This thesis examines a thirty year span in the history of Scottish photography, focusing on the rise of the commercial studio from 1851 to assess how images were produced and consumed by the middle class in the mid-Victorian period. Using extensive archival material and a range of theoretical approaches, the research explores how photography was displayed, circulated, exploited and discussed in Scotland during its nascent years as a commodity. In doing so, it is unlike previous studies on Scottish photography that have not attended to the history of the medium as it is seen through exhibitions or the national journals, but instead have concentrated on explicating how an individual photographer or singular set of images are evidence of excellence in the field. While this thesis pays close attention to individual projects and studios, it does so to illuminate how photography functioned as a material object that equally shaped and was shaped by ideological constructs peculiar to mid-Victorian life in Scotland. It does not highlight particular photographers or works in order to elevate their standing in the history of photography but, rather, to show how they can be used as examples of a class phenomenon and provide an analytical frame for elucidating the cultural impact of commercial photography. Therefore, while the first two chapters provide a panoramic view of how photography was introduced to the Scottish middle class and how commercial photographers initially visualized Scotland, the second section is comprised of three ‘case studies' that show how the subject of the city, the landscape and the portrait were turned into objects of cultural consumption. This allows for a re-appraisal of photographs produced in Scotland during this era to suggest the impact of photography's products and processes was as vital as its visual content.

This thesis examines the theme of commerce in four magazines of literature and the arts, all published in New York between 1915 and 1922. The magazines are The Seven Arts (1916-1917), 291 (1915-1916), The Soil (1916-1917), and The Pagan (1916-1922). The division between art and commerce is addressed in the text of all four, in a variety of different ways, and the results of that supposed division are explored for each magazine. In addition ‘commerce’ is also used in this thesis in the sense of conversation or communication, and is used as a way to describe them in the body of their immediate cultural environment. In the case of The Seven Arts, as discussed in Chapter 1, the theme of commerce with the past, present, and future is examined: the way that the magazine incorporates the European classical past and rejects the more recent intellectual past; the way it examines the industrial present, and the projected future of American arts and letters. In the case of The Soil and 291 (the subjects of Chapters 2 and 3) there is extensive commerce between them in the sense of intercommunication, a rival dialogic demonstrating both ideological and economic rivalry. These two chapters comprise an extensive examination of the relationship between the magazines, and shows how much of this involves commerce in the financial sense. The fourth magazine, The Pagan, is concerned with a different sense of commerce, in the form of its rejection of the American capitalist system, and is critically examined here for the first time. The introduction is a survey of examples from the whole field of American periodicals of the time, particularly those immediately relevant to the magazines described here, and acts to delineate the field of scholarship and also to justify the particular approach used. The conclusion provides a summary of the foregoing chapters, and also suggests ways in which each magazine approaches the dissemination, or ‘sale’ of the idea of the new.

In the last decades of the eighteenth century, urban lives were touched by a series of innovations in the technology and aesthetics of illumination. Unfamiliar combinations of new fuel sources and auxiliary equipment (for example, curtains, blinds, glass, mirrors and lampshades) meant that cities looked and felt different during both the day and the night. The spheres of elite, popular, public and private culture explored, exploited and were fascinated by the cultural value of light. Through four case studies in the aesthetics of urban illumination, my thesis demonstrates how the acquisition of skills for the manipulation of transparent and reflective surfaces were crucial when negotiating a balance between self-expression and standards of taste, morality, gender and class. Rather than relying upon canonical examples of the period’s fascination with light, such as the high Romantic idealization of nature’s sunrises and sunsets, my thesis investigates more everyday encounters with light in the built environment: the fashionably genteel pastime of transparent painting; the gendering of light to design both domestic interiors and female identity; the appropriation of patrician top-lighting for public buildings of education and exhibition; and the popularity of illuminated spectacles in commercial pleasure gardens. I argue that these new possibilities of lighting temporarily enabled new possibilities of subjectivity. My historical phenomenology suggests that the formation of perception between 1780 and 1840 was actively directed towards changes in the world through a finely-attuned consciousness of light.

