Digital Commons Network^™

A Cultural History Of Anti-Feminism In Marvel's Scarlet Witch, Madison M. Kooba

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Marvel Comics character Wanda Maximoff, otherwise known as the Scarlet Witch, has received significant attention in popular culture due to her recent appearances as the primary protagonist and antagonist in television show WandaVision (2021) and film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). These depictions foregrounding Wanda’s struggles with mental health have made her an admirable character to many who see her drawing power from her emotions as a celebration of aspects of womanhood that have long been shamed by society. Sourcing these contemporary adaptations, however, lies decades of blatantly anti-feminist and sexist comics that villainize and ridicule Wanda’s …

Comparing Comics And Illustrated Texts In Multimedia Learning, Jackson S. Pelzner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this research was to examine how different forms of media, in particular science comics and illustrated texts, contribute to different patterns of learning. While the standard illustrated text seen in a textbook has been a useful tool for instruction, science comics appear to be an alternative that could be used in lieu of media that use the traditional illustrated text format. The comic format, known more for its visual appeal to readers, is consistent with the principles of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (Mayer, 2009), though comprehension may require different mechanisms (Cohn, 2013a). It was hypothesized …

One Last Month, Or Clancy's Time-Box, Safiyya Bintali

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

One Last Month is a young adult (YA) novella of roughly forty-three thousand words aimed at readers in middle school and in early high school grades. Structurally, it is an “ensemble Bildungsroman”, wherein all the main characters—rather than just one—embark on journeys of emotional growth and are given significant plot focus. Through the characters, One Last Month focuses on the importance and influence of non-romantic love, specifically through homosocial relationships between the novella’s male characters. It also touches on the process of grief beyond the Kübler-Ross structure and, though more subtly, emotional expression in young men. Through one of the …

Family-Centered Psychosocial Care For Pediatric Oncology Patients, Jessica W. Casey

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Psychosocial conditions are prevalent in pediatric oncology patients (Kahalley et al., 2013). Family and social support are essential aspects of a patient's health care outcomes (Merck & McElfresh, 2019). Anxiety and depression are common in pediatric oncology patients due to trauma during treatment (Pao & Kazak, 2015). These patients also can have preexisting developmental or behavioral conditions before starting treatment. Treatment side effects can also cause cognitive and behavioral changes (Nixon, 2014b). Nurses should be knowledgeable and confident in their ability to care for patients' psychosocial health and development. The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project is …

An Illustrated Metamorphoses, Alexandria Devlin

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

This project was a comic consisting of five different myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses. My goal was to make it easier and more enjoyable for audiences to read classical myths, and give these stories a way to shine in the 21st century. Myths from many different cultures have been adapted into comics, but direct depictions are much less common than shaping mythological figures to fit a new story. I have yet to find a direct comic adaptation of Metamorphoses. Ovid's Metamorphoses is full of rich and interesting stories and deserves to be represented alongside other mythological tales.

The Concept Album As Postmodern Literature: A Critical Examination Of Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, Kelly E. Stith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With the humanities becoming progressively more open to interdisciplinary studies, there exists a space for music to be part of the discourse surrounding literature. One of the most important developments for music was the rise of the concept album, a medium where the individual tracks are defined by a larger theme or a unifying narrative. The concept album first emerged in the 1960s and became a method for musicians to experiment with expanded storylines and lyrical motifs that overthrew classical models of music albums. One of the most

influential concept albums, Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, which came out …

It’S A Bird! It’S A Plane! No, It’S A Feminist! Analyzing The Representation Of Women In Comic Book Media, Angelica Mcgee, Lynn Comella Ph.D.

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Superhero media is a 27 billion dollar industry. Superhero media has played a significant role in contemporary pop culture and society. So, where does feminist thought - or the lack of feminist thought - belong in the conversation of comics? My research aims to pinpoint and define sexist tropes within comic book media, how they can be detrimental to the representation of women, and what viewers and creators alike can do to diminish this unsatisfactory treatment. My research uses textual analysis to examine the representations of female comic book characters across various mediums. The pathway to improvement is within the …

A World Of Infinite Possibilities: Recoding Popular Culture In Modern U.S. Ethnic Fiction, Todd Martinez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project examines how the U.S. ethnic authors Ralph Ellison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Junot Díaz reflect the dynamic, reciprocal process of transculturation by decoding popular cultural forms. Using strategies made available by cultural studies, hemispheric theory and neoMarxism, critical attention will be directed to each author’s major literary work: Ellison’s Invisible Man, Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey, and Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This dissertation further analyzes a hitherto overlooked area of U.S. multiethnic literary studies: the ethnic subject’s relationship to encoded popular culture forms and how they impact dentity formation. Recent scholarship has focused on the ethnic …

