American Film Studies Commons^™

This Town Ain’T Big Enough For The Two Of Us: Western Genre Cinema Rhetoric Of The Twentieth Century And The Modern Alt-Right Movement, Lauren Samantha Bailey

Online Theses and Dissertations

This work uses Western genre cinema as a springboard for evaluating how alt-right political ideologies are absorbed by common, everyday people. Using the exploratory work of political journalist Andrew Marantz and employing his research of the alt-right movement as supporting material, it explores the dissemination of alt-right rhetoric in contemporary settings. Evaluating instances of hegemonic masculinity in John Farrow’s 1953 film Hondo and John Huston’s 1960 film The Unforgiven, alongside John Ford’s The Searchers, this work explores how filmic versions of masculinity have shaped characters to mimic and enforce social and societal systems that coincidentally adhere to alt-right ideologies. Hegemonic …

Navigating Global Capitalism: Identity, Ambivalence, And Resistance In Cultural Productions, Ahmad Bilal

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

I have navigated global capitalism in cultural productions that include selected short fiction of Rohinton Mistry, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You , and Benedict Andrews' Seberg. In these works, I have explored resistance, marginality, mobility, and identity to reflect how capitalism transcends local boundaries to become a pervasive social system worldwide.

The Exorcist Effect: Horror, Religion, And Demonic Belief, Sena Nurhan Duran

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Joseph P. Laycock and Eric Harrelson, The Exorcist Effect: Horror, Religion, and Demonic Belief (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2023).

When Language Fails: A Critical Analysis Essay Of Kathryn Stockett’S The Help:, Evan Mccreary

Black Album Mixtape

A critical analysis essay of Kathryn Stockett's New York Times Bestselling book, The Help, and it's subsequent film adaptation, and how in recent years, particularly following the murder of George Floyd, the story has been used as a classroom tool for teaching students about racism and its effects. Written by a Black student in a primarily white school community, this essay was written as an antithesis to the ideology that the book and movie exceed their intended intentions of being a beneficial teaching tool to youth.

The Successful Façade: The Powers Of Postmodernism Within The Comedy, Abigail Muller

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

The comedy has always been an incredibly versatile genre: although it certainly contains rote story formulas meant to provide lighthearted entertainment, the comedy can also reveal interesting perspectives pertaining to darker underlying issues, allowing audiences to process these hypocrisies as from behind a screen of safety. Such is the case of the movies The King of Comedy (1982), Wag the Dog (1997), Bowfinger (1999), and Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), all of which can be classified as comedic escapades yet fail to conceal their corrupted underbellies from a prying viewer. The four films, despite occurring in wildly different worlds and containing …

An Overview And Analysis Of The Wire’S First Season, Jack Gullo

Soaring: A Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the Fall of 2023, I had the great pleasure of studying the first season of an HBO drama from the 2000s called The Wire. In this paper, I analyze how creator David Simons made relevant cultural commentary about American capitalism and its effects on the citizens of our cities, specifically Baltimore. Simon derives his knowledge of Baltimore from his years spent as a crime reporter at The Baltimore Sun, which had a profound influence on the realism displayed in the show. This first season of The Wire proves to be sophisticatedly complex, stepping away from traditional cop shows at …

That Girl Vs. New Girl: The Perils Of Choice Feminism, Katherine Noble

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

In recent years, Elizabeth Meriwether’s television show New Girl has begun to reach the status of a cult classic. The show’s sharp humor and quirky protagonist have captured the hearts and minds of many. But is this all for the good? New Girl features a controversial protagonist, Jessica Day, whose personality grates on some and resonates with others. Jessica represents stereotypically feminine interests and ideals yet takes on a leading role and independence not always afforded to female characters. This opens her, and the larger show, up to feminist readings and critiques. Surprisingly, little scholarly research has been conducted on …

Montana As Place Of (Un)Belonging: Landscape, Identity, And The American West In Bella Vista (2014), Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

The American West is not just a geographical terrain but a mythical construct that occupies a powerful place in the popular imagination thanks to myriad literary and artistic works that have presented the region through specific archetypes emphasizing its vast ruggedness, white masculinity, and unique Americanness. In recent decades, revisionist scholarly and artistic works, however, have attempted to offer more nuanced perspectives on the region challenging its assumed homogenous history and fixed and stable identity. In particular, women filmmakers have recast the region through multifaceted representations underlining its complexity, diversity, and transnational dimensions. This article analyzes Vera Brunner-Sung’s film Bella …

Religious Iconography, Expressionist Lighting, And The Antihero's Spiritual Journey In Marvel's Daredevil, Savannah L. Pruett

