The art of persuasion: a critical survey of British animated information films (1939 2009)

Comparatively little has been written about British animated public information film and this gap in knowledge led to research, which positioned my practice as an animator in the historical and theoretical contexts of British filmmaking. My research investigates how animation creates distinctive approaches to information narratives and contributes to persuasive information communication. The animated public information film is one of several categories of information film, which are identified in my Glossary of Terms. Volume 1 of the thesis contains theoretical and historical discussion and argument. Chapter 1 is an overview of my research which generated the first comprehensive filmography of animated British public information shorts, chronologically recorded and defined from 1939 2009. Chapter 2 uses my filmography to determine the core characteristics, role and function of animated information film in the interdisciplinary contemporary era. This in turn informs my own approach to making a contemporary information film, and I also draw on some informal primary research and my critique of the historical sources identified in Chapter 1. Chapter 3, on my practice (evidenced in Volume 2), identifies how a contemporary animation responds to my research questions: How is the art of persuasion manifested in British animated information films? and How can animation practice contribute to contemporary information films made for public distribution? I focus on the history of British animation information films to assess patterns and forms affiliated with information delivery. I examine media technology and methods of communications as they evolve in a cross-media era, consider how they facilitate the production of a contemporary information film, and evaluate how I developed Tell Someone to provide information on how children, aged seven to eleven, can remain safe while on the Internet. My research establishes that British animation has been instrumental in contributing to social awareness by delivering important information to British society for over seventy years. My practice reveals that animation can make a contemporary contribution to information films. It proves to be adaptable to rapidly changing technology and capable of updating knowledge to meet new social challenges posed both by online access to technology and the new multiple platforms available for the delivery of information in the digital era

A Needs-Based Partial Theory of Human Injustice: Oppression, Dehumanization, Exploitation, and Systematic Inequality in Opportunities to Address Human Needs

The article presents an original needs-based partial theory of human injustice and shows its relationship to existing theories of human need and human liberation. The theory is based on an original typology of three social structural sources of human injustice, a partial theorization of the mechanisms of human injustice, and a needs-based theorization of the nature of human injustice, as experienced by individuals. The article makes a sociological contribution to normative social theory by clarifying the relationship of human injustice to human needs, human rights, and human liberation. The theory contends that human injustice is produced when oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation create systematic inequality in opportunities to address human needs, leading to wrongful need deprivation and the resulting serious harm. In one longer sentence, this needs-based partial theory of the sources, mechanisms, and nature of human injustice contends that three distinct social systemic sources—oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation—produce unique and/or overlapping social mechanisms, which create systematic inequality in opportunities to address universal human needs in culturally specific ways, thus producing the nature of the human injustice theorized here: wrongfully unmet needs and serious harm

Faith in the Furnace: British Christians in the Armed Services, 1939-1945

Many historians have sought to portray the World Wars of the twentieth century as drivers of secularisation in Great Britain. Much of this analysis has been based on an over-reliance on religious statistics, typically those relating to churchgoing. More recently, greater focus has been brought to bear on other manifestations of Christian belief and practice in British society, with some historians focussing on the impact of warfare on religious faith on the home front or in the British Army. To date, no wider, in-depth study of the religious experiences of men and women across the armed services, who considered themselves to be active Christians, that is pre-war church members and regular attenders, has been undertaken. This study argues the British armed forces during the Second World War was a milieu within which Christian faith could flourish. This was supported by the provision of effective chaplaincy services, as well as by service personnel developing their own modes of devotion and worship. Although, initially, not always fitting comfortably into a military environment, Christians were able to develop new aspects of their identity as warriors, identities that were informed and underpinned by their religious convictions. The resilience of pre-war faith, as expressed through frequent use of the Bible, hymnody and prayer, enabled them to mediate the ethical and moral challenges of warfare, and to emerge from the war with a strengthened faith. Ultimately, this study challenges existing notions of a slump in faith during the war years and positions itself within a growing historiography that acknowledges the continued and renewed importance of religious faith for millions of Britons during this period. It also suggests that this recasting of faith helps to account for the religious revival in 1950s Britain, therefore challenging recent narratives of this being a decade of religious torpor and decay