Dès le tournant du XIIIe siècle, les écrivains reprennent l’idée d’une quête du Graal, déjà développée par Chrétien de Troyes avec le Conte du Graal, pour y faire entrer plus amplement les traits d’une idéologie ecclésiastique. Les premières proses du Graal présentent alors une nouvelle façon d’exposer certains idéaux de la chevalerie à travers des convictions religieuses. Dans une approche socio-historique, nous nous sommes d’abord penché sur la figure incontournable du roi Arthur, personnage dont le comportement est la cause de la quête du Graal. Plus particulièrement, dans cette recherche, il est question de découvrir comment la position sociale du chevalier tend à s’élever au-dessus de celle du roi. Partant des différentes fonctions royales pour aller vers la nature et le but des aventures vécues par les chevaliers, nous observons pourquoi et comment les auteurs des premières proses du Graal ont tenté d’adapter l’idéologie chevaleresque à l’idéologie ecclésiastique. Il appert que l’influence des discours politiques de cette période médiévale aura joué un rôle important dans cette nouvelle approche de la chevalerie. / Since the turn of the XIIIth century, writers take up the idea of a quest for the Holy Grail, already developed by Chrétien de Troyes in the Conte du Graal. The authors saw in the Holy Grail a great chance to elucidate an ecclesiastical ideology. The first proses of the Holy Grail then present a new way of exposing certain ideals of knighthood through religious convictions. From a socio-historical approach, we initially looked at the figure of King Arthur, who is impossible to circumvent. King Arthur’s behavior is the cause of the search for the Holy Grail. More particularly, this research ponders the question of why the knight’s social position tends to rise above that of the King’s. From the various royal functions to the nature and the goal of the chivalric adventures, we observe why and how the authors of the first proses of the Holy Grail tried to adapt the chivalric ideology to the ecclesiastical one. It appears that the influence of the political discourses from this medieval period will have played a major part in this new approach to knighthood.

This extended case analysis thus demonstrates the intricate relationship between complex state capacities and cultural hegemony. It aims to deepen our understanding of the cultural history and state nature of Mao's China; theoretically, it aims to bring the state back into the cultural analysis based on a more solid foundation of state theory and provide a reference case for applying state theory to analyze cultural and other issues. / This research is an empirical analysis of the cultural hegemony pursued by Mao's China (1949-1966) in the field of mass culture. Based on the empirical research of this study, and inspired by the perspective of "Bringing the State back in" School, and the "State in Society" theory as well, this research put forth the theoretical perspective of "Complex Vision of State Capacities", which highlights the uneven-ness of state capacities in different fields and different aspects of the same field, and emphasizes that we should pay attention to both the strong state capacities, weak state capacities, the paradox of strong state capacities, the conflict between different state projects and the influence of "policy feedback" on state capacities. Based on the Extended Case Method, this research selects the Dashijie Amusement Center in Shanghai as the subject of research. It analyzes how the new regime effectively took over and transformed Dashijie, and meanwhile, demonstrates that under the influence of the complex state capacities, Dashijie gradually lost its original characteristics as an amusement center, and became more and more similar with Workers' Club. This phenomenon is called as cultural isomorphism. Negotiational hegemony to some extent alleviated this situation of cultural isomorphism, while zero-sum hegemony exacerbated it. With this development, the number of audience of Dashijie dropped a lot, which implies the predicament of cultural hegemony in the field of mass culture pursued by the totalistic state. Following the methodological perspective of the Extended Case Method, and also inspired by Bourdieu's theory of cultural field, this research further analyzes the evolution of Shanghai Bureau of Cultural Affairs. It demonstrated that, compared with the Nationalist Government, the new regime took further step in state building in the field of mass culture, advancing the bureaucratization of cultural administrative apparatuses and penetrating the state power into the cultural field at the grass-roots level. On the other hand, this research also reveals that the new regime is constrained by the weak state capacities in financial resources, human capital, sufficient bureaucratization, and the limitation of state capacities in the heterogeneity of the masses and the asynchronous-ness of structural transformation. As a result, the state capacity of the totalistic state in eradicating the production and circulation of the old mass cultural products is relatively strong and thus relatively successful, while the state capacity in constructing a new socialist mass culture, which was expected to be widely accepted by the masses, is relatively weak and thus relatively unsuccessful. In the view of "Complex Vision of State Capacities", negotiational hegemony reflected the recognition of complex state capacities, and it was thus necessary and beneficial for the state project of cultural hegemony; while the zero-sum hegemony reflected lack of recognition of or even did not accept the situation of complex state capacities, and thus exacerbated the situation of cultural isomorphism, leading to the final predicatement of cultural hegemony. / 肖文明. / Adviser: Hoi-man Chan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-339). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Xiao Wenming.

