Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The System Of Subjectivity: Societal Systems And Literary Pardigms, Alyssa Rittinger

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Patterns aid in deepening humanity's understanding of the world and what is cultivated within it. Patterns emerge in interactive disciplines such as language, literature, science, visual arts, and even mathematics. The existence of patterns assists the human need to understand a complicated world. Beyond simply seeing patterns as they are presented, I am interested in exploring how these patterns manifest into paradigmatic structures that affect the way in which society. Particularly, I am interested in the socialized perceptions of literature, and the role that systems plays in their interaction and development.

This thesis project: 1) introduces the fundamentals of systems …

Reel Women: Gender Stereotypes In Film, Kayla Marie Krahn

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Horror films portray female characters as sexual, helpless victims. When horror films attempt to portray female characters as the hero, this sends a message to audiences that women can be strong and independent. An experiment was conducted to test an audience's perceptions gender stereotypes of women in the horror film, Scream. Results indicate that stereotypes present in the horror film effected the participants' perception of women as competent heroes. Female participants were also more likely to perceive women as more competent than male participants. Then, from a qualitative standpoint, five individuals were interviewed about their perceptions of characters in their …

Uncovering Identities Through Performance Poetry, Angela Vanhook

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Research in the area of performance poetry is still relatively new to the field of communication. Using Hecht’s Communication Theory of Identity, this study explores performance poetry as a communicative tool for identity management. By observing the performances of five poets from six seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, a thematic analysis of the communication practices that occurred during the performances was used to code the processes of identity management. Additionally, this study explores how validation of enacted identity occurs between the poets and their audiences. Findings suggest that performance poetry could effectively be utilized as a tool in identity …