Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Liberating The Woman: Feminism In Korean Dramas, Emma Mackey

Scholars Day Conference

In my ventures throughout Korean dramas, or k-dramas as they are less formally known, I’ve noticed how poorly many of the female characters are treated in their romantic relationships, depictions of violence being glorified as something the male characters are doing out of love rather than selfishness. These abusive behaviors have waned out of popularity in recent years, though there are still underlying elements of patriarchal values in modern k-dramas, the female characters having to adhere to strict societal standards like chastity, modesty, beauty, and so on to be deemed worthy of a man’s love. I explored these themes in …

Hopeful Oscillation: Metamodernism, Barbenheimer, And Our New Cultural Undercurrent, Jewel T. Miller

Capstone Showcase

Recent societal changes have pushed artwork and media away from postmodernism as a dominant cultural philosophy. In its place has risen a new theoretical approach, titled Metamodernism, which attempts to discover the meaning behind present day art and media’s strengthening affective qualities, and provide a possible label for this new post-postmodernist state. This is not only an important attempt at understanding the society we live in today but also its broader impact on how we communicate through media. This paper explores the rise of Metamodernism as a theoretical approach within media studies and philosophy, including the term’s inception and growing …

So It Goes: Hauntology, Lost Futures, And Mac Miller, Ryan Hiemenz

Capstone Showcase

Hauntology is a relatively new concept born out of the current state of late capitalism, wherein it has become increasingly common for new releases of popular culture, art, and media to appease the societal desire to return to the past. First coined by Jacques Derrida in his book Specters of Marx, the term “Hauntology” was used to describe the phenomenon of the “death” of communism and how the capitalist powers that “killed” it essentially made the idea of communism immortal. They made it a specter, and ghosts cannot die. This concept was then altered by the late Mark Fisher, …

Women Play Football Too: Feminist Theory And Uk Football, Mikayla Kummer

Capstone Showcase

Women's Football in the UK has constantly overshadowed by Men's Football and with the popularity of social media it may have complicated the issue. The way women have been treated in the media has always been different to how men were treated. Gender can be considered a performance and how women are treated by the press demands a performance from them. Through Offside, a play by Hollie Poetry and Sabrina Mahfouz, this essay explores the relationship between feminist theory, women's football and social media. Women athletes have consistently been asked about their personal lives, bodies, relationships and anything besides the …

Comic Books, Satire, And The American Police State: Lessons From The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Jamie Michaels

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In the spirit of the #DefundThePolice and #BlackLivesMatter movements, protestors in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) declared sovereignty over 5½ city blocks. Emboldened by the potential for mass mobilization enabled by the COVID-19 pandemic protestors attempted to establish a racially egalitarian society that would exist without the police, the traditional enforcement mechanism of the white supremacist American state.

This paper explores how Alex Graham’s Dog Biscuits (2021) and Simon Hanselmann’s, Crisis Zone (2021) portray the ways CHAZ protestors utilized absurdity in the face of extreme violence to enact indiffernation—a unique affect comprised of indifference and determination. This affect …

Canadian Infrastructure For A “Canadian School” Of Informal Logic And Argumentation, Takuzo Konishi

OSSA Conference Archive

This article comments on Federico Puppo's position that a 'Canadian' school of argumentation exists. Based upon archival research, oral history interviews and published documents on the informal logic movement in the 1970s and 1980s, it is argued that Canadian infrastructure for informal logic and argumentation existed, in which a Canadian school of argumentation could exist.

The “Science” Of Story Structure, Diana Witt

Virginias Collegiate Honors Council Conference

Stories are immensely human. They help us learn and understand cultural and social contexts. The stories that we tell, see, and read have profound effects on our ideas and emotions, causing us to have visceral reactions. Stories are truly at the crux of how people relate to each other. In this talk, I will explore the necessary elements of stories and why they are effective. Storytellers across all mediums build plot and characters to make an audience care and draw them in. Authors and screenwriters have theorized about the main structures into which all stories fall. In modern media, story …

2020 Icrcc Proceedings Table Of Contents, Conference Organizers

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

These proceedings are a representative sample of the presentations given by professional practitioners and academic scholars at the 2020 International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference (ICRCC) held March 9-11, 2020. The ICRCC is an annual event that takes place the second week in March in beautiful sunny Orlando, Florida. The conference hosts are faculty and staff from the Nicholson School of Communication and Media. The goal of the ICRCC is to bring together prominent professional practitioners and academic scholars that work directly with crisis and risk communication on a daily basis. We define crisis and risk broadly to include, for …

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, …

The Evolution Of Revenge: Genre, Feminist Theory And Jennifer’S Body, Sophia Birks