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In Marvel’s Daredevil (2015), Matthew Murdock undergoes different phases of an antiheroic spiritual journey as his faith in the judicial system and his Maker is tested by evil in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. This thesis will dig deeper to reveal how the Daredevil series uses purposefully designed religious iconography and expressionist lighting to tell the story of Matthew Murdock’s antiheroic spiritual journey across three seasons. This thesis aims to prove that Daredevil is a complex and thought-provoking franchise that analyzes what it means to be an antihero, including the moral and ethical lines one is willing to cross to …

The Regenarrative: How To Change The Story In Order To Change The Future, S. Rose Bigheart O'Leary

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Abstract

In the era of Climate Change, many are concerned that the end of the Anthropocene, or the end of the era of human life on Earth, is upon us. Western European colonialism and its subsequent systems (settler-colonialism, colonial-capitalism, and globalization - sometimes termed “neocolonialism”) have all been implicated in contributing to unsustainable behaviors linked to accelerating climate change. In searching for possible solutions, some have called for listening to Indigenous Peoples, citing ethics of sustainability found among many Indigenous cultures. However, the cultural products of settler-colonialism are still dominant in ways that do not allow for Indigenous worldviews to …

Review Of Empire And Environment: Ecological Ruin In The Transpacific., Hanyue Li

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

A Book Review on Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific.

David Henry Hwang’S Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography And Parody On Racial Stereotypes, Quan Manh Ha, Jacob Christiansen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Hwang’s play Yellow Face (2007), a dramaturgically inventive work, combines multiple narrative forms into a plot that blurs the distinction among social science, social commentary, and fiction. The play is simultaneously self-mocking and self-examining in its representation of the Asian American experience in theatre. It both examines Hwang’s own racial identity and boldly redefines conventional theatrical forms as the playwright places himself at the center of a highly embarrassing, fictional racial controversy in order to scrutinize the performativity of an Asian American identity. This article argues that Yellow Face is fictitious autoethnodrama as it acerbically parodies racialization.

"Loving You No Matter What You Do": Ai's Dramatic Monologues, 1970s Asian American Feminisms, And Reproductive Justice, Catherine Irwin

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay makes visible the 1970s involvement of Asian American and Women of Color feminists in reproductive justice. Grounded in the Asian American feminist praxis of remembering, this essay analyzes how three dramatic monologues by the Asian American mixed-race poet Ai engage with the discourses of reproduce justice set forth by Asian American and Women of Color activists leading up to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Using an Asian American feminist lens, this paper argues that the speakers in Ai’s monologues utilize these discourses circulating about abortion and women’s health care to construct images of the treatment of dispossessed …

In Praise Of Limes, Poets, And Mentors: A Conversation With Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Noelle Brada-Williams, Elizabeth Asborno

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Twelve: Counting Our Blessings, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Aaldp Cover Volume 12, Joanne Lamb

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Keeping It Real: The Evolution Of The Black American Sitcom, Ebony E. Prescod

Capstones

The image of the black person has undergone many iterations in American popular culture. From the mammy of post antebellum America, to blaxploitation, to the black upper class -- what it next for the representation of black people in popular media, especially as it is now being helmed by black creatives. What does the black American of the 2020s look like? Now, what does it look like to be true to the black experience, today?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-KpHMb37_khYkOmlR6-gEPGEHLVZA4ND7HwNwhdz6ig/edit?usp=sharing

Narratives In, On, And Around Contemporary Queer Film: A Study Of Adam And Its Paratexts, Jeremy Stoller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Film’s ability to present and inspire desire, and to realize alternate worlds, render it a uniquely potent medium for expressing queerness. Because of this potency, and because films are among the most prominent ways that LGBTQ+ people are represented in society, queer film can feel both deeply personal and highly political for LGBTQ+ identifying audiences. But movies do not merely offer statements about political systems, they are also made within and reflective of those systems.

Scholars have thoroughly investigated films and our relationships to them for productive ways of seeing gender, sexuality, desire, and oppression. But the conversations about how …

Women's Interracial Friendships: Cultivating Coalitional Possibilities Across Difference Through Dialogue, Akie Fukushige Wenk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I thread through the macro-structure as well as micro-operations of hegemonic ideologies, namely white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 1995, Valdes, 1996), that has historically plagued the United States, eventually gaining a global reach over time. I center interracial friendship between Black and White cis-women, where I locate coalitional possibilities that begin at the grassroots level. I situate this interracial relationship within the socio-ecological system where the personal meets the social (including racialized backgrounds). I use a series of analogies to equate these ideologies as toxins in the air, water, and soil. Soil is where we can work …

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …