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Art history and cultural history in Quebec present many examples of “retours d’Europe” and of “French triumphs,” from the formative overseas stays of the “exotiques” in the 1910s to the stage success of Quebec “chansonniers” in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s. However, between the early 1930s and the mid-1950s, some of the most famous French-speaking artists based in Montréal preferred to go on tour in the United States. Many of them traveled New England year after year, sometimes going as far as New York City, to cheer the French-speaking public present along the way in the industrial cities of the region. Yet this episode of high mobility is almost absent from history, memory and cultural heritage in Quebec—and even more so in the United States. Beyond the impact of the Great Depression on Montréal’s cultural scene and of the Second World War on the possibility of visiting Europe, these artists have turned their eyes towards America because they participated in a transnational space, both geographical and symbolic, inherited from an era of great intracontinental migrations, then reactivated and reconfigured by the advent of sound and audiovisual media—discs, radio and cinema. By studying the history of the celebrity of Mary “La Bolduc” Travers, Rudy Vallée and Jean Grimaldi, this thesis attempts to access to the various layers of this phenomenon at the crossroads of cultural history, media history and migration history. Their intricate narratives therefore reveal the modality of mobility involved inside—and often times outside—of the French Canadian “imagined community.” By analyzing the heritagization process of these artists, it is possible to isolate some of the causes the oblivion of this transnational episode of francophone culture in North America, such as the rejection of mobility in the formation of national and ethnic identity narratives; the historical marginalization of popular arts; and the mistrust of the United States among cultural and political elites around the world at the time.

The inter-war period began at the end of the First World War and was part of a desire for change, lasting peace and a new international order. However, the reality of a return to peace is complicated by the scale of the conflict. The public space is transformed: monuments to the dead, destruction, widows and orphans. There is also a reflection on the sustainability of Western civilization: its limits, its models and its dangers. This paper examines the vision of an artist, Hermann-Paul, in order to know contemporary representations of inter-war France and the models of Western civilization. The study focuses here on Hermann-Paul’s work in the press, particularly in the weekly magazine Je suis partout, which offers the advantage of being able to follow the artist every week over a decade from December 1930 to February 1940. Several questions guide this research. What is Hermann-Paul's France? Why does it seem to be in crisis and what are the models and counter-models? Peace activists, who defend the idea of a lasting peace, are major actors of the period. Through their desire for change, they also participate in this civilizational anguish. How does the caricaturist integrate them into his French vision? The paper also focuses on the instrumentalization of gender, and subset that is masculinity. There is still a lack of Francophone studies in this area. The objective of this study is to participate in the historical analysis of the field of virility, with the case of Hermann-Paul. The caricature is an opportunity since this format instrumentalizes the codes of drawing and virility in order to construct, justify and divert representations.

This study examines the history of the physical education of Montreal’s young French Canadian girls from 1860 to 1920; from the first manifestations of corporal education in the private education network to the so-called « golden age » of women’s sports in Canada. Firstly, the discourses of French Canadian scientists are analyzed in such a way as to capture their theoretical reflections on the female body in movement and the prescriptions they formulated. Subsequently, this study presents the evolution of sport and gymnastic practices in the Catholic female boarding schools of Montreal held by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Proponents of women’s physical education faced certain challenges: how to promote exercise for young women without exposing them to the public space? How to reconcile physical training with the aesthetic ideal of femininity? Finally, how to promote more movement for the juvenile female body without risking its reproductive capacity? Doctors and educators, faced with this dilemma, defined the contours of an acceptable female physical and sports education. However, although the norms disseminated by the predominantly male prescriptive literature were restrictive, innovative practices that met specific objectives started to appear in Montreal’s boarding schools in the 1860s. These practices diversified in the first decades of the twentieth century under the impetus of historical actresses – teaching sisters, gymnastic professors and students.