This dissertation examines U.S.-Cuban cultural exchange around the Cuban revolutions of 1933 and 1959. It argues that the historical period from 1930-1970 represents a critical juncture in global politics, when fascination and dismay for Cuban revolutionary struggles spawned new ideas about art, aesthetics, governance, and jurisprudence as part of new state functions and cosmopolitan publics. Drawing from U.S. and Cuban sources, this project documents the ways in which cultural producers from across the political spectrum used the language of revolution to craft claims about race, class, gender, empire, and nationhood. It explains the fractured relationship following the 1959 revolution by beginning in the 1930s, when narratives of U.S.-led Pan-Americanism splintered and frayed within the broader project of neocolonialism. Cultural expressions--from folksongs and poems to presidential speeches and tourist literature--demonstrate multiple ideological positions and aesthetic forms that reveal a tension between Pan-American camaraderie on the one hand and neocolonial violence on the other. I use poetry, journalism, plays, federal policy, music, and radical literature to illustrate ideas about Cuba that spanned the ideological gamut--from socialist utopia to the tragedy of dictatorship--and their location in the generational transition from the Good Neighbor policy to Cold War containment. In the United States, these two political moments were anchored between the New Deal coalition and rise of the Old Left on the one hand, and the dawning of Kennedy/Johnson liberal internationalism and the New Left on the other. At the same time in Cuba the revolutionary culture industries restructured nationalist narratives and political ambitions based on anti-Yankee opposition, which ultimately ushered in a new Cuban state that self-fashioned itself as a leader of the Third World. I present a case study that reveals how political and cultural vectors operate in multiple directions, creating the overarching conditions that enable "minor" states to exert gravitational pull on superpowers in the production of new local tastes and sensibilities from Harlem to Havana. / text

Dès le tournant du XIIIe siècle, les écrivains reprennent l’idée d’une quête du Graal, déjà développée par Chrétien de Troyes avec le Conte du Graal, pour y faire entrer plus amplement les traits d’une idéologie ecclésiastique. Les premières proses du Graal présentent alors une nouvelle façon d’exposer certains idéaux de la chevalerie à travers des convictions religieuses. Dans une approche socio-historique, nous nous sommes d’abord penché sur la figure incontournable du roi Arthur, personnage dont le comportement est la cause de la quête du Graal. Plus particulièrement, dans cette recherche, il est question de découvrir comment la position sociale du chevalier tend à s’élever au-dessus de celle du roi. Partant des différentes fonctions royales pour aller vers la nature et le but des aventures vécues par les chevaliers, nous observons pourquoi et comment les auteurs des premières proses du Graal ont tenté d’adapter l’idéologie chevaleresque à l’idéologie ecclésiastique. Il appert que l’influence des discours politiques de cette période médiévale aura joué un rôle important dans cette nouvelle approche de la chevalerie. / Since the turn of the XIIIth century, writers take up the idea of a quest for the Holy Grail, already developed by Chrétien de Troyes in the Conte du Graal. The authors saw in the Holy Grail a great chance to elucidate an ecclesiastical ideology. The first proses of the Holy Grail then present a new way of exposing certain ideals of knighthood through religious convictions. From a socio-historical approach, we initially looked at the figure of King Arthur, who is impossible to circumvent. King Arthur’s behavior is the cause of the search for the Holy Grail. More particularly, this research ponders the question of why the knight’s social position tends to rise above that of the King’s. From the various royal functions to the nature and the goal of the chivalric adventures, we observe why and how the authors of the first proses of the Holy Grail tried to adapt the chivalric ideology to the ecclesiastical one. It appears that the influence of the political discourses from this medieval period will have played a major part in this new approach to knighthood.

