Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Fiscal Sponsorship In Truly Independent Film: Entity And Model Choice And Legal Risks, Samuel Johnson

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This article examines fiscal sponsorship as a legal and financing structure for “truly independent” films—low-budget, non-commercial projects created by filmmakers without access to studio financing, tax incentives, or traditional investors. Neither standalone nonprofit incorporation nor purely for-profit entity structures adequately address the unique needs of such projects. After surveying the development of fiscal sponsorship as a means of funding projects that meet an exempt purpose, relevant IRS guidance, and current prevailing practices and organizational structures in independent film, the article contends that a Model C (“regranting”) fiscal sponsorship paired with a single-member limited liability company (SMLLC) offers the optimal balance …

I Know You Are Watching, Camilo Salas Kusulas

Theses and Dissertations

I Know You Are Watching is a short documentary film that examines the evolving history and scope of mass surveillance, and how to resist it. The film introduces two local New York City artists, Bill Brown from the Surveillance Camera Players, and Sam Lavigne, who misuse technologies designed to watch us, exposing these systems and fighting back through digital art and performance.

Blending interviews, observational footage, personal narration, archival images, and news clips from different eras, the film interrogates the mechanisms of control, and positions art as a method of both understanding and talking back to surveillance.

Enjoying The Golden Screen Of Asian American Representation In A Colorblind Era: Neoliberalism, Narrative, And Negotiation, Jered Mabaquiao

English Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation contributes to Asian American studies, Cinema and Media Studies, and Critical Theory by interrogating how contemporary Asian American representation is shaped by the intertwined pressures of racial politics, neoliberal market demands, and psychic life. Working across race studies, media studies, psychoanalysis, and phenomenological questions of ontology and being, the project argues that Asian American film and television cannot only be understood  through the language of popular culture representation, narrative progress, media visibility, or political inclusion. Instead, I combine such angles to examine how popular culture media participates in the contradictory production of Asian American subjectivity as culturally present …

The Absent Monster: Personal And Cultural Fears Through Kiyoshi Kurosawa’S Pulse, Gracie J. Huras

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Eurovision As A Platform For Cultural Diplomacy In Times Of Conflict, Lucy Meza

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how states utilize the Eurovision Song Contest as a platform for soft power, focusing on the conditions under which cultural performance translates into reputational gains. Drawing on Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power, Biasioli’s theory of songwashing, Zamorano’s typology of cultural diplomacy, Anholt’s competitive identity framework, and Feklyunina’s analysis of identity and narrative, it argues that Eurovision’s effectiveness as a soft power platform is fundamentally contingent on the alignment between a state’s cultural narrative and dominant international perceptions of its legitimacy. Through a qualitative comparative case study approach, the thesis examines two nations whose Eurovision participation during …

Do The Oscars Move Markets? Best Picture Recognition And Public Equity Responses, Avi Dayani

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines when culturally salient events become financially material by testing whether Academy Awards recognition is reflected in public equity markets. The central question is whether Best Picture nomination announcements and wins generate abnormal returns or abnormal trading activity for the publicly traded parent firms linked to nominated films, and whether those responses depend on the firm’s exposure to filmed entertainment. I study Best Picture nominees from 2000 through 2024, map each film to the public parent of its primary distributor, and construct a firm-by-Oscar-year sample of 119 observations. Using an event-study framework, I calculate abnormal returns as firm …

Procedural Rhetoric And Prosociality: How Game Mechanics Shape Altruistic Decision-Making, Elijah Emory-Muhammad

CMC Senior Theses

This study investigates how different prosocial video game designs influence subsequent altruistic behavior, specifically comparing interactive narratives with procedural rhetoric. While prior research demonstrates that prosocial games can prime helpful behaviors, less is known about the underlying mechanical structures driving these effects. Fifteen participants engaged with either an Interactive Narrative Game (ING) or a Procedural Rhetoric Game (PRG) before completing a resource allocation task (Dictator Game). Results revealed no statistically significant differences between the two conditions in promoting sacrificial altruism or satisfying basic psychological needs. Instead, participants across both groups demonstrated a strong adherence to an equality-seeking norm, consistently choosing …

