As the lights dimmed over St. Catharines and the first chords filled the air, the crowd swayed in unison. Faces lifted, voices rose, and for a moment, music became something larger than entertainment. Christine Rose Cooling, a PhD student in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture at 快播视频, was there鈥攏ot as a fan, but as a scholar, watching, listening, and feeling the energy that rippled through the room.
鈥淲hen a Canadian artist returns home, something powerful takes place,鈥 she says. 鈥淎rtists and audiences experience a sense of national pride and recognition that feels bigger than commercial entertainment.鈥
For Cooling, the question isn鈥檛 just how these musicians perform鈥攊t鈥檚 how audiences respond, how the room seems to hum with a shared history, a collective memory, a connection to place and identity. She studies that 鈥渃harge鈥 in the air, the unspoken bond between performer and hometown, and what it reveals about Canada itself.
Her curiosity comes not from theory alone but from lived experience. At events like the 2023 Born & Raised festival, she felt the energy move through her as she stood in the crowd, noting how music, memory, and emotion intertwined.
A photo of Christine Rose Cooling
Born & Raised festival
鈥淚f we see cultural policy only as bureaucratic protectionism, we miss how real experiences of attachment and collective memory are shaped,鈥 she explains.
Indeed, Cooling鈥檚 research bridges the personal and the political. Hometown concerts are not just celebrations鈥攖hey are shaped by Canada鈥檚 cultural policies, by the pressures of a globalized music industry, and by the historical influence of American media. They are moments where audiences negotiate their own sense of 鈥淐anadian-ness,鈥 where national identity is performed as much as felt.
York鈥檚 interdisciplinary Communication & Culture program allows her to explore these moments from every angle: as economic events, as cultural rituals, and as mediated symbols. Under the guidance of Professor Anne MacLennan, Cooling connects the energy she observes in the crowd with a deeper understanding of media history and policy, showing how academic insight and human experience can inform one another.
鈥淭his project began from my own embodied experience in a crowd,鈥 Cooling says. 鈥淚 would very much like its insights to return, in some form, to those spaces.鈥
Her work reminds us that scholarship does not have to be distant or abstract. By following music into the towns that shaped it, by listening closely to audiences and performers, Cooling illuminates the cultural pulse of Canada. Through her research, the roar of a hometown crowd becomes more than applause鈥攊t becomes a story about memory, identity, and the enduring power of shared experience.