Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Off The Rails: Cinematic Trains As Technological Controls Of The Natural World, Trinity Thompson

Honors Theses

Short train rail lines across the United States are seeing increased national funding to reduce toxic chemical spills caused by train derailments, the most notable of which happened in February 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. A year prior, the film White Noise (2022) featured a similar toxic train derailment incident, taking place, too, in Eastern Ohio, and featuring actors from the town of East Palestine. In considering other films featuring trains, I identified a pattern of environmental conflict, leading me to question the relationship between trains and the natural environment as portrayed in popular cinema. To conduct my research, I …

Letting The Narrative Unfold: Black Female Storytellers Of The 21st Century, Jalila Waller

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The important aspects of film and television are the stories that are portrayed. Everyone has a story to tell. However, who tells the story is equally important as who portrays the story. This thesis analyzes three Black female auteurs and the work they have created with Black women at the center of those narratives. Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, and Issa Rae are Black female auteurs because they are Black female storytellers each with their own story to tell. They each have created and produced content that portrays Black women in a three-dimensional light.

And The Oscar Goes To... Tiktok, Dawson Bley

Senior Honors Theses

Companies have been forced to take note of the emerging social media app, TikTok, which has attracted more than a billion users to its platform and invited businesses into an uncharted market ready to be exploited. By seeking to understand and employ the unique features which have led to TikTok’s far-reaching success, many companies can similarly improve their position. In particular, traditional movie companies, which have recently suffered blows at the box office due to factors such as competition with online streaming, could benefit from an analysis of this tech to restore lost engagement and revenue. Specifically, how can the …

The Reality Of Bipolar Disorder: A Dance Film To Bring Awareness To The Misconceptions Of Mental Health, Julia Woolums

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

For my project, I researched bipolar disorder to create a dance film highlighting the associated symptoms and emotions of hypomanic and depressive episodes. The purpose of this research is to bring awareness to and educate on the reality of these mental health symptoms to reduce mental health stereotypes and stigma. I researched academic texts and peer-reviewed articles about bipolar disorder written from the perspective of those diagnosed with it and used the symptom criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to compose, choreograph, film, and edit my dance film. The completed film showcases what daily life could …

Off The Rails: Cinematic Trains As Technological Controls Of The Natural World, Trinity Thompson

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Short train rail lines across the United States are seeing increased national funding to reduce toxic chemical spills caused by train derailments, the most notable of which happened in February 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. A year prior, the film White Noise (2022) featured a similar toxic train derailment incident, taking place, too, in Eastern Ohio, and featuring actors from the town of East Palestine. In considering other films featuring trains, I identified a pattern of environmental conflict, leading me to question the relationship between trains and the natural environment as portrayed in popular cinema. To conduct my research, I …

The Evolution Of Stereotypes About Alcohol Dependency In Film: Gender, Family, And Treatment, Jordan Sweenie

Psychology Theses

When watching films, people seek reflections and depictions of themselves and their experiences, something that they can understand and relate to. Movies are often looked at to decide, either subconsciously or consciously, how we view society, widespread issues, and one another—Oscar Wilde wrote that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life” (Wilde, 1891). This is particularly true in how we as a society view mental illness, and what kinds of stigma are reinforced or rejected through the film industry. Accurately portraying any form of mental illness in film can be difficult, as experiences are subjective and no two …

Female Lawyers Don’T Need Pity; They Need A Paycheck, Meagan S. Bilodeau

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Whether it's pity or patronization female lawyers have often been criticized. They're visualized on the lower level of the patriarchal hierarchy system in the Hollywood courtroom. However, women that hold emotional intelligence don't need pity. Emotional intelligence encompasses how to set boundaries, stay motivated, hold healthy relationships inside and outside the courtroom, as well as maintain self-regulation. Through analysis of the biographical films Erin Brockovich, On the Basis of Sex, and The Mauritanian this study explores how extensively psychological resilience subfactors are depicted, proving whether or not female lawyers are emotionally prepared to succeed in their noteworthy cases.

