American Popular Culture Commons^™

Nothing About Us: Three Models Of Disability In Three Works Of Literary Fiction, Mary Lipiec

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project explores how the three umbrella models of disability (medical, functional, and social) are shown in several disabled characters from three novels published after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and Good Kings, Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum. Through the utilization of literary analysis from a cultural studies perspective, this project shows that the models of disability, despite the various flaws in their respective designs, prove to be useful lenses to see disability through, both in these novels and in real life, …

Exposed Nerves And Archival Impulses: Digital Ruination And The Death Of Adobe Flash, Helena Isabella Haid

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Love Is Real & I Just Had Some For Dessert: Legacies Of Communal Care & Compassion In Asian Diasporic Women's Food Writing, Miki Rierson

Honors Projects

In this project I work to recover influential yet often erased Asian American female immigrant chefs and food authors from the mid-twentieth century to the present, situating their contributions in a deep-rooted tradition of diasporic women who used cooking as a means of communal agency and care. Immigrant Asian cookbook authors and chefs have long faced internal criticisms from their own diasporic communities of either inauthenticity or engaging in “food pornography,” to use writer Frank Chin’s term—a line of criticism that Lisa Lau has elaborated on as “re-Orientalism.”Though these criticisms should not eclipse the works themselves, I discuss and counter …

Constance After Dark, Connor Vanmaele

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Constance After Dark is an episodic screenplay, outlining the beginning, middle and end of a television comedy pilot. Set in Ohio, the story follows Brooks Riegler in his first semester at the fictional “Constance College” as he navigates the ups and downs of university life at the lowest ranked school in the state. Due to a class taught by the eccentric and nefarious Dr. Mars, Brooks learns to open up to hyperactive athletes, obsessive overachievers, and even strange, mysterious men urinating on the side of the road. Brooks, Cassidy, Jenny and Guy form a tight-knit and unlikely bond in a …

Strange Creature, Dagny Walton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Strange Creature is an exploration and renovation of the myth of the American West. I extract elements from the known and recognizable myth of the West and create my own rendition, focusing in particular on themes of transformation and violence. Here in this black mirror world, animals speak out loud, cowboys face down a wildland with eyes, and two suns light up the lonely sky. There is no continuous narrative thread, but each piece is a vignette that takes place in a single shared world. This world is at once familiar and completely alien. I intend to surprise the viewer …

Marketing Reimagined: The Effect Of Tiktok’S Success On Social Media Advertisement, Ryan Roberts

Auctus: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

In 2021, the average TikTok user spent 19.6 hours a month on the platform, equivalent to the time spent by users on the leader of Social Media, Facebook (Sweeney, 2022). This year, TikTok is projected to triple its global advertisement revenues to 11.6 billion dollars, surpassing the 10.44 billion dollars global advertisement take of Snapchat and Twitter combined (Sweeney, 2022). TikTok is one of the most recent and successful social media platforms. It has gained worldwide renown for its unique, rapid presentation of content and addictive structure that has engaged a large audience in a short time. With attention increasing …

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

MSU Graduate Theses

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

Bibliography, Print Culture, And What To Do With Comics In A Rare Books Library, Michael C. Weisenburg

Faculty and Staff Publications

Comic books are among the rare books of the future. In fact, some comic books are scarcer and more valuable than many of the “old books” that fill special collections stacks. This essay proposes to answer the questions of “What do we do with comics in an academic library?” by analyzing comics as a popular phenomenon that is deeply rooted in book history and the developing print culture of the past 100 years. Using the traditional methods of bibliographic analysis, we might better situate comics within the mission of academic libraries as we work to foster learning, discovery, and inclusivity …

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology Of Verse By Negro Poets, Countee Cullen , Editor

Zea E-Books Collection

CONTENTS:

FOREWORD

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR • Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes • Death Song • Life • After the Quarrel • Ships that Pass in the Night • We Wear the Mask • Sympathy • The Debt

JOSEPH S. COTTER, SR • The Tragedy of Pete • The Way-side Well

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON • From the German of Uhland • The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face • The Creation • The White Witch • My City

WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT Du BOIS • A Litany of Atlanta

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE • Scintilla • Rye …

Stories, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Roxanne Harde , Editor

Zea E-Books Collection

Today, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911) is best known for a handful of her novels: The Gates Ajar (1868), The Silent Partner (1871), and The Story of Avis (1877). During her life, however, the short story was a hugely popular genre in which she was fully invested and where she made a good deal of her living. Stories were her earliest and latest publications, and they were work that she both enjoyed and employed to greater ends. From 1864 to her death in 1911, she published almost one hundred and fifty short stories in the leading periodicals of the day. This …

Football Can Save America, Francisco Attie

Capstones

Looking to cure the malaise of our day, I went to the football game, and, in the dying breaths of the match, found something much greater. https://medium.com/@Fran_Attie/football-can-save-america-2bb918f19a97

Be Our Guest Or Welcome Foolish Mortals? Disney’S Invitation To Play And The Delusion/Illusion Of Hyperreal, Immersive Documents, L.P. Coladangelo

