Word: europeanization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Desire for the unordinary in Cambridge has become desire for the foreign, the European. It is manifested in many ways, and on many levels. There are, of course, the beards. The beards are to an extent echoes of the Oxonian, and many have mildly literary connotations: their owners make themselves reminiscent of D.H. Lawrence, or even Shaw. But above all they are from abroad, and have the same exciting piquancy as imported food. The bearded faces in the Square are juxtaposed, indeed one might say thrust out glaring, noses touching, to the shiny, just-shaven whey face of the average...
Beards are fun, but they itch. An example of a less personal possession with an enduring European flavor is the motor scooter. Vespas and Lambrettas are noisily rampant on the streets of Rome and Venice, and so they are arriving in Cambridge in ever-increasing numbers. They not only attract attention, but impart that desirable note of devil-may-care hardiness when they come abreast complacent, insulated Buicks on Mass...
Beneath this outer skin there is no set costume: anything dowdy and off-beat enough to be considered European will do. Such outfits as wide-welt corduroy suits cut in odd shapes seem popular, but ordinarily Continentalism can be spotted in smaller, more specific articles of dress. Foulard scarves and desert boots are, admittedly, more British than European, but they should be counted. Dark-colored shirts are being worn too much by the Cantabrigian Gentleman types now, with tweeds, to be much good to Continentalism; and grey-and khaki-colored work shirts are part of the bigger, people-yes movement...
...stories and the creatures of Camus in their state of elevated wretchedness--a vilifying yet inexpensive estrangement that sets them off from their humdrum fellows. They have in their minds' eye the limbo of clandestine disbelief they think is occupied by post-war, or just post-nineteenth century, European intellectual degenerates. Needless to say, they fall short, and usually end up feeling what they imagine French poets feel or at least what philosophy students at the Sorbonne feel when they look at American tourists with a disdainful glare...
Another new course in modern European history will be History 153, "History of German Thought from Kant to Spengler," to be given in the spring term. The course will be taught by Claus W. Epstein '48, assistant professor of History and will feature Hegel as the central figure in the course...