NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
La profession de dessinateur de presse au Canada français au tournant du XXe siècle : le cas d’Edmond-Joseph Massicotte (1875-1929)

Around 1850, in French Canada, profound changes began to take effect in the spheres of teaching, communications and publishing, leading to the first appearances of professional editorial illustrators in the city of Montreal. Technological and journalistic innovations fuelled a transition from opinion-based to information-based journalism, thereby transforming the face of the written press. Images grew to be a central part of the editorial policies of newspapers and illustrated magazines. At the same time, these works became subordinated to current events, entertainment and ideology, assuming different shapes from caricature to historical portraiture and from fictional illustration to nationalistic propaganda. Meanwhile, the market for French-Canadian literature flourished: authors started moving from serial publishing to producing standalone books of poetry and fiction. There as well, editorial illustrators furnished novels and collections of poems and short stories with original illustrations.  This study attempts to question the emergence and development of this profession in Montreal at the end of the nineteenth century in order to better understand its socio-professional status as well as the nature, content and aims of these artists’ work. A corpus is established consisting of works by several Montreal artists: Vital-Achille-Raoul Barré (1874-1932), Albéric Bourgeois (1876-1962), Arthur-Albert-Samuel Brodeur (1862-1933), Paul Caron (1874-1941), Joseph-Charles-Théophile Charlebois (1872-1935), Octave-Henri Julien (1852-1908), Joseph-Arthur-Pierre Labelle (1857-1939), Ulric-E. Lamarche (1867-1921), Georges Latour (1877-1946), E. Z. Jobson Paradis (1871-1926), Arthur-Georges Racey (1870-1941), Alonzo Ryan (1874-?), Napoléon Savard (1870-1962) and Émile Vézina (1876-1942). After a thorough overview of the profession, the second part of the study focuses on a single exponent in a case study of the artist Edmond-Joseph Massicotte (1875-1929). The aim of this segment will be to demonstrate the specific characteristics of his artistic development in comparison with his fellow illustrators and cartoonists in order to pinpoint the features contributing to make his career and work singular.

Keyphrases: Edmond-Joseph Massicotte, Illustration, Caricature, Illustrator, Cartoonist, Written press, French Canada
Appréhender le territoire par l'audiovisuel : d'une démarche à un dispositif en mouvance

This thesis, presented as a research-creation project, explores the relationship between audiovisuals medias and the land. This one, not considered here as an objective, observable and tangible fact, is perceived as a milieu, that is to say as a relational entity placing the artist in relation with his environment. Starting from the concept of mouvance, inspired by the writings of the Quebec geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin, and the concept of médiance proposed by the French geographer Augustin Berque, it will then be tempting to understand how the land can be apprehended, expressed or translated by audiovisual means. This issue will be studied through the works of Pierre Perrault (Le pays de la terre sans arbre ou le Mouchouânipi), Michael Snow (La région centrale) and Nelly-Ève Rajotte (Ei), as well as by the creation made for this thesis, Agencements. Presented at the Université de Montréal in June 2018, Agencements consists of a six screens and five speakers installation and features images from shoots made in Eeyou Istchee (James Bay) in 2015 and 2016. By this principle of mouvance, I wish to leave to the land and its configurations the power to guide my creative process, my way of filming and writing. It’s then a dialogue that is proposed here : between a theoretical conception and a creative approach, proposing what I will call a device in mouvance.

Keyphrases: mouvance, milieu, médiance, Augustin Berque, Louis-Edmond Hamelin, Pierre Perrault, Michael Snow, Eeyou Istchee, Land, Milieu, Médiance, Landscape, Audiovisual, Video installation
Du pont du baleinier aux laboratoires du Muséum : circulation des objets et savoirs marins à la fin du XVIIIe siècle en France

Examining a specific publication, l’Histoire naturelle des Cétacées (1804), this study seeks to determine how Lacépède managed to compose his classic work of cetology without having seen a single whale in his entire life. The operating hypothesis is that, while referencing numerous well-read naturalists’ and other authors’ works, Lacépède was in fact exploiting the knowledge held by the persons that were the most familiar with the species: the whalers. Since this vernacular maritime knowledge does not appear clearly in the book, we will investigate the naturalist’s methods, sources and relationships with other fellow natural philosophers of the Museum d’histoire naturelle to try to understand the role seamen could have played in this work. To help us examine the complex mechanisms of the circulation of natural knowledge, we will benefit from a bibliography mostly composed with research on the Atlantic world, highly comprehensive on these topics. We will carefully take into consideration the political, scientific and cultural context of early nineteenth century France.