Selling Ideals: Sexualization In Teen Girl Magazines, 2007-2017, Megan Coogan

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

Magazines are made to sell more than just a product; they sell lifestyles and ideals. Teen girl magazines target adolescents starting as young as twelve years old, but is the content in its pages appropriate and identifiable for that demographic? This study investigated how levels of perceived sexualization changed between 2007, 2012, and 2017, in Seventeen and Teen Vogue magazines. A decrease in perceived sexualization was expected across the ten-year period of time. This window of time reflects the last ten years of publication for both magazines. Research was conducted by creating and utilizing a grading system for non-explicit sexualized …

Film For Jeanette, Brice Goldberg

Theses and Dissertations

Film for Jeanette is an experimental documentary concerning grief, memory, and what remains of those who have left this physical plane. The film paints the portrait of my late sister, Jeanette Lee Goldberg, who died in a car accident when she was 19. What begins as a memorial becomes a celebration of her life and an exploration into the complexities of her character that led to her death. Jeanette’s story is told through interviews with family members, while the visuals, created with various alternative 16mm film techniques, depict my own journey through the filmmaking process. I was only 3 when …

The Importance Of College Radio As An Experiential Learning Opportunity For Students, John Boggess

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As society evolves, journalism does too, and many universities are experiencing a significant shift from traditional outlets such as radio to more modern, digital platforms. College radio is a common resource of journalism schools to practice and develop professional skills, but with budget cuts and a lack of continued support from the university, it can be presumed that college campuses might be trying to phase it out. While radio may not be the most booming outlet in the world of journalism today, college radio still possesses the opportunity for students to gain the proper skills for the professional world that …

Slay Her: The Rhetoric Of Violation In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Lea N. Wright

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research draws on feminist theory and monster theory to perform a close rhetorical analysis of incidents in the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy) where female characters are violated physically, psychologically, and/or sexually. Buffy is one of the most-analyzed television shows of all time, with a particular emphasis on the show’s engagement with feminism; however, the issue of violation has received little scholarly investigation despite multiple instances of it within the show. Through examining the rhetorical elements (such as dialogue, camerawork, body language, and character response) that surround incidents of violation, this research reveals that Buffy …

In-Between Echoes, Jiayi Liang

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I explore memory, diaspora, labor, and intergenerational trauma through constructed photography and experimental film. Informed by Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the Third Space, I examine how identity is shaped through displacement, cultural negotiation, and inherited memory. Drawing from my relationship with my grandmother and my experience as a Chinese woman living in diaspora, I consider labor as both survival and care, tracing how domestic gestures and emotional structures continue across generations. Through collage, reconstruction, and animation, I rework fragments of family archives, colonial landscape imagery, and personal photographs to address grief, racialized perception, belonging, and the …

Life In Laughter: Comedy’S Impact On Student Health And Success, Julia Weinstein

Honors Undergraduate Theses

College students face rising rates of anxiety, depression, and stress, highlighting the need for accessible, stigma-free wellness interventions. While comedy is often seen as entertainment, research indicates laughter produces measurable psychological and physiological benefits, including reduced cortisol and increased endorphins. Life in Laughter, a creative-research hybrid project, investigates how live and digital comedy experiences affect college students’ mood, stress, and sense of belonging. Using mixed methods, data were collected through anonymous audience surveys, app-based reflections via JoyScroll, and interviews, supplemented by a mini-documentary. Findings suggest humor functions as both an emotional regulation tool and a means of fostering …

To Print A Remake: An Analysis Of Hollywood Remakes And Their Cultural Value, Connor F. Seaton

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, audiences and movie critics have expressed concern that Hollywood’s growing reliance on remakes, sequels, franchises, and similar adaptations has led to a broader worry that originality is fading from modern cinema and that the industry is instead focused on using adaptations to maximize profits. Although adaptation is often seen as a commercially driven framework for reproducing existing intellectual property in a new media format, this thesis argues that it should be recognized as an autonomous cultural category with its own artistic, historical, and social significance and merit. By analyzing adaptation scholarship and reviewing its complex historical development, …

