Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Shaping Heroism Through Participatory Fan Cultures: An Analysis Of Video Game Heroes As Nonhuman Online Personas, Jasmyn Connell

Heroism Science

This paper expands the theoretical framework for analysing nonhuman personas developed by Connell and Moore (2023) to explore video game hero personas as assemblages - complex negotiations between social media platforms, video game developers, and participatory fan cultures. Through a critical analysis of Aloy from the Horizon (2017-2023) series, I argue that video game heroes are dynamic characters, and fan participation in the shaping of a video game hero’s online persona is often overlooked. By examining the collaborative relationships between video game heroes and their online participatory fan communities, the article contributes to ongoing conversations about processes of heroic representation …

#Hotgirlsemestersyllabus, Katrina Marie Overby, Gheni Platenburg, Niya Pickett Miller

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury’, Rage Should Not Be A Privilege: The Potential Power Of The ‘Racial Imaginary’, Georgia Mcgovern

CMC Senior Theses

Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.

I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines …

Disney Princess Films: Feminist Movements And The Changing Of Gender Roles, Mckinley M. Frees

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …

Film Women Violence, Madison R. Ross

Masters Theses

As a condensed version of social reality, film has become a more common object of modern sociological and criminological investigation. As such, we can explore film to understand taken-for-granted as well as innovative constructions of social phenomena. Among these are gendered violence. We can use film to dig deep into its logics, elaborated in visual and narrative representations. Prior literature has analyzed crime films and the behavioral constructions within them, outlining the representations of serial homicide, rape, mass shootings and revenge. However, few studies have outlined films that do meaningful, non-voyeuristic representational work on the issue of violence against …

She Speaks Spanglish, A Podcast Series, Kate Fernanda Becerra

Humanities and Cultural Studies | Senior Theses

This is a podcast series about the immigrant experience in the United States. The series discusses immigration with a focus on women, at different stages of life and their involvement with the daunting transition into a different country and culture. The show will focus on one family, their close friends, and communities. It will also explore feminist themes through the lived experience of the people interviewed. Those who were interviewed have ties to central Mexico (Zacatecas, Jalisco, Michoacan) and Northern California. The Podcast host shares this experience and does one episode based entirely on her perspective as a daughter of …

At What Price: Insidious Hegemony And Character Archetypes Woven Into Until Dawn, Courtney Harvey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Supermassive Games’s Until Dawn tasks its players with helping eight teenagers survive a night of terror. All eight playable characters may live or die depending on the player’s choices and gameplay proficiency. Despite its intricacies, the game still relies heavily on horror movie tropes, which the characters embody, and they face different treatment based on their gender, race, and sanity. Particularly, the weapons available to them and the scenarios for their deaths and survival contribute to trapping the characters within their given characteristics and forcing them into a role that they cannot ever fully break free from. While the branching …

The Inappropriate/D Fantastic: A Proposal Beyond Feminism, Teresa López-Pellisa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Teresa López-Pellisa’s article “The Inappropriate/d Fantastic: A Proposal Beyond Feminism” discusses a type of narration that goes beyond the feminist fantastic. These are fantastic texts permeated not only by a feminist discourse, but by intersectionality, transfeminism, ecofeminism, cyberfeminism, post-humanism, xenofeminism and/or necropolitics as well. Borrowing the term inappropriate/d others from Donna Haraway (The Promises of Monsters), who in turn takes it from the feminist theorist Trinh Minh-ha, we can analyze those fantastic stories that call into question the categories of gender, class, race and sexuality established by Western enlightened humanism. These types of non-mimetic narrations have …

Kiss Of Love Campaign: Contesting Public Morality To Counter Collective Violence, Sonia Krishna Kurup Miss

Peace and Conflict Studies

The paper studies the immense opposition to a nonviolent campaign against the practice of moral policing in Kerala to understand the dominant spaces, collective identities, and discourses that give shape to the outrage of public morality in India. The campaign through its politics specifically targeted rightwing and political groups as well as socially embedded familial and institutional structures that exercise control over individuals through patriarchal regimes. The adverse reaction to the campaign revealed that collective aggression or violence can be used to impose majoritarian values and exert social control through the authority of public morality and everyday acts of moral …

Exquisite Corpses: Markedness, Gender, And Death In Video Games, Meghan Blythe Adams

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation analyzes gendered death animations in video games and the way games thematize death to remarginalize marked characters, including women. This project combines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s work on the human subjection to death and Georges Bataille’s characterization of sacrifice to explore how death in games stages markedness. Markedness articulates how a culture treats normative identities as unproblematic while marking non-normative identities as deviant.

