Digital Commons Network^™

Let Me Tell You About Homestuck: The Online Production Of Place, Jennifer Short

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the potential for the online production of place, specifically as it applies to the host site for the Homestuck web comic, MS Paint Adventures, and its attendant fandom. The proliferation of digital environments such as video games, web sites, and chat rooms has led to numerous opportunities for the study of online spaces and the numerous practices that take place within them. The lack of physical location in online spaces can, however, make it difficult to conceptualize of a web site as real, a problem that has often led researchers to develop new theories of space that …

Veteranness : Representations Of Combat-Related Ptsd In U.S. Popular Visual Media, Diane J. Keranen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Posttraumatic stress and PTSD are becoming familiar terms to refer to what we often call the invisible wounds of war, yet these are recent additions to a popular discourse in which images of and ideas about combat-affected veterans have long circulated. A legacy of ideas about combat veterans and war trauma thus intersects with more recent clinical information about PTSD to become part of a discourse of visual media that has defined and continues to redefine veteran for popular audiences.

In this dissertation I examine realist combat veteran representations in selected films and other visual media from three periods: …

Seeing The Sausage Made: How Compromise Works In Large Groups And Representative Bodies, James E. Crawford Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Inspired by the lack of Congressional compromise during the 2013 federal shutdown, I explore how compromise works in large groups and representative bodies. An on-line survey, personal interviews, and a discourse analysis of the Congressional Record yield a diverse collection of data, including personal and public stories of compromise. I examine the stories and other data through an eclectic mix of contemporary scholarship, borrowing literary theory from the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, socio-linguistic concepts from American linguist James Paul Gee, and moral philosophy from Israeli thinker Avishai Margalit. I also incorporate the work of political scientists Amy Gutmann and Dennis …