Sociocultural Pressures Among Parents Of Queer Children In Films With Non-Western Environments, Samay Bhasin

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The heteronormative and cisnormative nature of society has required queer individuals to undergo the phenomenon of “coming out” as their queer identity. This phenomenon has the potential to take great tolls on queer individuals especially when it comes to parents. Queer individuals with unaccepting parents are eight times more likely to attempt suicide, six times more likely to experience clinical depression, and three times more likely to suffer under substance abuse (Ryan et al., 2009; Ryan et al., 2010). However despite such concerning statistics, there is still a significant gap in scientific research on creating supportive environments …

As Seen On Screen: American Ambivalence Shown Through Death Penalty And Vigilante Films, Lisette Donewald

Honors Scholar Theses

The United States is one of the last western nations still practicing capital punishment. A history of and commitment to vigilantism and its ideals offers an explanation of America’s retention of capital punishment. Employing scholarship on law and popular culture and vigilantism, this thesis finds that pro-death penalty frames are prevalent in vigilante films while anti-death penalty frames are prevalent in films that focus specifically upon capital punishment. Since the 1960’s however, there has been a gradual shift towards anti-death penalty frames and away from pro-death penalty frames as well as changes in the themes presented in the two genres …

A Study Of The Impact Of Us Department Of Defense And Movie Industry Cooperation On Military Application Rates, Lindsay Varzarevsky

Honors College Theses

Using data from the Military Entertainment Media Liaison Office and the US Center for Naval Analyses, this paper examines the impact of cooperation between the Department of Defense and movie producers on military application rates. Multiple regression model results determine that movies which utilize the entertainment liaison facilities of the Department of Defense generate an increase in male and female applicants in the movies’ release year. In addition, applications from individuals from the Black population increase with a two-year lag after the movie release year. This study establishes that government institutions have an effect on media, which influences perceptions and …

Law Library Blog (April 2022): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

No Place Like Homeskillet, Kai Uyehara

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The iconic Sunnyland breakfast spot, Homeskillet, closed after punctuating its ten-year run with a celebratory brunch party. Watch a community built around warm hospitality, hearty comfort food and eclectic decorations gather to bid farewell to a Bellingham favourite in this video feature story. To construct this six minute video, I pulled from my knowledge of storytelling through multimedia learned in my years at Western Washington University earning an English Creative Writing major, a journalism minor and participating in a film production club. This video feature story dwells within a smaller quadrant of journalism: feel-good journalism. Community and hospitality are at …

Ouachita Student Participates In Arkansas Cinema Society's Filmmaking Lab, Julie Shands, Ouachita News Bureau

Press Releases

Sarah Critton, a freshman communications and media major from Little Rock, Ark., participated in the Arkansas Cinema Society’s Filmmaking Lab for Teen Girls from July 7-Aug. 6 in Little Rock.

The lab is held annually for high school girls who hope to follow in the footsteps of prominent women in directing, cinematography, costume designing, editing and screenwriting. Over the span of a month, Critton and eight other contributors chose a storyline, wrote a script, cast characters and shot a 5-minute short film.

Review Of: Murray, Stuart F. Disability And The Posthuman: Bodies, Technology, And Cultural Futures, Arthur Blaser

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Stuart F. Murray's book, Disability and the Posthuman: Bodies, Technology, and Cultural Futures.

Revolutionary Cinema: An Annotated Bibliography Of The 1989 And 1991 Revolutions Through The Lens Of Cinema, Christopher Shaffer, Olga Casey

Articles, Scholarship, and Creative Works by Faculty of University Libraries

The purpose of this paper is to expose librarians, scholars and other interested parties to the numerous films available concerning the 1989 and 1991 European revolutions. The films that are discussed can potentially be used as ancillary sources that will lead to a more in-depth understanding of these topics.

A total of 24 films from eight countries are presented in this annotated bibliography.