Chapter One characterizes play as a form of death-deferral, which culminates in the spectacle of player-character death. I argue that death in games can facilitate what Hegel calls tarrying with death, embracing our subjection to …

The Many Editions Of The Front Page: How Gender Shapes The Story, Nicole Moore

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

The Cultivation Theory And Reality Television: An Old Theory With A Modern Twist, Jeffrey Weiss

Capstone Showcase

George Gerbner, a Hungarian-born professor of communication, founded the cultivation theory, one of the most popular and regarded theories in the communications world. Developed in the mid 20th century, the theory focus on the long-term effects of television on people. Longer exposure to signs, images and people on television cultivates their perception of reality in the real world. The television became a household staple during this time. Families often spent time together watching programming together, however, it played out different effects for each person. Television's constant visual and auditory stimulation on a person made it easier to cultivate certain messages, …

Misinterpretations Of The Taming Of The Shrew: Adaptations And Their Emphasis On Gender, Brianna Reisenwitz

HON499 projects

Misinterpretations of The Taming of the Shrew: Adaptations and Their Emphasis on Gender focuses on modern adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew. Modern adaptations have a preoccupation with gender that was not necessarily present in the original play, and that is because they fail to include the induction scene. The works discussed are the book Vinegar Girl, the films Isi Life Mein, Deliver Us From Eva, 10 Things I Hate About You, and the television show BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told. In these adaptations, several gender focused themes are apparent. With the framing story, though, the play has many different interpretations, and …

Violence In The Hands Of Women: An Analysis Of Gendered Violence In Life Is Strange And Before The Storm, Mitchi Anne Maja

Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the video games Life is Strange and Before the Storm and how they serve to reflect social expectations and norms placed upon both women and men even today. Cultural studies recently accepted video games as a form of media to study, especially with the prevalence and accessibility of video games in various platforms. Violence in video games is culturally associated with men and the male audience; my analysis focuses on violence in the hands of women. By analyzing the choices I made as a player and how these games present their narratives and characters, …

Vulnerability And Resistance In Carmen Aguirre’S Mexican Hooker #1, Cinta Mesa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Vulnerability and Resistance in Carmen Aguirre’s Mexican Hooker#1,” Cinta Mesa examines Chilean-Canadian playwright and actress Carmen Aguirre’s latest autobiographical novel, Mexican Hooker#1, to analyze Latina vulnerability in relation to exile, emigration, gender violence and stereotypes. The article relies upon Judith Butler’s definition of vulnerability (20), which is excluded from official texts. The consequences of these types of trauma, which are written on female bodies, are expressed through post-traumatic stress disorder. The author expresses the difficulty of acting because of her post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and the challenges she meets on her way to heal herself and …

The Commodified Body And Post/In Human Subjectivities In Frears’S Dirty Pretty Things And Romanek’S Never Let Me Go, Rocio Carrasco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Following new materialist analysis, this article takes the body as the central locus of analysis, and relates it to broader questions such as ethics, ideology, power and/or technologies. Specifically, it revolves around the idea of embodied subjectivity as articulated by scholars Rosi Braidotti, Sherryl Vint or Cary Wolfe, whereby body and subjectivity are indissolubly and interestingly connected. Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) exploit the idea of the commodified body, understood here as a vulnerable body, a disposable commodity at the service of powerful and/or wealthy people. Victims of the cruelties inflicted …

Psychoanalysis And Star Wars: The Force Awakens: What The Film Says About Gender Ideology, Brooke Dochnahl

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

Star Wars is a major film franchise and has been part of United States’ pop culture for decades. This paper will look at the first film in the newest Skywalker trilogy. This paper defines psychoanalysis as a method for studying the media text, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It then defines the substructures of psychoanalysis, including Freud’s id, ego, and superego, and their relation to the film, as well as Jung’s archetypes of the hero, sidekick, and shadow element. It then gives a brief discussion of the characters Kylo Ren, Rey, and Finn, including defining characteristics such as personality …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

Queering The Clown Prince Of Crime: A Look At Queer Stereotypes As Signifiers In Dc Comics’ The Joker, Zina Hutton

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to explore the way heterosexism and homophobia are present in the coding that has created an implied and monstrous queer identity for the Joker, present in many versions of the character over the past forty years. Through close readings of several of the Joker’s most iconic appearances, queer theory texts, and analytical essays on pop culture, this paper will analyze the use of queer signifiers present in the comics and the way that these portrayals of the Joker are rife with harmful and heterocentric perceptions of what comic creators have seen as necessary signifiers …

"It Came In Little Waves": Feminist Imagery In Chantal Akerman's Je, Tu, Il, Elle +, Staci C. Dubow

Honors Theses

Chantal Akerman writes, “she who seeks shall find, find all too well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions.”[1] This thesis addresses the films of Chantal Akerman from a theoretical feminist film perspective. There are many lenses through which Akerman’s rich body of work can be viewed, and I would argue that she herself never intended for it to be understood in just one way. I wish to situate Akerman’s films, in particular her 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1h 30m), within a discourse of other feminist film theorists and makers that were further rooted in …

The Dmz Responds, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Seo-Young Chu’s “The DMZ Responds” appeared in Telos 184 (Fall 2018), a special issue on Korea edited by Haerin Shin.

