Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

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

Honors Theses, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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 Profits Of (The Critique Of) Patriarchy: On Toxic Masculinity, Feminism, & Corporate Capitalism In The Barbie Movie, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article explicates the political, social, economic, and cultural contribution of Barbie (2023). Through a critical and normative analysis of four different prominent reviews of the film, this essay explores the quality of discourse surrounding Barbie, with particular emphasis on its feminist critique of toxic masculinity and lack of a coherent criticism of capitalism.

The Crusading Days Of Jackie Stewart: Evaluating The Development Of Safety In Motor Racing During The 1960s., Alex Twitchen

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

This article critically evaluates the contribution of Jackie Stewart in making motor racing a safer sport for competitors. It challenges the validity of the popular assumption that Jackie Stewart by himself developed a ‘culture of safety’ that transformed the sport. Instead, the role of other individuals are identified alongside the importance of three social processes. These processes are identified as the changing balance of power between different masculine identities, the development of commercial sponsorship and a growth in the coverage of the sport on television.

The development of motor racing from the 1960s onwards as a safer sport in which …

Book Review: I Was A Nascar Redneck: Recollections Of The Transformation Of A Yankee Farm Boy To A Southern Redneck In The Golden Era Of Nascar And Beyond., Quinn Beekwilder, Daniel Dean

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Death In Supernatural: Critical Essays, Edited By Amanda Taylor And Susan Nylander, Martina G. Wise

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A review of the collection of critical essays, Death in Supernatural: Critical Essays

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cold Mountain Poems (CMPs), which have been neglected in the history of Chinese literature for ages, captured the attention of most Americans immediately after its being translated into America by the American poet Gary Snyder in 1950s, however. It is Snyder that reconfigured and recreated a sagacious Chinese Chan Buddhist poet Han-shan (literally, Cold Mountain), the acknowledged author of Cold Mountain Poems, in his translation for the postwar Americans in the midst of varied social problems and cultural identity crisis after World War II. Snyder eventually found in his translation of Cold Mountain Poems a back-to-nature remedy of …

Topological Tropology Of V.S. Naipaul’S Islamic Travelogues And Daniel Pipes’ Islamic History: Ahistorical Historicism, Md. Habibullah

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s (1932-2018) first Islamic travelogue Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) contains his experience of a visit from August 1979 to February 1980 to the four non-Arab Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Similarly, his last Islamic travelogue Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples (1998) has a description of another visit to the same countries for five-month in 1995. Concurrently, Daniel Pipes (1949-), an American historian, published his doctoral dissertation, Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), which represents Islamic culture as the first instigator of …

From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …

Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper examines cinematic representations of religion and religious communities in the early cinema of the Yugoslav space. This paper introduces the readers to the rich heritage of the cinema of the Yugoslav space by providing 1) the first study of the representations of religion and the concepts of faith in the early film, and 2) novel approaches in reading religion and history through film. Film is used as a primary rather than supplementary source in historical research on diverse religious and ethnic communities in this part of the Balkan Peninsula. This is the first study that investigates the importance, …

The Library Wants To Kill You: Places Of Information As Battleground And Sanctum In Halo, Mackenzie Streissguth

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Video games are often a widespread access point for studying information-seeking behaviors, as a large portion of the population (and its youth) play them. Understanding how real-world analogues, like libraries, are portrayed in games can give us insights into how they mirror conflicts of reality. By examining the depictions of information systems and accompanying curators in Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), we can begin to investigate the perceptions of libraries and their antagonism in ludonarratives. Resulting analysis reveals multiple layers of archival hostility that are ultimately upended in later iterations in the game series, changing the nature of the library itself. …

Data Lost, Forbidden Or Controlled?: The Archivists Of Horizon Forbidden West, Ashley Lanni

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper discusses the archival and information usage practices of characters within the 2022 video game Horizon Forbidden West. It considers how science fiction settings, particularly those based in post-apocalyptic futures with different technology and information practices, can help us reflect on how contemporary society interacts with information and determines its use. Furthermore, the paper explores the social responsibility informational professionals have toward the world around them through contrasting various groups and characters within the game, positing that the main group's actions are the most morally lauded within the game's narrative.

Misrepresentation Of Women Of Color In Western Media, Nicole C. Schutte

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

This paper delves into the misrepresentation of women of color in western media. From the perspective of bell hooks (1992), the commodification of the Other serves sinister societal “needs” in order to uphold the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Patricia Hill Collins (2000) and Judith Williamson (1986) interpret this as keeping the western racial hierarchy, gender dichotomy, and capitalist markets intact. A vast majority of people believe that any form of representation in the media is a sense of inclusion when in fact misrepresentation is counterproductive and problematic. Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins (1993) would agree that inaccurate portrayals …

Entering The Metaverse: Considering The Implications Of A Journey Into A Virtual World For Nysca At 80 Years, John Pavlik

