When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre in Washington on the evening of April 14,1865, he destroyed any possibility that his reputation as an actor would be dispassionately assessed for the foreseeable future. A bitter, fratricidal war was drawing to its close, and Northern newspapers were not interested in being fair; opprobrium was heaped on Booth's name, beginning in the press the following day. Twelve days later he was dead, shot during an attempted arrest. In 1890, his fellow player Clara Morris asserted hopefully, ‘At this late day the country can afford to deal justly with John Wilkes Booth.’ That time had not yet come: in fact, some of the worst -- and silliest -- slanders have been perpetrated in the twentieth century. But surely now, over a hundred years later, it should be possible to set aside that April evening and look dispassionately at Booth's career in the theatre of his time. As well as extending simple justice to a man who seems to have been extremely likeable and idealistic, and an actor interesting enough to deserve study, such a reassessment may serve to correct a distortion which the 'mythologized' view of his career has created: the idea that Edwin Booth was the only promising young tragedian in the early 1860s, which falsifies both Edwin's career and the period in general. Moreover, John's entire career covered a mere ten years, and his four full seasons as a star occurred during the Civil War, an under-researched period. The necessary concentration on so brief a time-span allows a more detailed treatment than would be possible in examining a career of average length, which may in turn illuminate some broader aspects of American theatre during an unsettled and transitional period.

Thc devolopment of scene changing machinery in Great Britain is perhaps one of the few disciplines in the field of mechanical engineering which have virtually never relied upon new discoveries in technology for their advancement. Instead it has always lagged behind, perhaps modifying, certainly adapting, existing techniques. This study aims to examine the evolution of stage machinery during the nineteenth century, when many techniques had already been in existence and traditions firmly established since the previous century. The degree of development in the course of the nineteenth century was in many ways a reflection of the type of drama presented. As time went by, the public's taste for spectacle and visual presentation intensified and fostered an increase in the complexity of scene changing equipment. This in turn meant that many of the theatres built in the eighteenth century, especially in the provinces, were sadly inadequate for housing the vast quantities of equipment which machinists needed to install above and below the stage. As a result architects, began improving and enlarging existing theatres as well as building new ones, with increased stage width and depth, increased flying space above and increased depth below the stage.There was indeed an enormous rise in demand for scenic effects shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century. This rapid growth caused the smaller existing Georgian playhouses, like the Theatre Royal, Ipswich, either to be modified in an attempt to cater for new trends, or to close. This dilemma alone must be acknowledged as a significant contributory factor in the decline of the Georgian playhouse and helps to explain the comparatively small number of such theatres surviving to the present day.The techniques of the stage machinist in the first half of the nineteenth century relied almost totally on technology and basic engineering principles which had existed for many years. Certainly the comparison often made between the backstage of a theatre of this period and a sailing ship is a very apt one, since both relied on manually hauled ropes, sheaves and the principles of mechanical advantage. However, these techniques had also been utilised for other, non-theatrical purposes. For instance, housed in the central tower of Beverley Minster is a large treadwheel, which was, and is still, used to raise equipment from ground level into the roof space [sec photo.1]. This is based upon the principles of mechanical advantage, in much the same way as many pieces of scene-changing equipment.Thus, because the theatrical profession was slow to adopt now apparatus and constantly replacing old machinery with brand new near-replicas, its evolution was comparatively slow. The job of a stage machinist was quite often a family concern, as the techniques, traditions, secrets and tricks of the trade were passed from father to son. The Sloman family and the Grieve family were particularly well known in London for their knowledge and expertise in this hold. Change was to a greater or lessor extent resisted and in any case many saw little need for change, especially those who were steeped in the traditions of the machinist and his machinery. It was, in fact, this basic resistance which caused a disruption in the evolutionary development of stage machinery. Many theatre architects were happy to furnish a traditional stage machinist with a blank drawing denoting "The Stage", requiring him to fill in the details as he saw fit, whilst the innovators devised all manner of new equipment, that which worked and sometimes that which emphatically did not. There was therefore a bifurcation, with the 'traditional school' refining the 'English wood stage' to a higher degree of sophistication, whilst the 'modern school' developed and attempted to apply the engineering technology associated with other disciplines. In essence, the latter attempted to replace muscle power with hydraulic or electrical power.This thesis documents the development of stage machinery from its comparatively primitive state at the beginning of the nineteenth century, through years of growth and expansion, and finally into the last decade of the century, when theatrical productions were in truth exercises in spectacle.