Keyphrases: Histoire naturelle, Lacépède, Science, Knowledge, Cetology, Atlantic, Museum, Curiosity, Whales, Whaling
« Au service d’un autre roi » : les troupes étrangères allemandes au service du royaume de France (1740-1763)

The memory of the French Revolution often refers to the victory of the Nation. The Revolution created the nation state, but also the standing army of citizen-soldiers, thus rejecting mercenary enterprise and the use of foreign troops. However, the reality is quite different, since the armies of the Revolution and of the many French Republic all had foreign contingents, the most famous being the French Foreign Legion. Even today, the use of private enterprise in warfare is again booming. During the warring period from 1740 to 1763, which saw two great European wars —the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years (1756-1763) wars—become world wars, the use of foreign troops increased in the kingdom of France. It was not solely the case in the armies of the Rois Très-Chrétiens: foreigners served in all European armies, notably in those of England, Spain, Prussia, Austria and Russia. They were not only used to inflate the ranks of the armies, but also to seek expertise in military knowledge. In the middle of the 18th century, the Prussian model was in fashion and was introduced to France by the German standing foreign regiments. This phenomenon has been neglected by the literature and by the military history (except regarding Swiss and Irish troops). This research seeks to fill this gap. Using social and cultural history, as well as the history of representations, it aims at understanding who these foreign soldiers were, where they came from, and what were their motivations to serve for France. Ultimately, this thesis examines the German and the French military cultures in the 18th century and highlights the role of German foreign regiments in cultural and warfare transfers.

Keyphrases: France, Old regime, Military history, Foreign troops, Representation, Military cultures, War of the Austrian succession (1740-1748), Seven year's war (1756-1763), Germany, Prussia
Une guerre à n’en plus finir : mémoires et récits historiques chez des activistes pour la défense du territoire dans le Guatemala post-conflit

If the signature of the Peace Accords in 1996 ended the thirty-six-year internal armed conflict between the State and the guerrillas, the peace in Guatemala remains nonetheless quite relative. After the genocide and the counterinsurgency campaigns, numerous Mayan peoples today are facing new threats related to the arrival of natural resource projects in the country. For many, they are the expression of a war by other means. This M.A. thesis looks into the resorts to the past used by activists mobilized to recover their lands and to protect their territory in the post-conflict period. Indeed, the renewal and the transformation of the violence in times of peace brought some inhabitants of the Ixil area to reflect differently on the recent and distant past. This investigation explores the narratives formulated by these militants and the functions of historical memory as a tool for political advocacy which enables to confront past and present violence. In order to do so, this study first analyzes a book originating from a process for the recovering of historical memory by a group of survivors of the internal armed conflict, then, the resort to historical memory by the inhabitants mobilized for the defense of their lands, and, finally, the role of the new generations within the memory and territorial activism in the Ixil area.

Keyphrases: Guatemala, post-conflit, memory, historical narratives, genocide, Guatemala, Ixil area, defense of land, territorial dispossession, post-conflict, war by other means
Les chartes de donations en Île-de-France au XIIe siècle : les exemples de l'abbaye Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre et du prieuré Saint-Martin-des-Champs

This thesis studies the charters of donations of two monastic establishments of the Ile-de-France in the twelfth century: the priory Saint-Martin-des-Champs and the abbey Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre. This research concerning 160 ecclesiastical charters is based on the analysis of the social and religious relations that follows from the gifts offered by French royalty and aristocracy to these two monasteries. The overall objective is to highlight that the practice of donation plays a central role during medieval society and that it has engendered, perpetuated and consolidated religious and social interactions in linking them to the ideological framework of the ecclesia. The first stage of this research examines the anthropological and medieval historiographies of the gift and on the practice of donation in the Middle Ages. Then, we establish the historical context on the Île-de-France region during the reign of Louis VI, Louis VII and Philippe II, so between 1108 and 1223. The last step analyzes the practice of donating to The Middle Ages from a social point of view, among others the relations that are established by repeated donations between aristocratic families and the two monasteries under study. We also investigate the religious ideology surrounding the gift as a means of apprehending the salvation of the soul for the actors who, by this practice, are running the salutary spiritual mechanisms for their redemption. Finally, we address the global implications that affect the whole of medieval society, including public ceremonies and donation confirmations by the aristocratic and religious elite.

