This dissertation examines the representation of visual arts and artists in two popular Canadian magazines. It is based on case studies of the Montréal-based Le petit journal, a French-language magazine, and the Toronto-based English-language publication Star Weekly, from 1945 to 1968. Both were weekly magazines with large readerships and included content for the entire family. Neither was devoted to visual arts but both carried photographs and articles that engaged with broad issues in the field of visual arts. As such, they represent a cross-section of ideas and perspectives that is very different from those of daily newspapers or of publications explicitly devoted to the arts. In addition, both implicitly claimed a national perspective by including articles and information about different regions of Canada. In this way, although in reality the two publications constitute a central Canadian perspective, inflected in each case by the particularities of their provincial locations, they claimed a national vision. In contrast to existing research concerning art journals and art critics in Canada, my investigation involves the ownership and editorial direction of these two popular magazines. By analyzing the content of the magazines across more than two decades, I am able to identify shifts in outlook as they occurred and consider them in the context of the period. I have found that, although there were substantial differences between the two publications, the way that they participated in the construction of ideas was strikingly similar. In effect, both magazines projected specific notions of the value of artists and visual arts and used this coverage to shape attitudes—to work, gender, immigration, nationalism and a host of other topics. I argue that the presentation of ideas was rooted in both liberalism and anti-communism, and was informed by inherent self-interest on the part of the owners of the magazines. In addition, I argue that this perspective was largely hidden within a language of disinterested public service. Finally, I posit that representations in the popular press shaped opinions and attitudes to visual arts and artists in ways that continue to resonate today, more than forty years later. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2011-06-02 12:18:51.194

Presented in the session “Boundary Bodies: Critically Thinking the Body in Contemporary Osteoarchaeology.” The last 10 years have seen an increase in high-profile historical forensic cases in the popular press, an area of investigation called forensic biohistory. This area typically involves effort to positively identify the famous dead (such as the case Richard III), of to characterize matters of facts surrounding famous historical remains (Mozart’s cause of death) or historical events (such as the Donner party and the Mountain Meadows Massacre in the Western United States), forensic biohistory remains undertheorized and under-considered as a locus of investigation in its own right. Such consideration is worthwhile however because forensic biohistory offers a unique opportunity for anthropologists to engage the public. Bodies of the famous dead serve as boundary objects through which various interested parties (including scientists) intersect. This potential is, however, coupled with a unique set of ethical challenges that researches must face because frequently we are asked to serve as arbiters and judges of the validity of narratives surrounding the bodies in question. In the presentation we discuss forensic biohistory as a district area of research and highlight some of the potential opportunities and challenges that define it as a whole.

On November 4, 1956, Soviet forces brutally suppressed the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest. Although Nikita Khrushchev had attempted to "repair" the Soviet Union's image by denouncing Stalin's crimes, the Soviet invasion of Hungary damaged the Soviet Union's legitimacy in the international community. This thesis examines the popular and religious press' coverage of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. By publishing anticommunist editorials and letters to the editor, the popular press furthered the phenomenon known as Cold War Consensus. Historians have looked at Cold War Consensus as a conscious political project created by a number of individuals and institutions. This thesis emphasizes the role of the popular and religious press as agents in the solidification of the Cold War Consensus. Most notable was the popular and religious press' use of the victimization narrative. By portraying the Hungarian freedom fighters as victims of the Soviet system, the popular and religious press condemned the Soviet Union's actions while extolling "American values" such as democracy, freedom, and charity. The popular and religious press' treatment of Soviet brutality also built a sensationalized image of Hungarian refugees. The emphasis on Soviet savagery and narrative centered on incoming Hungarian refugees as heroes strengthened anticommunist rhetoric that was typical during the 1950s. / History

