Open access edition of Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio by Derek W. Vaillant

FAIN: DR-290434-23

Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)
Laurie Matheson (Project Director: July 2022 to September 2024)

In 1931, the United States and France embarked on a broadcasting partnership built around radio. Derek Vaillant provocatively examines this sonic alliance in an era of increased global media production and distribution. Focusing on the period from 1931 until France dismantled its state media system in 1974, Vaillant considers how different strategic agendas, aesthetic aims, and technical systems shaped U.S.-French broadcasting and its accompanying cultural politics. He examines mobile actors, circulating programs, and shifting institutions that shaped international radio's use in times of war and peace. Documenting the achievements, miscommunications and failures, and the limits of cooperation between America and France as they shaped a new media environment, Vaillant shows how radio's power as an instantaneous mass communications tool produced, legitimized, and circulated various notions of states, cultures, ideologies, and peoples as superior or inferior.

Associated Products

Single Publication (Open Access eBook or Collection)
Publication Type: Single Publication
Title: Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio
Year: 2017
ISBN: 97802520414
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Author: Derek W. Vaillant
Abstract: In 1931, the United States and France embarked on a broadcasting partnership built around radio. Over time, the transatlantic sonic alliance came to personify and to shape American-French relations in an era of increased global media production and distribution. Drawing on a broad range of American and French archives, Derek Vaillant joins textual and aural materials with original data analytics and maps to illuminate U.S.-French broadcasting's political and cultural development. Vaillant focuses on the period from 1931 until France dismantled its state media system in 1974. His analysis examines mobile actors, circulating programs, and shifting institutions that shaped international radio's use in times of war and peace. He explores the extraordinary achievements, the miscommunications and failures, and the limits of cooperation between America and France as they shaped a new media environment. Throughout, Vaillant explains how radio's power as an instantaneous mass communications tool produced, legitimized, and circulated various notions of states, cultures, ideologies, and peoples as superior or inferior. A first comparative history of its subject, Across the Waves provocatively examines how different strategic agendas, aesthetic aims and technical systems shaped U.S.-French broadcasting and the cultural politics linking the United States and France.
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1ws7w0b
Primary URL Description: JSTOR
Secondary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/56744
Secondary URL Description: Project Muse
Type: Single author monograph

Single Publication (Open Access eBook or Collection)
Publication Type: Single Publication
Title: Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio
Year: 2017
ISBN: 9780252056635
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Author: Derek W. Vaillant
Abstract: Drawing on a broad range of American and French archives, Derek Vaillant joins textual and aural materials with original data analytics and maps to illuminate U.S.-French broadcasting's political and cultural development. Vaillant focuses on the period from 1931 until France dismantled its state media system in 1974. His analysis examines mobile actors, circulating programs, and shifting institutions that shaped international radio's use in times of war and peace. He explores the extraordinary achievements, the miscommunications and failures, and the limits of cooperation between America and France as they shaped a new media environment. Throughout, Vaillant explains how radio's power as an instantaneous mass communications tool produced, legitimized, and circulated various notions of states, cultures, ideologies, and peoples as superior or inferior.
Primary URL: https://www.bibliopen.org/9780252050015
Primary URL Description: Chicago Distribution Center/BiblioVault (our distributor’s OA portal)
Secondary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1ws7w0b
Secondary URL Description: JSTOR
URL 3: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/56744
URL 3 Description: Project MUSE
Type: Single author monograph

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