This thesis proposes to analyze the French representations of the role of women in the Wendat cerermonial universe at the time of New France. Divided into two parts, it first explores the representations of women in France’s Ancien Régime period, focusing on symbolic represen-tations on the one hand and, on the other hand, on the social perceptions of Ancien Régime women. To do this, we consult a vast repertoire of works of socioreligious history which makes it possible to penetrate the French episteme of Ancien Régime regarding the representation of women. The second part is devoted to the ethno-historical analysis of French representations of the role of women in the Wendat ceremonial universe during the New France era. All the French writings constituting Franco-Native contact literature are used to study these representations of rituals re-lated to “fertility”, “healing” and finally “funeral”. In the end, the analysis reveals that, while French observers attest to the “complementary” and “egalitarian” aspect of the gendered interac-tional dynamics governing the Wendat ceremonial universe, they were unable to capture the full extent and value of integration because they assessed the value of ceremonial wendat behaviors according to their degree of adequacy or inadequacy to the project of French colonization and Christian evangelization.

The city of Seleucia on the Tigris was founded in the 4th century BCE by Seleucos I, one of Alexander’s empire’s Successors. According to the size of it’s original dwelling-blocks, it was designed from the start to be a large and important city. It flourished for some time and became an administrative center and royal residence. In 129 BCE, it was conquered by the Arsacids, a rival dynasty. Seleucia’s development continued unbroken, but the city eventually declined and disappeared around 200 CE. To explain this change, historians underlined the importance of the perceived culture of its old and new sovereigns. Ruled by the Macedonian Seleucids, the city prospered. Under the Iranian Arsacids’ hostile administration, it was ill-treated until it got abandoned. Such analyses have been based on some passages of ancient texts insisting on the Greek character of Seleucia and its inhabitants. Those also influenced the interpretation of the results of the first archaeological digs conducted on the site. This thesis comes back on the relations between the city and both its Seleucid and Arsacid kings in order to evaluate the importance of this supposed cultural rivalry in the development of Seleucia. It compares the written tradition, essential but biased by political imperatives, and the buildings, coins, seals and figurines discovered by American, German and Italian archaeologists between 1927 and 1989. Our results suggest that the city and its population were of a mixed cultural backround and that its supposed Greek character did not play much of a role in its decline. We therefore suggest that other factors explain the disappearance of Seleucia, such as the Tigris changing bed and an evolution in the geopolitical situation of the Near East around 200.

Theodore Roosevelt's term in the White House (1901-1909) was marked by many efforts in the conservation of natural resources. This was a doubly important theme for Roosevelt, because not only did he see the negative effects of industrialization on the future of resources, but nature had been one of his passions since his childhood. Thus, he wanted to continue to father a conservationist movement that had existed since the 1870s. Ultimately, his objective was to consolidate all natural resources under the authority of the federal government, through numerous policies for the development of forests, agricultural lands, rivers, pastures, ranges and mineral lands. This thesis presents the many perspectives from which conservation developed under Roosevelt, as well as the role of important individuals in the conservation community during the Roosevelt era. Although conservation is generally associated with the economic benefits of natural resources and their actual uses, we explore what other issues conservation could address. Theodore Roosevelt was very attached to his idea of a typically American nation and to what he saw as the essential values of the United States. Thus, we examine the link that might have existed between this ideal of the nation and the efforts to protect natural resources. Our study shows that, by putting his conservation project into practice, Roosevelt was able to remain true to some of the ideals he believed were essential to the proper functioning of American society.

Subdelegates of the intendancies indirectly served the king of France at the local level. The study of their institution in five intendancies offers an original point of view on the Ancien Regime state and its administration. Subdelegations existed in all the provinces of the kingdom: in those known as pays d’élections, pays d’États or pays d’imposition, as well as in the colonies. Studying them makes it possible to question this typology and especially the centralization of the Kingdom of France. By comparative prosopography, 687 subdelegates in the 159 subdelegations of the intendancies of Caen in Lower Normandy, Fort-Royal in the Lesser Antilles, Lille in Flanders, Quebec in Canada and Rennes in Brittany are studied. This method allows for inter-provincial and transatlantic as well as intra-provincial comparisons and a multiscalar analysis of the royal administration. Subdelegations emerge as institutions of intendancy, in the service of the monarchy and exercised by local notables. Taxation, civil justice or administrative litigation, investigations, surveys and statistics, royal militia and corvée, public contracts, epidemics and assistance, supervision of municipalities, many powers concern them. In practice, they varied between provinces and between subdelegations. Everywhere, magistrates, mayors, marine commissioners or other notables served as subdelegates. Between bureaucracy and patronage, they participated in a limited administrative centralization. Subdelegations mainly generated multiple mediations of royal power, transforming it through provincial variations and local translations.