Dr. Paul Moore

Areas of Expertise: 

media history; urban studies; mass society & the mass market; newspapers; film exhibition

Research: 

Prof. Moore studies the history of the mass market and urban modernity in North America. Overall, his work argues that amusement and leisure help constitute modern publics by providing spaces, rhetorics, and logics for collective gathering. Recent research, Circuits of Cinema, tells the history of film and media distribution from the earliest days of travelling shows to global blockbusters. A new project considers Hollywood’s relation to Madison Ave. in print, radio & tv campaigns. Collaborating with Prof. Sandra Gabriele, a forthcoming book examines the development of the Sunday newspaper in the 1890s as a cultural technology, animating modernity, central to the institutionalization of mass society.

Websites:

psmoore.ca, external link, opens in new window

  orcid.org/0000-0002-521-4713, external link, opens in new window

Courses:

• SOC 902: Hollywood and Society
• SOC 482: Advanced Approaches to Media Analysis
• SOC 931: Waste and Consumerism
• SOC 483: Advanced Research and Statistics
• SOC 479: Communities and Social Networks
• CC 9900: Doctoral Research Methodologies
• CC 8820: Theoretical Approaches to Media and Culture

Graduate Program Membership:

• Communication & Culture

Community & Professional Service:

• University Senate, opens in new window (2019-2021)
• Ryerson Director of the joint York-Ryerson MA & PhD in Communication and Culture, opens in new window (2012-2017)
• hosted the 7th International conference of the HOMER Network, external link, opens in new window (History of Movie Exhibition and Reception) in 2017
• Past-President of the Film Studies Association of Canada, external link, opens in new window (2012-2014)
• working with the Canadian Picture Pioneers, external link, opens in new window on their archive project and has been working to preserve and digitize Canadian film trade journals and documents
• has compiled histories of thousands of theatre and cinema buildings across Canada, and consults with local groups to help recover their regional cinema histories

Recent Publications:

Moore, P.S. and S. Gabriele. Forthcoming. The Sunday Paper, 1888-1922. University of Illinois Press (History of Communication Series).

Whitehead, J.L. and P.S. Moore. 2020. “Cinema Paradiso: Toronto’s Italian Language Cinemas and Distribution Networks” in Italian Americans on Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future, edited by R. Calabretta-Sajder and A. Gravano. Lanham, MD: Lexington-Rowman & Littlefield.

Whitehead, J.L., L.B. Pelletier and P.S. Moore. 2020. PDF file“The Girl Friend in Canada’: Ray Lewis and the Canadian Moving Pictures Digest, 1915-1957”, external link, opens in new window in Mapping Movie Magazines: Digitization, Periodicals and Cinema History (pp. 127-152), edited by D. Biltereyst and L. Van de Vijver. London: Palgrave.

Moore, P.S. 2019. PDF file'Bought, Sold, Exchanged and Rented': The Early Film Exchange and the Market in Second-hand Films in New York Clipper Classified Ads.”, external link, opens in new window Film History 31(2): 1-31. 

Moore, P.S. 2019. PDF file“‘It Pays to Plan ‘Em’: The Newspaper Movie Directory as a Spectre of Conspicuous Consumption”, external link, opens in new window in Companion to New Cinema History (pp. 365-377), edited by  B. Biltereyst, R. Maltby and P. Meers. New York: Routledge.

Moore, P.S. 2018. PDF file“A Distant Reading of the Chaser Theory: Local Views and the Digital Generation of New Cinema History”, external link, opens in new window in Technology and Film Scholarship: Experience, Study, Theory (pp. 169-193), edited by S. Hidalgo. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 

Moore, P.S. 2018. PDF file“Spaces In-Between: The Railway and Early Cinema in Canada”, external link, opens in new window in Rural Cinema Exhibition and Audiences in a Global Context (pp. 73-89), edited by D. Treveri Gennari, D. Hipkins and C. O’Rawe.  London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Roberts, P. and P.S. Moore. 2016. PDF fileObjects, Archives, and Collections., external link, opens in new window Early Popular Visual Culture 14(4): 297-301.

Moore, P.S. 2016. PDF fileEphemera as Medium: The Afterlife of Lost Films., external link, opens in new window The Moving Image 15(2): 135-139.

Moore, P.S. 2015. PDF fileSpace, Place and Case: Surveying the Grounds of Cinema History., external link, opens in new window Early Popular Visual Culture 13(4): 336-343.

Moore, P.S. 2014. PDF file“Wide-Open Screens: Early Cinema in Saskatchewan”, external link, opens in new window in Overlooking Saskatchewan: Minding the Gap (pp. 45-61), edited by R. Rogers and C. Ramsay. Regina: University of Regina Press. 

Moore, P.S. 2014. PDF fileSubscribing to Publicity: Syndicated Newspaper Features for Moviegoing in North America, 1911-1915., external link, opens in new window Early Popular Visual Culture 12(2): 260-273.