Capstone Showcase

The representation and proliferation of violence against women in media, when applying genre theory, reflects the social climate of rape culture and the social response to sexual violence. Looking at the Rape-Revenge genre through the scope of Feminist Theory, the only way to reintroduce female agency into a trauma led narrative is to reclaim the tropes used to perpetuation female exploitation and a popular culture ambivalent to male on female violence. Within this subversion and deconstruction, a genre benefiting from female trauma finally includes an honest artistic retelling of that female experience. With the intention of the creator in line …

Habermas, The Public Sphere, And Wikileaks: The Public Sphere And The Right To Know, Mary Murray

Capstone Showcase

Jürgen Habermas, a German theorist, coined the public sphere as a place where citizens could interact, study, and debate issues together outside the realm of the home or family, which was defined as the private sphere. The public sphere can also be seen as a “manifestation of citizen sovereignty”. At its core, Habermas centered the public sphere around feudalism and the shift of one all-powerful individual reigning and representing the public to those citizens under the control of the state. Some critics argue voices encouraging the minorities were actually private voices leaking into the public sphere, while others argue the …

The Fear And Biopolitical Control Of The ‘Terrorist Other’, Percy Percy Sherwood

Western Research Forum

“I think Islam hates us,” Donald Trump said as a presidential candidate in a CNN interview in March 2016, conflating the religion with ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ Trump’s statement exemplifies the prevailing fabricated enemy and resulting Islamophobia in the context of the ‘global war on terror.’ Since 9/11, powerful actors are using abstractions, ideologies, and narratives—that are usually defined along racial lines—to conjure up a fear so permeable that it serves to legitimize massive levels of violence in the name of self-righteousness. How do the racist abstractions, ideologies, and narratives that are associated with Islam and Muslims produce fear and insecurity …

Promoting Your Department To High School Seniors, Jeremy H. Sarachan

Academic Chairpersons Conference Proceedings

Increasingly departments must take charge of their recruitment, but most academics are new to public relations and marketing. What are the best methods to reach high school students? Led by a media and communication chair, this discussion will revolve around best practices that are both affordable and easy to manage.

What’S In A Name?: The Evolution Of The Female Identity In Shalimar The Clown, Jessica Barksdale

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.

English Grammar: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Wendy Delk

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.

Until Valhalla, Mr. Krebs, William J. Williford

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Merry Death Collector, Benjamin Wade Murphy

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Documentary filmmaking puts life on lens and who knows what the outcome will be. The creative team chose Arnie Meredith to be the subject of the short documentary The Merry Death Collector. The oddball LaFollette, Tennessee resident collects and sells antique items from estate sales and recently purchased two buildings to house and run his business. The story follows Arnie’s struggle to open and maintain a small-town business. He attends a convention in Knoxville, Tennessee to raise funds, and even attempts to hang a biplane in one of his buildings. With his projected opening date around the corner, an exhausted …

Postcolonial Disability In Mohesen Makhmalbaf’S Kandahar, Sukshma Vedere

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

Kandahar (2001), an Iranian film directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, details the journey of the protagonist, Nafas, to Kandahar to save her sister from committing suicide on the day of the solar eclipse. The film has gained recent attention by disability studies scholars for the representation of disability in Afghanistan; scholars have discussed the significance of prosthetics and international aid for the disabled in post-war zones of the Third World, but little has been said about disability as a postcolonial embodiment. I argue that Kandahar represents the postcolonial state as a disabled space both literally and metaphorically. It projects the veil …

Walt Disney And The Propaganda Complex: Government Funded Animation And Hollywood Complicity During Wwii, Amanda Cunningham

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

Walt Disney’s work as an animator during World War II had a measurable impact on culture and in the development of government produced messages. It is important to examine this understudied area of Disney’s life and his studio’s efforts to produce wartime training and propaganda films during WWII. Government agencies, including the U.S. Treasury, contracted Disney to produce 32 animated shorts between 1941 and 1945 (Gabler, 2007).

Employing a semiotic approach of cinema, this study focuses on the cartoons The New Spirit (1942), Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) and Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943). While American wartime …

Long May She Reign: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender Expectations In Disney’S Tangled And Disney/Pixar’S Brave, Caitlin J. Saladino

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

This project addresses messages about gender expectations in Disney princess narratives. The two films included in my project are Tangled (2010) and Brave (2012), which feature the most recently inducted princesses to the marketed Disney Princess line (Rapunzel and Merida, respectively). Using genre as an organizing principle, I argue that Rapunzel and Merida are different from the past Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, etc.) because their narratives reflect new ideas about gender expectations in modern society. The central tension appearing in both films is the opposition between the image of woman as traditional, domestic, and dependent and woman …

Gilded Age Visual Media As The Impetus For Social Change: Jacob Riis’S Reform Photography And The Antecedents Of Documentary Film, Denitsa Yotova

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

This study examines the birth and evolution of the social documentary genre in visual media. It suggests that a mixture of ideology, technology, and social awareness are necessary for a successful social reform. It finds that despite the limitations of technology during the nineteenth century, social documentaries were produced long before they were part of the genres of photography and film. By focusing on the work of Danish photographer Jacob Riis and tracing the emergence of film, this study demonstrates a connection between documentary film and Riis’s social documentary photography and public slide exhibitions. The study concludes that in order …

