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Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21^st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21^st-century poets and their 20^th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …

The Mock Doc Film Series: History Of The Mockumentary Film, Victoria Napolitano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As documentaries developed a more narrative approach to storytelling, filmmakers increasingly turned to scripted or fictional elements (events, characters, etc.) to depict or recreate “reality.” Robert Flaherty, John Grierson and other pioneering documentarians employed numerous fictional devices in their movies. These filmmakers, however, were relentlessly criticized by documentary film purists who steadfastly believed that the blending of fact and fiction was in many ways unethical and an unforgivable betrayal of the genre. Such critics feared that if truth, the key characteristic of the documentary film genre, were manufactured by filmmakers then the documentary genre would lose its uniqueness. More importantly, …

Muriel Rukeyser's "The Book Of The Dead": An Analytical Appreciation, Emily Cogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry has always focused around a particular event be it something of global proportions such as the Spanish Civil War (Mediterranean) or the Japanese occupation of Korea (The Gates) or, as with The Book of the Dead, a specific disaster closer to her home, America. Her poetry, however, never exists purely in the realm of politics; she never aligned herself with any particular political party and consequently her poetry is never simply a call to arms or a manifesto in verse. Throughout the body of Rukeyser’s work there are echoes and allusions to …

Heavy Ink: A Documentary On The Comicbook Revolution, Renzo Adler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heavy Ink is a documentary short focusing on the comic anthology magazine, Heavy Metal, examining its history as both a standout comic magazine, and how it fits into the larger tradition of comic books. What started off in 1977 as a sci-fi offshoot of National Lampoon ushered in a new era of comics by bridging the gap between American and European comic sensibilities with a talent pool from all over the world.

Heavy Metal would go on to have reverberations beyond comics into music, movies, and the global entertainment landscape of today. Heavy Metal introduced the world to artists such …

Dark Matter: Susan Howe, Muriel Rukeyser, And The Scholar's Art, Stefania Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instead of describing poetry as a set of constraints or history of practices, Muriel Rukeyser calls it "one kind of knowledge." Dark Matter heeds Rukeyser's call, theorizing a poetics of the "scholar's art," in which documentary investigation, autobiographical exploration, and formal innovation are mutual, interwoven concerns. The dissertation pairs American poets Susan Howe (b. 1937) and Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), reading their hybrid works not through the received categories of American poetry, or through common generic and disciplinary divisions, but using an inductive methodology that takes its lead from the poets. Understanding Howe and Rukeyser's literary experiments as serious interventions in …

Straight Record And The Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters To Foreign Correspondents, Magdalena Bogacka-Rode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Straight Record and the Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters to Foreign Correspondents engages with Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War (1959), Virginia Cowles' Looking for Trouble (1941) and Josephine Herbst's The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs (1991) as documentaries of struggle. Documentary as a mode of writing and image making reveals dissonance, contradictions and varied perspectives which undermine the official historical record. The three writers, I argue, by republishing their Spanish Civil War (SCW) journalism in book form intended to set their record straight. This was motivated by their commitment to the 1930s struggle and the need …