In researching this paper, the authors have been unable to find any similar works, which makes this work of particular value to those wanting to learn more about this period of change in Eastern Europe and the …

Our Greatest Weapon: The Rhetoric Of Invasion In Arrival And Independence Day, Emma G. Schilling

Student Publications

Inside of every alien invasion story is a central ‘us vs. them’ mentality that carries the thematic and moral weight of the story. Because of this, alien invasion films can be viewed through a postcolonial lens that reveals the destructive implications of colonialism, including a fear of the foreign and the figure of the white savior. Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996) and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) are no exception to this. Although both films are about aliens coming to Earth, the perspectives they follow in telling the story, their depictions of the military and scientists, their commentary on the role …

A Vermont Romance Turns One Hundred: Vermont's Earliest Surviving Photoplay, Martin L. Johnson, Frederick Pond

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

In 2016, a hundred-year-old film spent the year touring the northern half of Vermont, drawing audiences to refurbished opera houses and picture palaces. But the picture being celebrated for its centenary year was not D. W. Griffith's Intolerance or Lois Weber's Shoes, two of the best-known films made in 1916. Instead, Vermonters were watching what they believed to be the first feature film made in their state, the fetchingly titled photoplay A Vermont Romance.

But A Vermont Romance is not a conventional feature picture. None of the people who appeared in the film had previous movie acting experience, …

Examining The Impact Of Climate Change Film As An Educational Tool, Brittany Bondi, Salma Monani, Sarah M. Principato, Christopher P. Barlett

Student Publications

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of film in communicating issues related to climate change. While previous studies demonstrate an immediate effect of a film post-screening, this study also considered if a film can inspire long-term effects, and if supplemental educational information plays a role on participant understanding.

Design/methodology/approach: Using surveys, we assessed undergraduate students’ climate change responses pre-, immediately-post, and 9-weeks post watching the climate change documentary The Human Element (Prod. Earth Vision Institute, 2018). In the 9-week interim before the final survey, half of the participants received weekly information on climate change via …

Fascist Aesthetics From 1940 To Contemporary Times, Anna M. Gellerman

Publications and Research

Movies and literature all over the world share some common aesthetics: militarization, romanticization of death, beauty of perfection, and even purity. What most don't think about is how these tropes rose to popularity due to Nazi Germany's propaganda films. This work describes these fascist aesthetics, and uses famous publications from the 1940s until now to paint just how common these themes are.

Sustainable Messaging In Film: A Survey Of A College Community, Chelsea Faught

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The concept of sustainability encompasses environmental, social, and economic issues. A sustainable approach encourages a balanced earth in both well-being and resource conservation for the sake of future generations. Unfortunately, awareness of and participation in various dimension of sustainability are currently inadequate given the current projections of the negative impact of climate change to humanity. Therefore, this project was designed to research if there was a relationship between viewing sustainably themed films and becoming more sustainably-conscious as a way to explore a potential avenue for mental and behavioral change. Furthermore, this project examines audience perception of sustainable messaging and content …

Sound And Emotion: The Use Of Music In The Cinematic Experience, Sarah Schulte

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

To portray the radical importance of music in stimulating emotion within cinema, to appeal to an audience’s selective attention to sounds, and to detail the process of creating an original film score, I have scored WKU student Tori Mills’ short film Come Up for Air. Film music is traditionally defined as any music that accompanies a film, though today it more specifically refers to music intended to advance the film’s narrative. Music has played an increasingly important role in transmitting emotion to film audiences, feeding the psychological connection between spectator and on-screen action. To achieve this emotional connection, a film …

Contributions Of Mainstream Sexual Media Exposure To Sexual Attitudes, Perceived Peer Norms, And Sexual Behavior: A Meta-Analysis, Sarah M. Coyne, L. Monique Ward, Savannah L. Kroff, Emilie J. Davis, Hailey G. Holmgren, Alexander C. Jensen, Sarah E. Erickson, Lee W. Essig

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Decades of research have examined the impact of exposure to nonexplicit portrayals of sexual content in media. There is only one meta-analysis on this topic, which suggests that exposure to “sexy media” has little to no effect on sexual behavior. There are a number of limitations to the existing meta-analysis, and the purpose of this updated meta-analysis was to examine associations between exposure to sexual media and users' attitudes and sexual behavior.