Keyphrases: Don, Île-de-France, Paris, Don pro anima, Caritas, Ecclesia, Donation, Royalty, Aristocracy, Church, Almsgiving, Pro anima's donation, Ecclesia
« Ehrliche Kriegsleute » : la construction de la représentation du lansquenet au royaume de France lors de la Renaissance (1486-1559)

Through an approach that seeks to link the question of the culture of war to the awareness of the social, economic and political dimensions of war, this study highlights the construction of the figure of the landsknecht through the prism of the practices of these German mercenaries and the representations of French contemporaries. To identify this dominant figure of the Renaissance, it is a question of circumscribing the strategies implemented by the lansquenets, i.e. the arsenal of symbols, speeches and behaviours to which the members of this group refer, and to confront them with the discourses of the French military and civilians in order to apprehend the perception they have of the landsknechte and the behaviours they develop towards them. The dialectic between the practices of the Lansquenets and the French representations of them illustrate the profound transformations of the French monarchy at the dawn of the Modern Era and reveals a society's apprehension of alterity.

Keyphrases: Lansquenet, Culture, Violence, Landsknecht, Mercenary, Foreigner, Monarchy, Representation, Identity
La Bromance au temps de Lionel Groulx : les pratiques amicales de deux dirigés spirituels de Lionel Groulx au Collège de Valleyfield (1900-1908)

This master thesis qualifies the friendship of two college students of the collège de Valleyfield between the years 1900 and 1908. It analyzes the intimate journals of Erle G. Bartlett (1886-1945) and Émile Léger (1883-1908) and their correspondence. This thesis also studies their relationship with Lionel Groulx (1878-1967) who is their spiritual director. While studying friendship practises and intimate exchanges between the pupils it is possible to show that the friendships between Erle and Émile constitute emotional refuges in the college strict emotional community. Both students define their friendships as Catholic friendships, elitist relationships with union in prayer for ideal. Mentorship relationship between pupils of different ages constitutes an imitation of the practice of spiritual direction applied in their friendships. Lionel Groulx influence the student's conception of friendship by making them read romantic Catholics authors, particularly Charles de Montalembert (1810-1870). The « Montalembertisation » of Erle and Émile encourage them to adopt a romantic friendship vocabulary more characteristic of 19th century friendships. As for Lionel Groulx, his inexperience in being a spiritual director makes him nearly become Émile and Erle friend instead of director. Those relationships will merit him to be sent away temporarily from the college in 1902. Lionel Groulx and his pupils, first members of the Action catholique de la jeunesse canadienne-française (A.C.J.C.) at the collège de Valleyfield, are not able to add a mandate of « Montalembertisation » at the A.C.J.C. The friendships of Erle and Émile are one of the last testimonies of romantic friendship between college students in an area where homophobia is more and more common thus rending this kind of homosocial friendship suspicious.

Keyphrases: Collège, Masculinité, Virilité, Homosexualité, Émotions, Lionel Groulx, Montalembert, Friendship, College, 19th Century, 20th Century, Mentorship, Masculinity, Virility, Homosociality, Homosexuality, Emotions, Romantism
Les militaires français et la Communauté européenne de défense, 1950-1954

This thesis studies the European Defence Community (EDC), a plan for a European supranational army proposed by French politicians in October 1950 and rejected by the French National Assembly in August 1954. It is more precisely concerned with the position of the French army, a group directly concerned by the project. The subject has been relatively neglected by historians. The army was being asked to pursue two contradictory tasks: fight alongside its allies the threat the Soviet Union was supposed to represent without sacrificing its independence. This thesis will focus, among other things, on the arguments presented for and against the EDC, the differences of opinion within the army, the factors that might account for these differences, the relative importance of the supporters and detractors of the project, and the variables taken into consideration by the members of the army on both sides (the communist threat, national power, colonial power, supranationalism, independence, etc.) It is based on the archives of the Service historique de la Défense (SHD), located in Vincennes, near Paris. This thesis shows that, although a majority clearly opposed the EDC, there was also a significant pro-EDC current, whose importance has often been underestimated by historians, and that both sides primarily used political arguments.

Keyphrases: France, France, EDC, army, supranationality, national independence, French Union, anticommunism
Art, Internet et dissidence en Chine : le cas d'Ai Weiwei

This memoir examines Ai Weiwei’s life. Often portrayed as one of the most popular Chinese dissidents in the world, Ai Weiwei is depicted in Western media and governments as a brave opponent of the Chinese Communist Party who dares to defend the values of democratic systems. For its part, the Chinese regime prefers to present him as a disruptive element that has lost its Chinese identity. Through these different representations, we wonder who Ai Weiwei really is? More exactly, is he really a dissident? What values does he defend and why? What other aspects of his personality deserve our attention to better understand the person he is?In order to answer these questions, this memoir aimed to guide the analysis around the aspects of art, Internet and dissent in China. These three elements are closely linked to Ai Weiwei’s life and they offer the necessary tools to understanding our subject of study. Ultimately, we hypothesize that Ai Weiwei is not the character that governments and media around the world describe to us. The analysis reveals that he does not defend exclusively Western values and that he has not lost his Chinese identity. He shows activism attitude while art and Internet play a leading role in conveying his opinions. He officially became a Chinese dissident in 2011 when he was arrested, but he has since regained much of his freedom. In recent years, Ai Weiwei has redirected his activism towards issues that do not directly target the Chinese government to address human causes at the international level.