New Torch, Same Flame, Joanne Montanye

UVM Libraries Conference Day

This project is a work-in-progress exploring collaborative preservation opportunities for libraries and current digital-content creators in Vermont. Legacy retention partnerships are waning with the print industry, and new independent creators are discovering the need to self-archive, develop new alliances, or risk eventual loss of their work. Cooperation is in everyone's best interests, in that libraries can advise on best curation practices for access and interoperability; creators can keep libraries up-to-date technologically; the public benefits from access to more digital-only work; and the bridges between print and digital records are maintained. This presentation is a narrative of the project's origins up …

Media Bias Through Facial Expressions On Local Las Vegas Television News, Jessica Zimmerman

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

Trust in news media has been considered an important base for social order and cohesion in society and is a crucial variable for evaluating news media. Media credibility has been questioned by the audience for some time and the audience’s trust in the media has been slowly diminishing over the years. When a news broadcaster communicates a story on local television news, it is possible for his own opinions and beliefs to leak through nonverbal communication, specifically facial expressions. This presentation explores the four main local Las Vegas television news stations’ anchors and reporters to visually analyze whether facial characteristics …

Does Movie Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations About Love And Marriage?, Lauren Galloway

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

The present study investigated the connection between romantic movie viewing frequency and endorsement of dysfunctional beliefs for romantic relationships in a university-based sample of 228 participants. Respondents completed a questionnaire in which they reported demographic information as well as responses to the several scales that measure endorsement of romantic ideals. I base this investigation of Segrin and Nabi’s (2002) examination of television viewing habits and proclivity for unrealistic expectations of sex, love, and marriage. Both the current study and the investigation conducted by Segrin and Nabi (2002) support the supposition that media play a part in reinforcing beliefs about coupleships. …

The Other September 11th: El Mercurio Media Coverage After The Chilean Coup Of 1973, Valeria A. Gurr‐Ovalle

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

This thesis provides an exploratory overview of the role the El Mercurio newspaper played along with the military after the Chilean coup of 1973. The study reviews the contents of the newspaper’s front pages, including their coverage of the events during the coup. The thesis will show how the paper revisited its coverage each year on the September 11th anniversary, beginning with the years dominated by the military government, from 1973 through 1990, and continuing through the transition to democracy, from 1991 through 2007. The primary method used in the course of this examination is a content analysis, which will …

Busting A Gut: Portrayals Of Obesity In Popular Culture, Carly Babel

Annual Undergraduate Conference on Health and Society

Obesity is America’s number one leading health epidemic, affecting more than 93 million Americans today (OAC). From 1985 to 2010, obesity has gone from affecting an average of 10% of individuals in just about every state to today affecting 33.8% of people within each state. Children and adults alike all over the U.S. are being diagnosed with obesity and encouraged to change their lifestyles. Doctors are prescribing patients to lose weight, exercise, eat healthy, and in extreme cases, go under the knife, but none of these recommendations are making a dent in lowering the rate of obesity. Rather, the number …

Tele-Visioning Terror, Caroline Zekri

Re-visioning Terrorism

This paper is devoted to the relationship between terrorism and media, with a special focus on the theoretical notions of “icon”, “mass” and “distance”. It aims to show how the phenomenon of modern terrorism calls into question the essence of modern democracies and their systems of information, based on the distance between vision and event.

Marco Bellocchio's Buongiorno Notte And The Language Of Terrorists, Cosetta Gaudenzi

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay investigates Marco Bellocchio’s Buongiorno, notte (2003), a movie which exploits language and soundtrack to fictionalize and revisit the historical 1978 kidnapping and murder of the Christian Democrat President Aldo Moro by the 1970s Italian left terrorist group Brigate Rosse. As I demonstrate, Bellocchio relies greatly on the language and soundtrack of Buongiorno, notte to convey his negative response to the BR’s kidnapping and murder of Moro, as well as to come to terms with his own political and cinematic past.

Oral Presentation: Depictions Of Sexuality And Gender Construction In Japanese Manga And Anime, Sarah Huerta

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

This presentation will explore research into gender and sexuality in anime and manga as compared to popular U.S. displays of gender and sexuality using a brief historical and cultural contextual background on manga and anime. I will discuss a comparison between U.S. and Japanese gender and sexual depictions in anime/manga and popular American media. Lastly, I discuss the potential for anime and manga in exploring gender and sexuality in U.S. studies, as well as my current, ongoing research with individuals in anime/manga groups

Influence Or Deterrence: A Critical Analysis Of The History And Current State Of Music Videos In The Us, Shannon Blow

Undergraduate Research Conference

This paper critically examines the medium of music videos and its influences in society through examples and through a variety of critical theoretical concepts.