Creating the Future of Health

Creating the Future of Health is the fascinating story of the first fifty years of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Founded on the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Health Services in 1964 the Cumming School has, from the very beginning, focused on innovation and excellence in health education. With a pioneering focus on novel, responsive and systems-based approaches, it was one of the first faculties to pilot multi-year training programs in family medicine and remains one of only two three-year medical schools in North America. Drawing on interviews with key players and extensive research into documents and primary material, Creating the Future of Health traces the history of the school through the leadership of its Deans. This is a story of perseverance through fiscal turbulence, sweeping changes to health care and health care education, and changing ideas of what health services are and what they should do. It is a story of triumph, of innovation, and of the tenacious spirit that thrives to this day at the Cumming School of Medicine

War and community: the Red Cross in Camden, 1939-1945

Voluntary organisations like the Red Cross were an integral part of the life of a small town like Camden during wartime. They played a very important role in the consciousness of the local community. They helped focus and galvanise the local population into support for the war effort. The Red Cross was the most successful example of an imperially-based, philanthropic, voluntary organisation that was active in Australia between 1914 and 1945. It had an international network that fitted the imperial profile, its aims were war-related and it was most active between 1914-18 and 1939-45. It had extensive kinship and interpersonal contact networks and tended to be exclusive in terms of social rank and religious beliefs. The success of the Red Cross was due to its broad aims, which encompassed peacetime work, imperial connections, strong female leadership, and the skilful organisation of a large network of women. In 1939 the Red Cross Society was the voluntary organisation best equipped, in the Camden district, to cope with the response of the homefront to the outbreak of the Second World War in terms of experience and resources. The Camden gentry and upper middle class, through their membership of local Red Cross branches, used the existing social networks and social structure to support their position within the local hierarchies and rally the local community. As well, they encouraged romantic notions of voluntary service, and imperial citizenship for war-related fundraising and other patriotic activities. These mechanisms allowed the Red Cross in the Camden district to effectively mobilise the local community, particularly the women, to volunteer thousands of hours of unpaid effort in the name of the Society

The “Morals of Genealogy”: Liberal Settler Colonialism, the Nova Scotia Archives, and the North American Ancestor-Hunters, 1890-1980

Genealogy loomed large in the culture of Nova Scotia from the 1890s to the 1970s, yet when D.C. Harvey, the provincial archivist after 1931, defined the key purposes of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, he excluded genealogical research from the core objectives of this “historical laboratory.” He was fighting a losing battle. Like it or not, the institution he headed operated as part of a transnational mnemonic network within which genealogical approaches were becoming more influential and within a province whose White colonial elite had deep connections with New England – the epicentre of popular genealogy in the United States.La généalogie occupait une place importante dans la culture de la Nouvelle-Écosse des années 1890 aux années 1970. Pourtant, lorsque D.C. Harvey, l’archiviste provincial à compter de 1931, a défini les principaux objectifs des Archives publiques de la Nouvelle-Écosse, il a exclu la recherche généalogique des objectifs fondamentaux de ce « laboratoire historique ». Il menait une bataille perdue d’avance. Que cela lui ait plu ou non, l’institution qu’il dirigeait faisait partie d’un réseau mnémonique transnational à l’intérieur duquel les approches généalogiques devenaient de plus en plus influentes, et d’une province dont l’élite coloniale blanche avait des liens profonds avec la Nouvelle-Angleterre, l’épicentre de la généalogie populaire aux États-Unis

The Reception of C. S. Lewis in Britain and America

Since the publication of the book The Screwtape Letters in 1942, ‘C. S. Lewis’ has been a widely recognized name in both Britain and the United States. The significance of the writings of this scholar of medieval literature, Christian apologist and author of the children’s books The Chronicles of Narnia, while widely recognized, has not previously been investigated. Using a wide range of sources, including archival material, book reviews, monographs, articles and interviews, this dissertation examines the reception of Lewis in Britain and America, comparatively, from within his lifetime until the recent past. To do so, the methodology borrows from the history of the book and history of reading fields, and writes the biography of Lewis’s Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia. By contextualizing the writing of these works in the 1940s and 1950s, the evolution of Lewis’s respective platforms in Britain and America and these works’ reception across the twentieth century, this project contributes to the growing body of work that interrogates the print culture of Christianity. Extensive secondary reading, moreover, permitted the investigation of cultural, intellectual, social and religious factors informing Lewis’s reception, the existence of Lewis devotees in America and the lives of Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia in particular. By paying close attention to the historical conditions of authorship, publication and reception, while highlighting similarities and contrasts between Britain and America, this dissertation provides a robust account of how and why Lewis became one of the most successful Christian authors of the twentieth century