Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Reclaiming Tremé: A Design Research Thesis, Tori Dunston

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Reclaiming Tremé explores the potential for design to support the well-being of the oldest African American neighborhood divided by urban highway projects in the US. This comprehensive thesis that seeks to improve the well-being the neighborhood using precedents, historical context, and the quantifiable architectural goals of WELL v2, to present a design solution for Tremé. Through understanding the current communities needs and having historical context of the area, the design strategy focuses on creating a vibrant cultural core that enhances the community's well-being. By integrating new structures and amenities, preserving cultural heritage, and enhancing physical and social infrastructure, the project …

An Examination Of How The Media Portrayed Professional Female Athletes During The 2023 Women's World Cup In The Match-Up Between Spain And The United States, Brianna R. Breazier

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

This project is an examination of how the media portrayed professional female athletes during the 2023 Woen's World Cup in the match-up between Spain and the United States. This project consists of a literature review of the history of both countries, an overview of feminist theory, and past studies that show current patterns of biases or stereotypical behavior in today’s mainstream media. This project also consists of a cross-examination and comparison between Spain and the United States, specifically examining the timeline of events between the two. The purpose of this study is to compare the media trends of professional female …

In This Time And Place, Christy Aggens

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I seek out and spend time in relatively wild outdoor locations and create art based on my observations. The resulting work explores time and place, while the creation of the work increases my engagement with the environment. This process serves as a reminder that time is relative and life itself is continuous.

I start by finding time in locations where nature has been given a chance to thrive and where the sound of human activity is at a minimum. During these retreats, I use my senses to absorb information and document the experience by journaling, making recordings, taking photographs, drawing, …

Trust Me: Film + Q&A; (February 22, 2024, 5:30 Pm, Sheldon Museum Of Art) [Poster], Sheldon Museum Of Art, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Poster for Trust Me: Film + Q&A held February 22, 2024 at 5:30 PM at the Sheldon Museum of Art (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, United States).

Poster blurb:

In today's information landscape, how do you know whom--and what--you can trust? Watch the award-winning, feature-length documentary Trust Me, which explores how media technology is influencing society and what we can do about it.

A Q&A with Rosemary Smith, filmmaker and managing director of the non-partisan Getting Better Foundation, follows.

More information about the screening is available at https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/trust-me-documentary-to-screen-at-sheldon/.

More information about the film is available at https://www.trustmedocumentary.com/ …

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 …

"Don't Put Restrictions On Us": The Dangers Of Conservative And Populist Appeals For Abortion Access In Post-Roe America, Kayla Schmitz

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis critically analyzes Kansans for Constitutional Freedom’s campaign ads for their campaign against the Value Them Both Amendment in Kansas in 2022. Value Them Both would have stripped the Kansas constitution of its protection of personal autonomy and therefore abortion rights. Kansans for Constitutional Freedom used populist and otherwise conservative appeals in their ads to reach audiences across the political “spectrum” to gain their votes against Value Them Both. While the campaign was widely successful, there are many things it did not do for the broader concern of reproductive healthcare access in the United States, particularly for those living …

Symbolic Annihilation And Stereotyping Of Native American Women In News: A Content Analysis Of Health, Safety, And Economic Status Related News, Shreyoshi Ghosh

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

This is an exploratory study on the safety, economic, and health challenges of Native American women who constitute about 1.5% of the American population. With the symbolic annihilation and stereotyping of Native American people and women of color, there was a need to study the portrayal of Native American women in news. The findings indicated there was a growth in news coverage during 2018-19 and safety, including missing and murdered, emerged as a key topic. But symbolic annihilation in health and economic status including pay gap news was significant. Health news mostly covered maternal health and deaths but excluded most …

The Utilization Of Broadcasting Media In Meeting The Information Needs Of Prospective Regional Chief Regarding Political News, Mohammad Zamroni, Suwandi Sumartias, Soeganda Priyatna, Atie Rachmiatie