Methods: A thorough literature search was conducted to find relevant articles. Each study was coded for associations between exposure to sexual media and one of six outcomes …

Symbolically Annihilating Female Police Officer Capabilities: Cultivating Gendered Police Use Of Force Expectations, Howard Henderson

Center for Justice Research Reports

This first step cultivation analysis examines the quantity, temporal dynamics, and stance of muni-cipal police officer use of force depictions based on the gender of the officer. The 112 theatri-cally released films that comprise the core cop film genre were systematically identified. Subsequently, a population of 468 police use of force scenes was identified to serve as the units of analysis for this study. Findings revealed male officer use of force scenes appeared across all 40 years of films. Female officer use of force scenes, however, were highly restricted to specific films, years, and often dwarfed by male scenes within …

Happy Sad Man: A Small, Gentle, Important Film That Reveals The Vulnerability Of Men, Scott J. Mckinnon

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Review: Happy Sad Man, directed by Genevieve Bailey

Globalization Tropes In Films: A Focus On Crazy Rich Asians, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Learning from and encouraged by the impacts of film film-based windows into globalization phenomena, in this issue of MGDR, we have focused on the film Crazy Rich Asians. In the popular press, the movie has been hailed as a major cultural point of departure for Hollywood as well as panned as just an Asian Asian-themed romantic comedy that celebrates the super-rich of Asia. The buzz around this movie does, however, indicate a slight bend in the curve of the geopolitics of the globalization discourse – and hence our decision to feature a number of academically insightful reviews of this movie …

Sexually Objectifying Microaggressions In Film: Using Entertainment For Clinical And Educational Purposes, Jackie M. Nelson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Our culture is steadily becoming more aware, and less tolerant, of sexual harassment and misconduct. This is particularly evident in the wake of the viral Me Too movement beginning in 2017 which highlighted the breadth of personal experiences of sexual harassment on various social media platforms. Often the focus of these experiences is on overt sexual harassment and assault, but less attention is paid to the buildup that can lead to these terrible events. What is more, is that often these events are attributed to character flaws of the perpetrator without taking covert social norms into perspective. This dissertation takes …

Yellow Fever: Asian Representation In Western Pornography, Chye Shoong Chin

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research project seeks to explore the various implications porn films make on Asians Orientalism. Generally, Asians in pornography are composed of multiple negative archetypes, all based on the underlining purpose of servitude. Characters are portrayed through stereotypes including the use of colonial language to misrepresent Asian men and women in both straight and gay porn videos. Referred to as Orientalism, this ideology exploits Asian characters to privilege the White, male viewer. My research project investigates the following question: How are Asians represented in gay and straight pornographic films and pornographic scenes?

I will be applying scholarly arguments to various …

Legacy- December 2018, South Carolina Institute Of Archaeology And Anthropology--University Of South Carolina

SCIAA Newsletter - Legacy & PastWatch

Contents:

A Tribute to Elizabeth “Betty” Hamilton Stringfellow (November 14, 1921-May 18, 2017..p. 1

Director’s Notes…p. 2

Sergeant York Battlefield Archaeology Study Published…p. 2

Please Welcome Stacey Young, New Director of the Applied Research Division at SCIAA…p. 3

Hidden Under Our Feet: The Broad River Trenching Project…p. 10

Animals Used at Spanish Mount…p. 12

Submerged: Underwater Archaeology of South Carolina: Hands-On Interaction with 8^th Graders…p. 15

6^th Annual Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival- Columbia, SC- October 12-14, 2018…p. 19

ART/SCIAA Donors Update August 2017-December 2018…p. 22

Made Up: A Devised Short Film, Justine Musselman

Honors College Theses

I've explored and studied the use of devising in theatre, and decided to bring that process to the making of a short film. Devising is the process of an ensemble creating a piece together in a collaborative and creative environment. These devised works start without a final script and are formed through discussion, improvisation. and ensemble exercises. Film is a new medium for devising and allows for unlimited creative opportunity and exploration. My devised short film utilizes dramatic makeup as an artistic device to assist in the storytelling. The narrative focuses on the idea of how we present ourselves publicly …

Savannah River Archaeological Research Program Debuts New Film, George Wingard

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.