The dissertation examines the field of popular magazines in 1930s Italy, by first examining the broad field of magazine production under Fascism and then undertaking three case studies of individual magazines - L'Avventuroso (1934 - 1943), Omnibus (1937 - 1939), and Grazia (1938 -) - in order to build an in-depth analysis of the production, format and reception of the popular press in this period. In the interwar years, and in particular from 1934 onwards, innovative printing techniques and production methods transformed the periodical press worldwide. The emergence of new forms of illustrated magazines expanded the readership and started a process of standardisation and mass production of periodicals. The dissemination in Italy of the rotocalco, a new product aimed at the masses that was developed in the 1930s, offers a particularly interesting starting point for analysing the development of a modern Italian mass press and culture within the peculiar dynamics of a controlling Fascist regime and the mixed national and international forces that shaped it. Modern Italian magazines developed in dialogue with foreign industries, imitating models from abroad and adapting them to the Italian culture. The development of popular press in the 1930s represented a challenge for the Fascist regime, which approached it both as a threat and an opportunity to shape Italian popular culture. Through the analysis of three case studies, each from a key sector of popular press - comics, general cultural magazines, and women's magazines - and each produced by one of the three main publishing companies in the field - Nerbini, Rizzoli, and Mondadori - the dissertation aims to provide a detailed picture of the development of mass print culture in Italy during Fascism. The analysis provides examples of the impact of and cracks in Fascist censorship and cultural autarchy on the periodical press and argues that the Italian popular press developed in dialogue with European and American culture, which influenced both the form and content of rotocalchi, reinterpreting and adapting these models to Italian standards and to the constrictions of Fascist control.

Although the yellow press has been in existence in Great Britain and the USA since the start of the 19th century, it has only recently been introduced in the South African media environment. The mainstream press like Rapport and Beeld have showed certain characteristics of the yellow press for a while now, but rather present a combination of both trivial and more serious news to the reader. The arrival of the yellow media which brought along a more sensational approach to news became also visible in more serious papers. This phenomenon is called "tabloidisation". The yellow press can be distinguished from serious papers on the basis of its nature and presentation. These characteristics can be divided into three categories, namely news themes, language and style, and presentation. The yellow press can be recognised by the amount of news items that focus on scandals and gossip involving celebrities, sex and crime. These media communicate in a informal and an easy understandable way with the readers,. These publications often make use of crude language and the stories are mostly people-driven. The yellow press publication can be seen as an entertainment package, because the aim is to entertain the reader. A vivid news package is presented to the reader by using bold headlines, large photos, graphics, colour and a captivating front page. This study investigates the characteristics of the yellow press. It investigates whether and how these characteristics are presented under the categories news themes, language, style and presentation of three local daily tabloids, namely the Kaapse Son, Daily Voice and the Daily Sun. / Thesis (M.A. (Communication Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Although the yellow press has been in existence in Great Britain and the USA since the start of the 19th century, it has only recently been introduced in the South African media environment. The mainstream press like Rapport and Beeld have showed certain characteristics of the yellow press for a while now, but rather present a combination of both trivial and more serious news to the reader. The arrival of the yellow media which brought along a more sensational approach to news became also visible in more serious papers. This phenomenon is called "tabloidisation". The yellow press can be distinguished from serious papers on the basis of its nature and presentation. These characteristics can be divided into three categories, namely news themes, language and style, and presentation. The yellow press can be recognised by the amount of news items that focus on scandals and gossip involving celebrities, sex and crime. These media communicate in a informal and an easy understandable way with the readers,. These publications often make use of crude language and the stories are mostly people-driven. The yellow press publication can be seen as an entertainment package, because the aim is to entertain the reader. A vivid news package is presented to the reader by using bold headlines, large photos, graphics, colour and a captivating front page. This study investigates the characteristics of the yellow press. It investigates whether and how these characteristics are presented under the categories news themes, language, style and presentation of three local daily tabloids, namely the Kaapse Son, Daily Voice and the Daily Sun. / Thesis (M.A. (Communication Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

This thesis considers how understandings of the sexed body changed in Britain during the 1930s. Popular versions of sex changeability were grounded in medical science and I examine how medico-scientific research into hormones changed understandings of where sex was located in the body. I examine the historically specific concept of normality, which medics employed to ascertain whether or not individuals ought to have their sex reclassified. I focus on L. R. Broster, a surgeon at London’s Charing Cross Hospital. I analyse Broster’s case studies, published in 1938 as The Adrenal Cortex and Intersexuality, which showed the markers medical professionals were using to assign sex. The thesis investigates how Broster’s work in the burgeoning field of endocrinology generated distinctive narratives of sexual mutability and locatedness in the body. Broster was an important figure in the press stories about changes of sex and provides a link between them and the medical research occurring at Charing Cross. During the 1930s the popular daily, local and Sunday newspapers contained numerous articles about individuals whose sex had changed. These accounts were treated in a mostly positive tone and were held up as being symptomatic of scientific modernity. I argue that this concept of ‘sex change’ does not neatly map on to present day categories, be they intersexuality, transsexuality, transgender or any other. Older categories such as that of the ‘man-woman’ persisted into the 1930s as a way to conceive of sexual ambiguity and changeability. That sex could change, and in particular that women could become men, was an idea that had a wide reach across popular culture. New concepts of hormones and of sex change were also taken up in special- interest magazines, adverts, fiction and popular science. I explore the dissemination of ideas about sex changeability and the role of hormones beyond the press and medical studies to show their pervasiveness. I pay particular attention to two very different magazines, Urania and London Life. These magazines extended the life of articles about changes of sex by reprinting and recontextualising them. They point to the interest that such stories attracted and the ways in which they were harnessed to competing ideological ends. Women's increased participation in sport also changed understandings of the sexed body, having an impact on gender roles and the sexed and gendered meanings ascribed to physical features such as muscles. Women’s athleticism suggested that competitiveness could also be a female trait, and that muscularity was not exclusively male. I consider how the achievements of sportswomen, and the more typically masculine bodies they developed, challenged the received differences between men and women. Attention to the sexed body as a site of cultural concern expands the remit of queer historiography beyond sexual identities and practices. I argue that scientific developments and popular culture coalesced to create an environment in which sex characteristics were not fixed and the sexed body was seen as mutable.