Magneto Was Right: How The Holocaust Shaped An X-Men Antihero, Benjamin J. Morse

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the X-Men property has extended beyond comic books over the last 30 years into television and film among other mediums. The initial premise of the canon, that mutants gifted with inherent superpowers were feared and hated by normal humans, has served as an allegory for discrimination against minorities on the basis of race, religion, and sexual orientation. Chris Claremont, the primary author of the X-Men from 1975-1991, did significant work introducing Judaism into the metaphor, in large part by making the series’ primary antagonist, Magneto, a Holocaust survivor working to prevent …

How Pop Cultures Makes For Better Teachers, Jason Olsen

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In this talk, I will discuss the benefits of pop culture for educators in two distinct but obviously connected ways: (1) how implementing pop culture in classroom curriculum (in both specific and general ways) can engage our students and improve their overall experience and performance and (2) how academic pop culture research and writing paves a path toward teaching excellence (even when the research is not pedagogically driven). As an Associate Professor of English at Utah State University, I can use examples from my own teaching and research (and how I have managed to merge them together), including how I …

She Lives: Bringing The Bride Of Frankenstein To Life In The Comics, Michael Torregrossa

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein recently celebrated its two-hundredth anniversary, and its story remains vibrant in popular culture, especially in the comics medium. I’ve done a number of conference papers in the past devoted to representations of the Creature and his creator, Victor Frankenstein, in comics and comic art, but I’ve only recently begun to look at how the character of the Bride of Frankenstein has been depicted. I’d like to use this opportunity to further that work and look more closely at continuations and recastings of her story. The Bride has no chance at life in Shelley’s novel, as she is …

“Meet The Fantastic Four”: The Origins And Innovations Of The Fantastic Four, William Nesbitt

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

No abstract provided.

“Back In The Saddle: Fallout: New Vegas And Real-World Tourism In Goodsprings, Nevada”, David Schwartz

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Fallout: New Vegas, a video role-playing game released in 2012, is set in Southern Nevada in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The action begins in Goodsprings, which is in effect the game’s tutorial space, as the player learns how to move, fight, and interact with others, as well as being exposed to the game’s world and the factions that inhabit it. The game’s Goodsprings was modeled on the real-life town of Goodsprings, with several locations directly modeled on real-life buildings. The Prospector Saloon’s real-world analogue, the Pioneer Saloon, has become a tourist site for the game’s devotees. This …

Comics For Pediatric Oncology Patients And Families: Education And Empowerment, Natalie Johns

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The major objective is to develop the first book of a boxed set series of comic vignettes that will serve as a clinical educational tool for pediatric patients with a recent cancer diagnosis and their caregivers. These comics are hypothesized to improve patient and family understanding of the disease, its treatment, side effects, and outcomes in an engaging and aesthetically pleasing way. The overall goals of this project are to reduce anxiety and increase health literacy in patients and their families while assisting the oncology team in providing optimal medical care, thus improving the overall quality of treatment. Comics aimed …

Racial Ideology And Teaching Practice: A Conceptual Framework, Kelly Demers

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

No abstract provided.

“That’S Not Real Reading”: Making The Case For Graphic Novel Inclusion In Every Classroom, Amanda Melilli, Kate Covintree, Alicia Abdul

Library Faculty Presentations

No abstract provided.

Centering Preservice Teachers Of Color Through Culturally Relevant Critical Teacher Care: A Critical Race Transformative Convergent Mixed-Methods Analysis, Tara Joann Plachowski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The reproduction of white supremacist culture in schools continues to marginalize Students of Color in a variety of implicit, explicit, and systemic ways. As teachers are the one of the key arbiters of school culture, teacher education presents itself as a vital locus in need of critical inquiry and radical change. A diverse teacher workforce not only helps to disrupt the direct effects of racism on Students of Color, but also prepares all students for successful democratic participation in a diverse global society (Sleeter, 2011). This study of teacher education examines the teacher demographic diversity gap within a College of …

Discover A New World Of Reading: Making The Case For Graphic Novels As "Real" Books In Secondary Education, Amanda Melilli

Library Faculty Presentations

No abstract provided.

Graphic Novels At Unlv An Exploration Of Their Relevancy And Your Freedom To Read, Katherine Keller, Amanda Melilli, Jean Munson, Jarret Keene

Library Faculty Presentations

No abstract provided.

