cernst

Personal Information

Full Name

Christopher Ernst

Bio

Christopher Ernst earned his PhD in history from the University of Toronto. He is currently a Visiting Research Associate at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. His dissertation is entitled, “The Transgressive Stage: The Culture of Public Entertainment in Late Victorian Toronto.” In it, he demonstrates that public entertainment was one of the most important sites for the negotiation of identities in the late Victorian city, spilling over the threshold of the playhouse and circus tent to influence the wider world. His work examines the moral panic surrounding indecent theatrical advertisements; the use by political playwrights of tropes from public entertainment as a vehicle for political satire; the role of the stage in providing an outlet for Toronto’s racial curiosity; the centrality of commercial amusements in defining the boundaries of gender; and, finally, the importance of the theatre in attempts to control the city’s working class.

Affiliation

University of Toronto

Country

Canada

Case studies by Christopher Ernst

Case study :

J.W. Bengough: Publisher and Pioneer of Editorial Cartooning in English Canada

As editor of Grip magazine, J.W. Bengough made a lasting contribution to Canadian publishing. A pioneer of the editorial cartoon, he demonstrated that such images could be serious while simultaneously exuding playfulness, irony, and satiric charm.