Keyphrases: Ai Weiwei, art, Internet, Web, dissident
Entre la théorie ecclésiastique et la pratique laïque : le mariage chez les fidèles au XVe siècle

In the fifteenth century, a valid and legitimate marriage, according to the Church, was monogamous, consensual, exogamous and indissoluble. If it is possible to describe rightly the theory, can we do the same about domestic reality and perception of marriage by the laity? It is to this double question that this master’s thesis seeks to answer. From late antiquity to the late middle Ages, the marriage’s doctrine changed, was refined and finally, fixed. Accordingly, the unions that do not meet these criteria weren’t perceived as legitimate by the ecclesiastical authorities. A non-marital relationship leads to noxious consequences for the couple’s offspring, whose illegitimacy. It’s why the Apostolic Penitentiary graciously intervened by exempting, by absolving and by "leveling" the canon law’s requirements. This office has softened the legislation’s implementation and allowed couples whose marriages were theoretically invalid, to remain married and legitimize their children.

Keyphrases: Dispenses, Marriage, Penitentiary, Officiality, Canon Law, Dispensations, Holy Roman Empire, The fifteenth century
Bioconcentration des éléments traces dans les horizons de surface d'un sol forestier non-contaminé

Large-scale trace element accumulation patterns in topsoil are well documented and often associated with nearby input sources. On a fine scale, and in the absence of a distinct source, these accumulation patterns develop according to local vegetation and the chemical properties of the soil. This project aimed to understand the role of vegetation in defining fine-scale trace element distribution patterns in the surface horizons of an uncontaminated forest. Fresh leaf samples were collected from dominant tree species at the end of the growing season. Soil samples were collected from a 1500 m2 plot that had a strong gradient in the distribution of yellow birches (Betula alleghaniensis Britt.). The composition of leaf litter at each sampling point and the pH, organic matter content and the Ca, Cd, Mg, Mn, Pb, and Zn concentrations of the organic F and mineral B horizons were analysed.  Yellow birch leaves had up to 13 times the Cd and Zn concentrations of the other species on site. Spatial analyses found common distribution patterns between birch leaf litter and Cd and Zn concentrations in the F horizon. Significant differences exist between areas with a high and a low birch density for both elements in both horizons. In the F horizon, the high density area had higher concentrations of Cd and Zn. In the B horizon, an opposite trend was found for Cd and Zn. The yearly uptake of both elements for each species was estimated. Over a few decades, uptake by yellow birches could account for the observed differences in the B horizon. These results emphasize the role of biological cycling on trace element accumulation in the surface horizons of uncontaminated forest soils.

Keyphrases: Bioconcentration, Betula alleghaniensis, Pluviolessivats, Trace elements, Biological cycling, Organic horizons, Throughfall
Des géographies Two-Spirit? 
Du concept de trans-Nation-alités pour articuler l’imbrication entre identité, communauté et territoire

Colonialism in North America has worked towards dismantling Indigenous social systems in order to appropriate territories. Heteropatriarchy has been an efficient tool to achieve this project, where power dynamics rooted in racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia were imposed, and often internalized by Indigenous communities. Thus, the people now designated as Two-Spirited, previously highly valued by their communities since they brought unique worldviews transcending feminine and masculine domains, were the target of repeated sources of oppression aimed at their elimination. Yet, they have resisted, their paths marked by mobility(ies), as is the case for Indigenous people in general due to urbanization politics and history characterized by movement (nomadism, semi-nomadism and forced relocations by the State). However, Two-Spirit people’s spatial practices remain overlooked. Therefore, a focus on the ways that they navigate and negotiate complex sociospatial contexts will allow to consider the linkages between spaces, not as they are inscribed according to territorial distance but rather through superimposition, stressing a spatial inbetweenness. Building on a multi-sited ethnography and a case study based in Montreal where life interviews and a focus group were conducted, this research explores a spatial paradox by theorizing the concept of trans-Nation-alities, intended to disrupt hegemonic territorial understandings based on Nation-states rising from colonialism, and to refocus on Indigenous Nations by analyzing how Two-Spirit people move through and create their own “between” places by weaving Two-Spirit geographies through these socio-spatial superimpositions. This intermeshing between their practices and paths and spaces strengthens a sense of connection to Indigenous communities and ancestral territories, making it possible to find their way back in the circle.

Keyphrases: Two-Spirit, mobility, transnationalism, ancestral lands, indigenous communities, trans-Nation-alities