Wonder Woman: A Case Study For Critical Media Literacy, Adriana N. Fehrs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To better grasp the messages Wonder Woman is sending to its audience, a Critical Media Literacy (CML), ideological, and feminist framework is used to examine whether, and if so how, Wonder Woman succumbs to stereotypes that are often portrayed in the media. These theories will be used in the ensuing project to build a curriculum aimed at high school students.The curriculum positions students to examine the hegemonic ideologies that are represented in pop culture, specifically Wonder Woman.

Rape Culture In Disney Animated Princess Movies, Patricia Paulson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Gender stereotypes, rape myths, and rape culture are perpetuated in U.S. media, including media aimed at young people. Previous research in the areas of gender, gender stereotypes, portrayals of gender in movies, Disney movies, rape myths, and rape culture are all examined. Prior to this research, no study had been conducted to determine if the characteristics of rape culture are portrayed in Disney animated princess movies. For this research, an ethnographic content analysis is conducted on all thirteen of the Disney animated princess movies to determine if the characteristics associated with rape culture are portrayed in these movies. The findings …

Adult Learning And The Effect Of Education And Gender Interaction On Type 2 Diabetics, Abdi H. Nur

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods research study was to investigate whether the relationships between education and medication and healthy exercise adherence were the same among female and male Type 2 diabetic adult learners. The purpose included also exploring whether registered nurses would alter their approach to diabetic adult learners’ education on medication and healthy exercise adherence considering patients’ gender and education levels. The study also investigated the correlation between diabetes duration and medication and healthy exercise adherence. The research investigation employed mixed methods sequential explanatory design using qualitative data to help explain the quantitative findings. The quantitative study was …

To Kill A Mockingbird, The Help, And The Regendering Of The White Savior, Brett Seekford

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Filmmakers continue to use the “White Savior “ archetype to construct racialized messages in the post-Civil Rights era. These protagonists, who resolutely defend the rights of African Americans, ultimately focalize whiteness and marginalize black characters and voices. Though a white savior features prominently in both To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The Help (2011), The Help’s regendering of the archetype invites viewers to imagine a world in which a white savior is no longer necessary. The Help’s update on the white savior trope from Atticus Finch to Skeeter Phelan allows for deeper development of black characters and a …

Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches

Communication Studies

This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.

Politics Of Feminist Revision In Di Prima's Loba, Polina Mackay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Politics of Feminist Revision in di Prima's Loba" Polina Mackay explores Diane di Prima's two-volume epic Loba (1998) and, through a comparison of di Prima to the work of Adrienne Rich, argues that Loba practices a politics of feminist revision. Further, Mackay examines the ways in which di Prima starts to move away from the recovery project of female voices in patriarchal culture, associated with late twentieth-century Feminism, towards a women's literature which need not be defined entirely through its resistance to patriarchal narratives of gender in men's literature. Here it focuses on di Prima's revisionist …

Sticking To The Script: Sexual Scripts In The Slasher Sub-Genre, Jennifer L. Clay

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The “slasher” sub-genre has been immensely popular, even spawning television shows that invoke the familiar slasher conventions. This sub-genre has simultaneously become vilified by media researchers over the years. The slasher has received particular criticism for allegedly reinforcing regressive attitudes regarding female sexuality. This study applies sexual script theory to better understand the messages about sex found throughout the sub-genre. This study utilizes content analysis to study the more recent iterations of the slasher sub-genre including the re-make, the modern slasher film and the slasher television show. This analysis uncovered that the slasher sub-genre has evolved over time. While slasher …

Gender In The Slasher Film Genre, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It slices, it dices, it has entertained and scared audiences for decades—it’s the slasher film. Despite being dismissed by critics, the slasher film refuses to go away. Even if you don’t go to these movies, they are hard to escape, as every Halloween at least a few trick or treaters will dress up as a character from these movies. Given the longevity and popularity of this genre, I want to spend today talking about how these films often represent gender.

Scholars have also studied slasher films, and have provided a more formal definition than the one that I just provided. …