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Broadcast media is one of the electronic media that is widely used to meet the information needs of the public. One of them is television media which is currently still enjoyed by many people amid the presence of new media and social media. There are two private television stations, namely iNews TV and Metro TV as news television which are widely used by political parties and regional head candidate pairs in campaigns, building self-image, and offering work programs. Likewise, the community in fulfilling the information needs related to the 2017 Pilkada DKI Jakarta also took advantage of this television media. …

Fighting For 504: Negotiating Hegemonic Ability Through Verbal Advocacy And Disabled Embodiment, Drew Finney

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In my thesis, I look at San Francisco’s 504 sit-in for disability rights. I argue that both the verbal advocacy and the embodied actions of protestors demonstrate that dis/ability is constructed through a hegemonic process. I contend that combating hegemonic understandings of disability creates a tension between being a counter hegemonic movement and desiring the benefits of hegemonic legibility. To make these arguments, my thesis draws several conclusions. I argue that activists enacted a civil- rights framework to communicate the need for Section 504 to the public. I explain that activists adopted the role of educator to address problematic ideas …

Social Studies Teacher Perceptions Of News Source Credibility, Christopher H. Clark, Mardi Schmeichel, H. James Garrett

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These …

Political Communication Of Women's Aceh Legislators (Opportunities And Challenges Of Women In Aceh In The Public Sphere), Ainol Mardhiah, Dadang Rahmat Hidayat, Agus Rahmat, Nuryah Asri Sjafirah

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The lack of representation of women in Aceh parliament, indicates that women were left behind in every decision-making related to the development of the Aceh region. Though women are the largest group in this area. This paper intends to examine the political communication of women legislative members in Aceh by focusing on: opportunities and challenges for Acehnese women in the public sphere. This study uses qualitative research methods with a case study approach. The results of the study show that with the legalization of the Law no. 12, 2003 on the Public Election and Law on the Aceh Government no. …

Women Representation In Lyric Of Minang Song “Laki Den Hobi Baburu”, Tantri Puspita Yazid, Asep Suryana, Dadang Sugiana, Neni Yulianita

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research focuses on women representation in lyric of Minang song titled “laki den hobi baburu” popularized by Elly Kasim. The assumption of this research is that the song’s lyric reconstructing Minang women based on patriarchy ideology, where women are marginalized because of having husband whose willing to hunt boars. Moreover, to analyze the phenomenon above this research used Sara Mills critical discourse analysis method which covers macro, micro and representation in the text. However, researcher only focus on micro level analysis. This is a qualitative research which data were acquired by focus group discussion and library research. This song …

Bat Meets Girl: Adapting The Dark Knight’S Love Life To The Big Screen, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It is no secret that Hollywood loves a good romance. What is perhaps sometimes overlooked however is how important romance and female characters are to male-dominated action films. Esma Kartal argues women and romance are deliberately placed into action films to create “romantic relief” and attract female viewers for greater crossover appeal.¹ In addition to romance, Yvonne Tasker observes how women in action films serve as a witness for “the hero’s suffering” and humanity in action films.² Finally, a classic use of women and romance in action films is that of the damsel-indistress, which continues to this day …

Batman's Animated Brain(S), Lisa Kort-Butler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Presentations

Much of the analysis of Batman’s brain – whether by scholars, writers, or other comic characters – focuses on his psychological make‐up. That is, what makes Bruce Wayne psychologically motivated to be The Batman? His childhood trauma is often poised as the answer, the tireless pursuit of “justice” in an attempt to regain control from the trauma of his parents’ murders (Sanna 2015). The same could be said for his nemeses. Madness, psychopathy, and insanity are centered in the corrupted minds of Gotham’s ghastliest, some of whom have also had psychological or physical traumas (Langley 2012; Lytle 2008). A psychological …

What Is My Role In Changing The System? A New Model Of Responsibility For Structural Injustice, Robin Zheng

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Faculty Publications

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the Role-Ideal Model is that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles …

