, cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering, development, and culture. It offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary perspectives on how the philosophies of today’s cultural triumvirate—American, European and Chinese—are shaped and given nuance by the cross-fertilization of engineering and development. Scholars from the humanities and social sciences as well as engineers themselves reflect on key questions that arise in this relational context, such as how international development work affects the professional views, identities, practice and ethics of engineers.