No abstract available / 28 cm.

Les gardiennes des nappes d'offrande en Iran (de la préhistoire à nos jours) :<p>Cette recherche a été intitulée "les femmes iraniennes héritières des nappes d'offrande". L'objectif de cette recherche est la mise en évidence des bases des nappes d'offrande votive féminines de la préhistoire à nos jours en tant qu‘explication, analyse et interprétation des nappes ;pour cette recherche, nous avons choisi la société actuelle de Téhéran constituée d'ethnies iraniennes variées, notamment les Zoroastriennes et les Shi‘ites. Le fil conducteur de cette recherche est le cadre théorique combiné basé sur la transmission culturelle, l'interprétation religieuse symbolique de Geertz, la réaction symbolique de Parsons et la théorie d'échange de Peter Blau, interprétant les différents aspects des signes et des symboles des nappes avec la présence, la participation des femmes, la réalisation de leurs désirs et la mise en place des nappes. Les théories d'Henri Corbin ont permis de répondre à certaines questions sur la transmission culturelle religieuse et les changements et transformations du monde symbolique iranien, mazdéen zoroastrien aux nouveaux symboles de l'Iran musulman shi‘ite ;nous avons également fait appel aux rapports de Sadegh Hedayat, Henri Massé, Shakouri, Faghiri ,K. et F. Mazdapour. Le commentaire et l'interprétation d'autres sujets des nappes tels que les récits, la lamentation et l'allégresse, les Adjil-é Moshkel Gosha étaient des mystères non élucidés jusqu'alors par les chercheurs ;ils l'ont été dans cette thèse. Il a été essayé de répondre aux questions posées par des réponses basées sur l'anthropologie religieuse symbolique. L'enquête statistique de la recherche porte sur des étudiantes, mariées ou non, de l'Université Azad, Unité Centre de Téhéran. Les questions principales intéressent la féminité des nappes d'offrande et le recours aux saints religieux iraniens shi‘ites. Les souhaits sont relatifs à la vie quotidienne, comme l'obtention d'un travail, la guérison d'un malade, l'achat d'un appartement, la résolution de problèmes financiers, le mariage, l'accouchement, etc. les résultats ont été rassemblés dans les tableaux de l'enquête statistique. Cependant, certaines questions sont restées sans réponses ;elles seront élucidées par de futurs chercheurs.<p>Mots-clés :nappes d'offrande votive, les femmes gardiennes, la transmission culturelle, Adjil, Moshkel Gosha / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Concentrating on six plays in the 1610s, this thesis explores the ways theatrical visual effects described as “strange” channel the period’s moral anxieties about rhetoric, technology, and scepticism. It contributes to debates in repertory studies, textual and material culture, intellectual history, theatre history, and to recent revisionist considerations of spectacle. I argue that “strange” spectacle has its roots in the materialisation of morality: the presentation of moral ideas not as abstract concepts but in physical things. The first part of my PhD is a detailed study of early modern moral philosophy, scepticism, and material and textual culture. The second part of my thesis concentrates on Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (1609-10) and The Tempest (1611), John Webster’s The White Devil (1612), and Thomas Heywood’s first three Age plays (1611-13). These spectacular plays are all written and performed within the years 1610-13, a period in which the changes, challenges, and developments in both stage technology and moral philosophy are at their peak. I set these plays in the context of the wider historical moment, showing that the idiosyncrasy of their “strange” stagecraft reflects the period’s interest in materialisation and its attendant moral anxieties. This thesis implicitly challenges some of the conclusions of repertory studies, which sometimes threatens to hierarchise early modern theatre companies by seeing repertories as indications of audience taste and making too strong a divide between, say, “elite” indoor and “citizen” outdoor playhouses. It is also aligned with recent revisionist considerations of spectacle, and I elide divisions in criticism between interest in original performance conditions, close textual analysis, or historical-contextual readings. I present “strangeness” as a model for appreciating the distinct aesthetic of these plays, by reading them as part of their cultural milieu and the material conditions of their original performance.