Ce mémoire porte sur la couverture de la crise soudanaise par la presse montréalaise de la fin du XIXe siècle. Cette étude comparative des narrations de la rivalité anglo-française en Afrique que construisent La Presse et le Montreal Daily Star met en valeur, dans le contexte québécois, deux cultures politiques coexistantes : l’impérialisme et le nationalisme. Le point de départ de ce mémoire se situe en 1885 avec la première mention, dans La Presse, des interventions britanniques au Soudan qui mèneront à la crise de Fachoda en 1898 et il se termine à la signature de l’Entente cordiale de 1904, qui marque la résolution des principaux conflits impériaux entre le Royaume-Uni et la France. Cette recherche conclut, d’une part, que le Montreal Daily Star montre une culture politique anglophone adossée à l’impérialisme canadien et britannique, une perspective dont la prégnance s’accentue tout au long de la période étudiée. Au contraire, La Presse se distancie progressivement de ce courant et révèle plutôt l’affirmation d’un nationalisme canadien. / This master’s thesis focuses on the Sudanese crisis coverage within Montreal popular press at the end of the 19th century. This comparative study of the narrations of the Anglo-French rivalry produced by La Presse and the Montreal Daily Star shows that, in the Quebec context, two main political cultures coexist: imperialism and nationalism. This thesis coverts a period starting in 1885 with the first report, by La Presse, about British interventions in the Soudan, leading toward the Fashoda crisis in 1898. The study period ends with the signature of the Entente cordiale in 1904, which bring an end to the main colonial rivalries between the United Kingdom and France. This research concludes that, first, the Montreal Daily Star shows an Anglophone political culture tied to Canadian imperialism; the newspaper preserves and even reinforces this perspective during all the study period. Then, on the other hand, La Presse tends to draw away from this ideology and reveal Canadian nationalism.