"The Only People Who Can Get Aids-Are People": The Aids Crisis In Mainstream Crisis, 1981-1995, Franklin Howard

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the representation of the AIDS crisis and People with AIDS (PWAs) in comics produced by mainstream publishing companies in America. Between 1988 and 1995, mainstream comic artists at DC Comics and Marvel Comics used their art to offer social commentary on the crisis. This commentary focused primarily on social issues like violence against PWAs and social ostracizing instead of the critiques of the Reagan Administration and medical institutions found in similar comics produced by activists in the queer communities. They provided education and advocated acceptance through their character’s actions and dialogue as well as in their own …

"Already Writers": A Case Study In Assessment And Visual Rhetoric Connections In Digital Multimodal Composition, Fawn Elise Canady

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

English language arts must respond to shifts in literacy practices that reflect changes in ‘college and career ready’ that are more than technologically mediated, but also emphasize creative and social skills. The case study in this dissertation is a small part of a larger, ongoing formative experiment in digital multimodal composition (DMC). A formative experiment is a methodological approach that favors a collaborative, iterative research process that is centered on an instructional goal in authentic classroom settings (Reinking & Bradley, 2008). The intention of the larger research study was to support students’ learning through DMC. This dissertation explored one of …

It’S Not About Brooklyn, Elee Maybelle Oak

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program has culminated into a collage form hybrid comprised of vignettes, poetry, and other creative works. The writing engages central themes, through the Queer gaze of the character Sissy. She became suspect at an early age because of her odd aptitudes along with a physical appearance that never fit. She dodged and at times embraced an identification as a sort of side show curiosity, and an intoxicated freak of gender, race, and talent. She survived physical and mental attacks. Then she blindly stepped …

Child-Mediated Health Communication: A Conceptual Framework For Increasing Stroke Literacy In Hard To Reach Populations, Olajide Williams, Ellyn Leighton-Herrmann, Mindy F. Hecht, Alexandra Desorbo, William Gerin, Monique Hedmann, Rachel Shelton, Benjamin Tolchin, James Noble

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Effectively engaging economically-disadvantaged ethnic minority communities for promoting health has proved to be challenging for a variety of reasons, including factors related to healthcare access, literacy, inadequate or ineffective cultural appropriateness of materials, and the relatively low priority for health due to competing demands related to economic hardship. We have developed a framework of Child-Mediated Health Communication (CMHC), which focuses on children as channels for carrying out health promotion interventions to parents and other caregivers. CMHC is an innovative, alternative strategy for engaging this underserved population, where traditional methods of health promotion have not been successful. We discuss the theoretical …

Police Blotter, Unlv Department Of Police Services

Police Blotter

No abstract provided.

The End Of The World (Eotw) Scientist And The Framing Of Science In Science Fiction Films From 1950 To 2010, Jennifer Naoko Lui

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The current study looks at scientists in End of the World (EOTW) films spanning from 1950 to 2010 through stereotypes and gender roles. Eighteen films, 12 representing EOTW films and 6 that are considered “regular” science fiction films, were analyzed in terms of Goffman’s (1976) 6 aspects, first introduced in Gender Advertisements, as well as aspects of visual and textual frame analysis. The analysis of these films provided a way to look at the portrayal of scientists in EOTW films and add to the limited body of literature on this particular sub-genre of film.

Previous research identified that scientists were …

Siren Song: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender And Intimate Partner Violence In Gotham City Sirens, Katlin Schmidt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project investigates comic book discourse. Specifically, I investigate how comic narratives provide readers with an interpretation for how they should discern and assess “appropriate” behaviors for women. The artifact of analysis included in this project is DC Comics Gotham City Sirens (2009). This text features popular female superheroes, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy. Because comic books utilize both textual and visual means to disseminate a message, this project evaluates the visual rhetoric of these characters within the narrative. Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm is used to provide an understanding to how these visual means contribute to the meanings assigned …

Siren Song: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender And Intimate Partner Violence In Gotham City Sirens, Scarlett Schmidt

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

This project investigates comic book discourse. Specifically, I investigate how comic narratives provide readers with an interpretation for how they should discern and assess “appropriate” behaviors for women. The artifact of analysis included in this project is DC Comics Gotham City Sirens (2009). This text features popular female superheroes, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy. Because comic books utilize both textual and visual means to disseminate a message, this project evaluates the visual rhetoric of these characters within the narrative. Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm is used to provide an understanding to how these visual means contribute to the meanings assigned …

The Formation Of Situation Models In Multimedia, Kris Gunawan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When people read traditional text-based stories, they construct mental representations of the described state of affairs, called situation models, to connect various details of events (e.g., time, space, entity) in memory (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). According to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2005; 2011), stories presented as pictures and text generate independent channels of mental representations that can work hand-in-hand or separately to acquire and remember the materials presented. This dissertation consisted of two experiments that were used to further explore how the two modalities affect what is being mentally represented in memory. In Experiment 1, participants were …

Beyond The Tragedy Of Failure: Debating The Role Of State Failure In The Middle East And North Africa As A Root Cause Of Political Violence In The Region, Tiffiany O. Howard

Political Science Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Reaching Out To Business Communities: Best Practices For Libraries, Patrick Griffis, Sidney Lowe

Scholarship Colloquium

Origin of Book Project

• Presented about Business Community Outreach

– Reference Renaissance Conference: August 2010

• Approached by Managing Editor of Libraries Unlimited

– Asked to submit proposal for a book

• Proposal accepted and book contract signed