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, Multicultural Moviegoing, tells the history of diasporic film and media distribution in Canada, such as Italian- and Chinese-language movie theatres. A new project considers Hollywood’s relation to Madison Ave. in print, radio & tv campaigns. Co-authored with Sandra Gabriele, The Sunday Paper: A Media History reviews how the weekend newspaper of the 1890s became a cultural technology, animating modernity, central to the institutionalization of mass society.

Websites:

  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 481: Survey Design and Analysis
• SOC 483: Statistical Modelling
• CC 9900: Doctoral Research Methodologies
• CC 8906: Master’s Communication & Cultural Theory

Graduate Program Membership:

• Communication & Culture

Community & Professional Service:

• Canada Lead, Media History Digital Library Global Task Force (external link, opens in new window) 
• Program Director, Arts & Contemporary Studies (2021-2022)
• University Senate (opens in new window)  (2019-2021)
• TMU Director of the joint York-TMU 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. 2024. “Paramount Pictures, National Advertising Agencies, and the Conspicuous Distribution of First-Run Feature Films in the United States” (external link, opens in new window)  in Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema (pp. 481-502), edited by C. Keil and R. King. New York: Oxford.

Moore, P.S. and Whitehead, J.L. 2023. “Moviegoing in Stereoscope: Film Advertising in Diasporic Communities in Urban Canada” (external link, opens in new window)  in Handbook of Ethnic Media in Canada (pp. 198-219), edited by S. Yu, D. Ahadi and A. Al-Rawi. Montreal: McGill-Queen's.

Moore, P.S. and S. Gabriele. 2022. The Sunday Paper: A Media History. (external link, opens in new window)  Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press (History of Communication Series).

Moore, P.S. 2022. “Narrative Cinema as a Separate Attraction: Archie L. Shepard’s Newspaper Publicity” in New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences (external link, opens in new window)  (pp. 167-192), edited by M. Slugan and D. Biltereyst. New York: Bloomsbury.

Whitehead, J.L. and P.S. Moore. 2021. “Cinema Paradiso: Toronto’s Italian Language Cinemas and Distribution Networks” in Italian Americans on Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future (external link, opens in new window)  (pp. 183-211), edited by R. Calabretta-Sajder and A. Gravano. Lanham, MD: Lexington-Rowman & Littlefield.

Moore, P.S. with Verhoeven, Coles, Coate, Zemaityte, Musial, Prommer, Mantsio, Taylor, Eltham, Loist and Davidson. “Disciplinary Itineraries and Digital Methods: Examining the Kinomatics Collaboration Networks.” (external link, opens in new window)  NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 9(2): 273-298.

Whitehead, J.L., L.B. Pelletier and P.S. Moore. 2020. “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. '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. “‘It Pays to Plan ‘Em’: The Newspaper Movie Directory as a Spectre of Conspicuous Consumption” in The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History (external link, opens in new window)  (pp. 365-377), edited by  B. Biltereyst, R. Maltby and P. Meers. New York: Routledge.

Moore, P.S. 2018. “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. “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.