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper playfully appropriates the metaphor of delusional states to frame a discussion of hyperreal documents present in Disney theme parks and resorts. A brief overview of the literature on delusion in individuals transitions into the collective formation of positive illusions to introduce the concept of play. The conceptual framework of play culture, or ludics, is presented to understand cultural production and meaning, which is further described in relation to theme park design and the negotiation of theme park experiences. This discussion is situated in document theory to explicate the intentionality of theme park designers and the indexicality of park …

Co-Writing Nashville Style: A Recital Of Selected Country Songwriters, Joseph H. Wandass Iv

Recital Papers

Country music and songwriting have been hallmark features of the Nashville music scene for well over a century. Due to the development of the concept of "the Nashville Dream," the idea that one can "make it" in music by moving to Nashville and writing songs, migratory patterns to Nashville from across the United States have changed the ways in which Nashville-based music is created and disseminated. In the thesis and accompanying recital, these trends are analyzed through the lens of ten selected active Nashville songwriters who have seen these trends. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree …

Comic Literature And Graphic Novel Uses In History, Literature, Math, And Science, James O. Barbre Iii, Justin Carroll, Joshua Tolbert

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Graphic novels and comics have a rich history and have long served as a medium for both education and entertainment. Although we live in an increasingly technology-rich era which offers abundant visual stimulation to compete with comics, graphic literature is arguably a more immediate and robust resource than ever before. The following paper highlights specific applications of graphic literature to pedagogical purposes, including implications for the use of comics in teaching history, world languages, English as a new language, science, and mathematics. Across these areas, a wide degree of application exists for teachers, in both K-12 and post-secondary settings. In …

Cowboy Cooper Goes West: Mystery Babylon And The Western Hero Archetype, Matthew Bancroft-Smithe

Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) at UNI

William Milton Cooper was a radio show host, author, and conspiracy theorist. Among other things, Cooper claimed insider knowledge of a plot, guided by an ancient Luciferian religious order, to consolidate nations into a socialist New World Order. Although currently unexamined in academia, Cooper’s conspiratorial influence can be found everywhere from the Oklahoma City Bombing to contemporary false flag accusations to QAnon mythology. While this influence includes shared content, Cooper’s approach to evidence, persona, and narrative framing demand attention in a world of increasingly visible conspiracy discourse. Through application of Hocker-Rushing’s western hero archetype, my research indicates that Cooper’s Mystery …

We4: Leisure Quotes, Lance Gibbs Phd

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Welcome to the fourth exhibit in the series of “We Exist”. In this section we have selected quotes that represent and explain how Maine’s Black residents’ create the processes behind their engagement in particular leisure activities. The quotes also highlight the particular types of leisure activities that Maine’s Black residents suggest that they are involved in. The quotes are taken from transcripts of the oral history project "'Home Is Where I Make It': African American Community and Activism in Greater Portland, Maine”. The interview subjects are all native to Maine or are longtime residents of Maine. The original intent of …

The Comedy Of Cancel Culture In A Post-Carlin United States: On The Politics Of Cultural Interpretation, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Taking the form of a critical review of the HBO documentary George Carlin's American Dream, this essay explores the character of George Carlin's political and cultural criticism, its implications for contemporary debates about so-called "cancel culture," and the broader political significance of cultural interpretation.

Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History Of The World’S Greatest Hero By Roy Schwartz, Gabriel C. Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

In Is Superman Circumcised?, Russell Schwartz provides a historical overview of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creation of the comic book character Superman, arguing that Siegel and Shuster's backgrounds in Jewish immigrants gives a particularly Jewish subtext to their character. Schwartz builds on this argument with a larger historical overview of American comic book publishing, showing how Judaism and Jewish-American immigrant experiences have informed that industry from its earliest days.

Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman (2020): A Psychoanalytic Review Of Masculinity And Rape Culture, Marjorie A. Briones

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

TW: mentions of sexual violence and rape

When it comes to the subject of sexual violence, there are systemic and cultural effects that prevents assaulters from being properly prosecuted. In the U.S., perpetrators of sexual violence largely consists of heterosexual, white men (RAINN, 2022). So, we begin to question the ways in which sexual violence and masculinity are interconnected. By conducting a psychoanalytic analysis of Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film Promising Young Woman, the ideas of toxic masculinity and “rape culture” will be deconstructed in regard to Cassie’s–the protagonist–story. Theories by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung will be connected to real-life …

Questions Of Canon In Gilbert Hernandez's "Palomar" Comics, Martin Dolan

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

While questions of misrepresentation are starting to be addressed in academia — acknowledging racial, cultural, gender, and artistic diversity — there is still much work to be done to close the gap between the literary canon and what contemporary literature actually looks like. These efforts have been a step in the right direction, but representation of unconventional literatures is often spotty, boiling down entire literary scenes into one book. This is especially true for those that offer formal or structural challenges – including multilingual and graphic narratives that don’t easily fit into a canonical “box.”

Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar comics, serialized …