"In The Land Of Tomorrow": Representations Of The New Woman In The Pre-Suffrage Era, Natalie B. O'Neal

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This digital anthology explores feminism in selected short fiction by women writers from the 1911 run of the popular women’s magazines Woman’s Home Companion, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The Farmer’s Wife. This fiction furthered the women’s rights movement by allowing women to imagine a world similar to their own with a heroine who voiced their desires and enacted change. Rather than the more experimental, inaccessible literature of avant garde high modernist writers consumed by the upper class, popular fiction reached a wider, middle class audience and was more effective at producing a progressive zeitgeist following the stilted Victorian …

“Uh Oh. Cue The [New] Mommy Wars”: The Ideology Of Combative Mothering In Popular U.S. Newspaper Articles About Attachment Parenting, Julia Moore, Jenna Abetz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Through critique of concordance, we argue that popular U.S. newspaper articles about attachment parenting perpetuate the ideology of combative mothering, where mothers are in continuous competition with one another over parenting choices. Specifically, article writers construct a new, singular metaphorical mommy war between pro-attachment parenting and anti-attachment parenting proponents by prepackaging attachment parenting and its debate, advocating for attachment parenting through instinct and science, and rejecting attachment parenting because of harm to children, relationships, and mothers. A minority of articles, however, avoided reifying this pro-/anti-attachment parenting mommy war by exploring the complexities of parenting beyond prepackaged philosophies. We explore the …

Tacit Cultural Knowledge: An Instrumental Qualitative Case Study Of Mixed Methods Research In South Africa, Debra Rena Miller

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Notwithstanding the dramatic expansion of mixed methods research, research methodologies, methods, and findings are culturally situated. Problematically, studies conducted outside the global north often embrace canonical methodologies aimed at understanding concepts more explicit than tacit. Learning about the needs of researchers and participants in South Africa may bring to light taken-for-granted assumptions in Anglo-American orientations of mixed methods. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore aspects of tacit cultural knowledge that contextualize mixed methods research in South Africa.

In-person interviews among South African professors as well as a corpus of books, sections, journal articles, and theses informed the …

Maternal Perceptions Of Agency In Intergenerational Transmission Of Spanish: The Case Of Latinos In The U.S. Midwest, Isabel Velázquez

Spanish Language and Literature

This article examines the ways in which a group of first-generation Latino immigrants to the U.S. Midwest conceptualized their role in their children’s bilingual development. Respondents were asked to identify the individuals or institutions on which their children’s language and academic development depended, as well as household practices perceived as conducive to Spanish maintenance, and perceived obstacles to their children’s use of Spanish in the domains of home, school, and community. Discussion centers on maternal perceptions of agency because of the centrality of the mother in intergenerational minority language transmission. It is argued here that immigrant mothers’ perceptions of agency …

Mapping Injustice: The World Is Witness, Place-Framing, And The Politics Of Viewing On Google Earth, Joshua P. Ewalt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Working from assumptions that inequality is often spatially informed, a set of interactive cartographies has recently proliferated on Google Earth. In this essay, I analyze one of those interactive cartographies: The World is Witness produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). I read the map as an organizational rhetoric that frames place as "embedded injustice." I also argue that thorough analysis of the framing of local place on Google Earth must inherently question whether the map can create a disruption in the viewing subject. While the map presents vital information on excruciatingly despicable acts of injustice, and the …

Contesting Sphere Boundaries Online: Private/Technical/Public Discourses In Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome Discussion Groups, Kittie E. Grace

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The internet is fast becoming a means for people to obtain information, creating a unique forum for the intersection of the public, technical, and private spheres. To ground my research theoretically, I used Jürgen Habermas’s sphere theory. Habermas (1987) explains that the technical sphere colonizes the private sphere, which decreases democratic potential. In particular, the internet is a place for altering technical colonization of the private and public spheres.

My research focuses on women’s health because it is a particularly useful case study for examining sphere tensions. Historically, the biomedical health establishment has been a powerful agent of colonization, resulting …