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Abordant une période de 16 ans, notre étude comparative se propose de mettre en évidence un aspect particulier de l’histoire de la médiatisation du sport en France et en Allemagne : l’évolution de l’offre de football télévisé et sa réception par la presse durant la première phase d’édification du « Grand stade ». De manière primordiale, nous avons exploré dans quelle mesure cette offre a pu jouer un rôle de vecteur d’identité nationale et européenne. L’approche comparative entre France et RFA invitait à analyser principes et forces à l’œuvre dans la gouvernance nationale et internationale du football et de la télévision. La presse sportive et celle spécialisée dans l’annonce des programmes télévisés, concernées de façon essentielle par le phénomène, ont retenu notre attention de manière prioritaire. L’analyse de l’évolution des rapports entre acteurs institutionnels, celle des contenus proposés et de la ritualisation du spectacle de football télévisé à la lumière d’avis contemporains des événements et publiés dans cette presse dite populaire constitua donc un aspect crucial de notre projet. Ces avis sous-tendaient des théories professionnelles et profanes sur la télédiffusion du football qui, pour certaines, s’inscrivirent dans la durée. D’autres, par contre, furent rapidement invalidées par l’évolution de la technologie, de l’environnement règlementaire et institutionnel ou par l’apparition de nouvelles épreuves comme les compétitions européennes des clubs et des sélections nationales. Le cas échéant, il s’agissait donc de mettre en évidence non seulement l’émergence, mais également la persistance de part et d’autre du Rhin d’une « culture nationale » en la matière. Dans le même esprit, nous avons examiné comment la fondation de UER, celle de l’UEFA et le lancement de ses compétitions aboutirent à la création, puis à l’extension et à l’enracinement d’un « certain » espace culturel européen du football. / Covering a period of 16 years starting back in 1950 our comparative study aims to stress a peculiar aspect of the history of sports media coverage in France and Germany: the evolution of television football programs and their reception by the press during this first phase of edification of the “Great Stadium”. We have primarily explored in what measure these programs played the part of a conveyor for national and European identity. The comparative approach between France and Germany pleaded in favor of analyzing principles and forces involved in the national and international governance of football and television. We first focused on the sports press and the magazines dealing with television programs since they are liable to be essentially concerned by the observed phenomenon. The analysis of the evolution of the relationships involving institutional actors in this sector is a crucial aspect of our study. The study of the supplied programs and of the rites tied with a growing consumption of television football shows is not less important. It provoked the publication of numerous contemporary opinions in the so-called popular press of both countries. These opinions sustained professional or profane theories on football broadcasting that had a lasting pertinence for some of them. Others were soon invalidated by the swift evolution of technology, of the institutional environment and regulations or by the apparition of new competitions like the European Champions’ Cup or the European Nations’ Championship. It was important to stress how a “national culture” emerged and persisted on both sides of the Rhine River during those years as far as football broadcasting is concerned. It was also important to examine how the foundation of EBU, of UEFA and the launching of diverse European competitions led to the creation, to the extension and to the establishment of a “popular” European cultural space tied with football.

The thesis is a comparative case study, that applies the typology of deployments of history of S. A. Metzger and R. J. Paxton on the World War I video games Battlefield 1 and Valiant Hearts. The objective of the thesis is to compare the studied games and to evaluate the usefulness and limitations of the applied typology as an analytical tool. A. Chapman's analytical framework for the formal analysis of historical video games is used as a methodological guideline. The "texts" of the video games serve as the main data source, complemented by the use of Let's Play videos, that allow a deeper level of analysis in certain areas and offer a glimpse of how historical representations and narratives are being consumed. Results show that both games present a rich and critical view of the World War I history and that they offer space for representation of marginalized groups. The game Valiant Hearts, unlike the game Battlefield 1, has a strong anti-war message and tells its story from a transnational perspective, emphasizing the Franco-German reconciliation. The game Battlefield 1 celebrates the combat heroism of the soldiers of individual nations and avoids completely the portrayal of civilians and the impact of the war on their lives. The World War I in this game is likened to the Second World War and it...

This dissertation investigates whether video games are able to affect players' attitudes and information behaviour towards depicted historical topics in games over the short- and long-term. We collected data from a sample of 148 young adults. As far as we know, there is currently no study of such a scale focused on historical games. We used, as an intervention tool, a modification of the serious game Czechoslovakia 38-89: Borderlands that deals with the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from the former Czechoslovakia after WWII. The game is based on historical research providing players with multiple perspectives on the depicted topics. Our control group played a similar game, but where the narrative was unrelated to any depicted historical event from Czechoslovakia 38-89: Borderlands. In the empirical part of the study, we measured explicit and implicit attitude change and information behaviour change towards the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. Results showed more negative pretest-posttest explicit attitude changes towards the expulsion on a general level (d = -0.34; p = .022) and a specific level (d = -0.53; p = .001) in the experimental group compared to the control group. Over the long-term, group differences in attitude change remained significant for the specific level (d = -0.44; p = .014),...