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

Meta’s Horizon Worlds is among the first Metaverse platforms. Through a digital ethnography, this paper examines the contours of Horizon Worlds. Drawing upon affordances theory, the paper considers the affordances of Horizon Worlds Metaverse within the context of the user experience. Findings suggest that storytelling is central to the nature of the meaning generated inside Horizon Worlds and perhaps the Metaverse in general. But it is not storytelling in a conventional sense. Stories inside the Metaverse are not linear and there is no plot. Metaverse stories do have characters, and they travel pathways and engage in activities and sequential events, …

Witnessing Conspiracy Theories: Developing An Intersectional Approach To Conspiracy Theory Research, David Guignion

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation proposes an intersectional approach to conspiracy theory research that engages conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists by considering their proximity and affiliations with hegemonic power structures. Against challenges to conspiracy theories based on their lack of empirical legitimacy (Rosenblum and Muirhead 2019) and building on arguments that propound their status as “subjugated knowledges” (Bratich 2008), this dissertation argues that conspiracy theories can be vectors of anti-oppressive resistance against systemic forces that disenfranchise racial, gender, and class minorities. Conspiracy theories are not a homogenous phenomenon; they are particular instances of potentially generative suspicion against powerful forces. The dissertation deploys Kelly …

Transgender In Neverland: Dysphoria In A Supernatural Anime, Arya Arsenault

Masters Theses

This research asks the question of why the anime Zombie Land Saga has been hailed as positive and progressive transgender representation by international fans. I examine a famous episode in which the character Lily Hoshikawa comes out as transgender in terms of its themes of gender dysphoria and identity. After considering the changing understanding about these concepts in Japan as a result of Gender Identity Disorder, those two themes are suggested as key to popularity. The impact of the “wrong body” narrative created by GID on transgender culture in Japan is considered through personal accounts and commentary on recent changes. …

The Internet Isn’T Forever: Early Internet Fan Archives, Their Stewards, Lifespans, And The Political Nature Of The Deaths Of Their Queer Communities, Grey D. Mangan

Masters Theses

The concept of a “forever Internet” has been pervasive in the modern digital age, but the degradation of fan archives from the late 1990s and 2000s seems to tell a different story; as such, we find ourselves in the midst of a Digital Dark Age and we are losing independent digital fan archives quickly- what is happening and how can we save this digital cultural memory, particularly queer cultural memory? To lose these fan archives is to lose valuable insight into the lives and communities of the individuals who interacted in these spaces. By utilizing the lenses of play, theft, …

Contexts Of Transformation And Integration In Palestinian Media Institutions In The Digital Age, Osama Abdallah, Ahmad Hamouda

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

In this study, we sought to provide an accurate and detailed diagnosis of the transformations witnessed by Palestinian media institutions in light of the new environment of communication, and to know how Palestinian media institutions can establish a new communication model within their organizational structures in line with the new environment of communication in the digital age. It also discussed the mechanisms used by professional journalists in traditional Palestinian media institutions to deal with the contents produced by citizen journalists. In this context, we posed the following problem: What are the contexts of transformation and integration of traditional Palestinian media …

Body Genres, Embodiment And Engagement: Second Person In Audio Storytelling, Riccardo Giacconi

RadioDoc Review

In the article, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess” (1991), Linda Williams defines as body genres the film genres that are based on stimulating certain physical reactions in the bodies of spectators. These are fear (horror), sexual arousal (pornography), and tears (melodrama). All three genres share, “an apparent lack of proper aesthetic distance, a sense of over-involvement in sensation and emotion. We feel manipulated,” by them. The bodies of whoever watches these films are involved in an “involuntary mimicry” of the body on the screen. During a talk at the 2016 Third Coast Conference, radio producer Eleanor McDowall inquired about …

Show Or Tell? A Systematic Review Of Media And Information Literacy Measurements, Daniel Schofield, Reijo Petter Kupiainen, Vegard Marinius Frantzen, Anette Novak

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Media and information literacy (MIL) is a key concept in several research fields and measuring the levels of MIL is considered valuable for policy stakeholders. However, the concept is complex, and few systematic reviews of research on measuring MIL levels have been conducted. This article draws on a systematic review of peer-reviewed studies measuring MIL between 2000 and 2021. Out of a total of 4008 publications, 236 were included in the analysis, and 87 were analysed in depth. A key finding was that several studies applied broad understandings of MIL, often based on initiatives by international organisations such as UNESCO, …

7th Annual Chapman Staff Art Exhibition Program, Chapman University Staff

Library Displays and Bibliographies

The Leatherby Libraries Hall of Art was established to showcase the creativity of the Chapman community. It was dedicated for this purpose in 2014 although the space has been available for staff and student exhibits since 2011. While past staff art exhibits featured work by Leatherby Libraries staff members only, this is our fifth year opening up the exhibit to any interested staff member of Chapman University.

The 21 artists represented here demonstrate the wide variety of talent at our university. From photography to painting, mosaics to film, the works you see here provide a unique opportunity to view and …