Cette thèse se présente comme une histoire et une analyse de l’émergence de la critique francophone de cinéma à Montréal, entre 1920 et 1931. Elle cherche à comprendre comment se forme le champ de la critique cinématographique au Québec, ainsi qu’à exposer la polysémie du discours à l’intérieur duquel sont formulés ses énoncés. La méthodologie emprunte à la théorie des champs de Pierre Bourdieu, aux principaux historiens de la critique de film, et aux études sur l’histoire culturelle du Québec. L’hypothèse initiale est qu’étant apparue dans les journaux de masse, dans les années 1920, plutôt que dans les revues spécialisées (comme ce fut le cas notamment en France et aux États-Unis), la critique cinématographique québécoise est développée par des journalistes culturels venus d’autres disciplines (principalement de la musique et du théâtre) et qui s’adressent davantage à un public populaire large et varié qu’à un auditoire restreint de cinéphiles. Cette situation particulière favorise ainsi l’émergence d’une critique vernaculaire qui navigue en sortant des étroits paramètres imposés par le clérico-nationalisme, mais dont la liberté est balisée par une presse privée répondant aux lois du marché. Elle doit également osciller entre un intérêt marqué des journalistes pour la culture française, et une presqu’hégémonie du cinéma étatsunien dont la majorité des œuvres visent bien davantage le divertissement populaire que la recherche narrative, artistique ou esthétique. De plus, puisque la production cinématographique canadienne est alors plutôt marginale, les journalistes culturels ne peuvent avoir véritablement d’incidence sur la nature des œuvres presque toutes réalisées aux États-Unis ou en Europe. Ils peuvent toutefois avoir un impact sur les spectateurs et spectatrices, ainsi que sur plusieurs enjeux liés à la diffusion. Ces journalistes développent tout de même une réflexion pertinente sur le cinéma et sur les films, tout en gardant une distance par rapport aux polémiques qui animent la critique étrangère, qu’ils connaissent et lisent pourtant. Il en résulte un discours sur le cinéma propre à cette époque, et révélateur de la situation spécifique du Québec. / This PhD dissertation is a history and an analysis of the francophone film criticism genesis in Montreal, between 1920 and 1931. It aims to understand how the field of film criticism is formed in Quebec, as well as to expose the polysemy of its discourse. The methodology chosen borrows from the Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, from the leading historians of film criticism, and from studies on Quebec’s cultural history. The initial hypothesis is that since it was first published in mass newspapers in the 1920s instead of specialized journals (as it was the case in France and the United States as examples), the Quebec film criticism was developed by cultural journalists from other disciplines than cinema (mainly music and theatre) and was intended to a broad and diverse popular audience rather than to a small audience of cinephiles. This situation has favoured the emergence of a vernacular film criticism that takes its distance from the narrow parameters imposed by the “clerico-nationalism”, and whose freedom is limited by a press dealing with the market laws. It must also waver between the interest of the journalists for French culture and the American cinema hegemony whose movies aimed to be much more popular entertainment instead of being narrative, artistic or aesthetic experimentations. Moreover, since Canadian film production is rather marginal, local cultural journalists cannot really have an impact on the nature of the films mainly produced in the United States or in Europe. However, they can have an impact on viewers, as well as on several issues related to broadcasting. These journalists, nevertheless, developed a relevant reflection on cinema and films, while keeping a distance from the main controversies that were driving foreign criticism, although they know and read them. The result was a discourse on cinema peculiar to that time and revealing the specific situation of Quebec.

Ce travail est consacré aux journalistes des quotidiens russes et français qui couvrent l’actualité politique depuis le terrain biélorusse. Les représentations de ceux-ci, nationales mais également transnationales, sont au cœur de nos interrogations. Leurs interactions coopératives permettant de fabriquer les élections biélorusses pour les publics russes et français est un autre aspect de ce travail. Leur discours, encadré par le projet éditorial de chacun des journaux pour lesquels ils travaillent, est le troisième point que cette thèse éclaire. Nous tâchons d’identifier les valeurs communes faisant adhérer les acteurs au monde de la production de l’information à Minsk, activé par les reporters étrangers. De plus, nous révélons des dynamiques internes aux groupes prenant part à la production mutuelle de l’information, qui font en sorte que ce monde est composé de communautés distinctes, réunies autour de leurs objectifs, leurs identités propres, ayant un discours propre. La question des frontières des communautés se pose ainsi, et permet de faire émerger l’équipe des reporters étrangers et la communauté opposante biélorusse. La structure de ces deux communautés, les rapports entre les membres de celles-ci, leurs conventions internes, leurs rapports aux coéquipiers et aux étrangers du groupe sont également des questions que ce travail se pose. Enfin, nous interrogeons les résultats de cette coopération, qui s’inscrivent dans les projets éditoriaux des journaux russes et français. Il s’agit de l’expression des logiques professionnelles à l’échelle éditoriale, visibles à travers l’énonciation des titres de presse. / This work focuses on the journalists from Russian and French daily newspapers who cover political events on the Belarussian territory. Their own national and transnational representations, are at the center of our questioning. The way their cooperative interactions elaborate the Russian and French audience's perception of the Belarusian elections is another aspect of this work. Their narrative, framed by each newspaper's editorial project for which they work is the third aspect this thesis explores.Our goal is to identify the common values that tie together the different actors of the world of information in Minsk, which is motivated by foreign reporters. Furthermore, we shed light on inner dynamics within the groups that take part in the mutual production of information, which create distinct communities that make up this world and are united around their own objectives, their own identities, and their own narrative. This is where the matter of borders between these communities lies and allows us to reveal the foreign reporters' team and the Belarusian dissident community. This work also interrogates the structures of both communities, the relationships between their respective members, their inner conventions, the relations between colleagues and individuals outside of the group. Finally, we explore the results of such cooperation, which are in line with the editorial projects of the Russian and French newspapers. Thus we analyze the expression of professional logistics on an editorial scale that transpires through the enunciation of the different press titles.