Science Fiction Cinema And The Technological Sublime: Spectacle And The Infinite From Early Cinema To Digital, David Jackson Dr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines how science fiction cinema constructs and reimagines the technological sublime in the twentieth century: the experience of awe, terror, and admiration provoked by human-made power and scale. Drawing on the philosophical foundations of the sublime in Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant and extending through Leo Marx’s and David E. Nye’s theorization of the technological sublime, I propose an aesthetic mode in which representation inflected with affect translates technological spectacle into examinations of humanity’s role and agency in the face of overwhelming technologized worlds and in some cases, even the universe itself.

Through three distinct historical periods …

International Students Experience Show: A Television Content To Prepare African Students For Study In The United States., Eric Atsu Senyo

Masters Theses

For many African students, studying in the United States begins with hope but often leads to confusion, isolation, and unmet expectations. This creative thesis presents International Students Experience Show, a 26-minute television shows designed to prepare African students for the realities of studying in the U.S. Grounded in Uses and Gratifications Theory, the project positions media as an active tool for empowerment through storytelling, practical guidance, and emotional engagement.

The series addresses key challenges, housing, transportation, mobile communication and daily life experiences through a hybrid format of personal testimonies, panel discussions, expert interviews, and field segments. Featuring nine African international …

The Final Boys' Club: Conceptualizing A Final Boy Of 1980s Horror, Ej Newton

Masters Theses

Carol J Clover’s (2015) Final Girl, the female slasher protagonist who survives to the end of the movie, has become a staple of horror scholarship, providing insight into the function of gender within the genre as well as our cultural beliefs surrounding femininity. Given the attention paid to horror’s leading ladies, however, another fascinating figure has gone unexplored: the Final Boy. This project analyzes nine horror films from the 1980s with young male protagonists in order to conceptualize and critique this previously unidentified trope. Utilizing McKerrow’s (1989) critical rhetoric as a guide, this research not only provides a thorough definition …

El Cine Alegórico Del Tardofranquismo: El Arte Frente Al Silencio Y El Olvido, Angela Rodriguez Mooney

The Coastal Review

En contraste con los años de la postguerra, se nota una tendencia no realista en el arte durante la etapa final de la dictadura de Franco e incluso durante la Transición. Cinematográficamente, la guerra civil española y la vida bajo un gobierno autoritario es frecuentemente representada indirectamente a través de las experiencias íntimas o el tono lírico e intimista de los conflictos personales y familiares.  Considerando el silenciamiento de las experiencias de la guerra impuesto durante el franquismo, investigamos en este ensayo el uso del lenguaje alegórico no realista presente en las obras Ana y los lobos, (1973), de …

(Dis)Orientations: Finding Rhythm Within Queer Nightlife In Los Angeles, Frances Bright Currie

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines how queer individuals in Los Angeles perceive, inhabit, and reshape their experiences in queer cultural spaces. Through this project, I trace the evolution of queer nightlife in Los Angeles (from early gay counterspaces, through the collectivist politics of the Queer Nation, to post-gay assimilation and contemporary “inclusive” queer nightlife) in order to examine how queer space has been shaped and reshaped by a recurring tension between the utopian promise of universality and inclusion and the material realities of exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, queer theory, and approaches to memory and the archive, I argue that queer nightlife …

Lights, Camera, Aggression!: Exploring The Relationship Between The Horror Genre And Criminality, Taylor M. Wanke

Scripps Senior Theses

This proposed correlational study will examine the effect of exposure and involvement with the horror genre in media and the crime genre in media on one’s antisocial personality traits, criminal thinking, criminal behavior/aggression, and morality in the general population and those who are currently incarcerated. Data will be collected through a Qualtrics survey accessed online for the general sample and printed out for the incarcerated sample. Each participant will complete exposure checklists, involvement scales for each genre, and multiple measures to record their level of each dependent variable. Data will be analyzed using a correlational analysis, 1-sample t-tests, and a …