Film and Media Studies Commons^™

The Mundo I Imagine, Angeliky Castrellon

Theses and Dissertations

My work investigates the human experience of belonging and how the force of displacement alters the perception of one's present and enables dissociation. After leaving my home and starting a new life overseas, coming back never felt the same; I couldn’t find peace and comfort anywhere. This made me create an imaginary world called “Mundo.” Shelters for the souls of the displaced, looking for comfort. As I became a graduate student in the Craft/Materials Studies department, my perspective widened, and my work itself answered a question for me: I want to be comfortable everywhere; how can my home be everywhere …

Visual Semiotics And Cultural Hybridity In Orión, El Atlante: Negotiating Global Comic Codes And Mexican Identity, Jaime Cruz-Ortiz

The Coastal Review

This article examines the 1980s Mexican comic series Orión, el Atlante through the lens of visual semiotics and cultural hybridity, drawing on Roland Barthes’s theory of polysemy and Néstor García Canclini’s concept of hybridization. While Mexican historietas have long been understudied, Orión offers a compelling case for understanding how Latin American comics negotiate global superhero tropes and local cultural imaginaries. The analysis foregrounds the historieta’s layered visual codes and narrative strategies, revealing how its retrofuturistic Atlantis blends Greco-Roman aesthetics, advanced technology, and indigenous symbolism to construct a mythic space that evokes both precolonial grandeur and modern aspiration. Orión’s characterization—rooted …

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, …

The Phone Eats First: Reconfiguring Cultural Capital And Performing Taste On Tiktok’S #Torontoeats, Annie M. Willick

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study investigates how TikTok reconfigures cultural capital through the visual commodification and performative display of Toronto’s food culture using the hashtag “#TorontoEats”. Through a digital ethnographic multimodal critical discourse analysis, my research considers Bourdieu’s (1984) definition of cultural capital as the guiding definition of distinction, status, and personal taste. This analysis considers how cultural capital manifests through algorithmic engagement, adherence to platform norms, and TikTok’s multimodal format that blends video, sound, text, and gesture to entice audiences. Findings suggest that mundane food practices and activities are transformed into conspicuous commodities on TikTok, where creators position themselves as tastemakers and …

Revisiting The Rural Folk Devil: Rural 'Othering' And The Connections Between Media Stereotypes And Rural Issues, Brooke Baker, Ida L. Oesteraas, Stephen T. Young, Elizabeth Monk-Turner

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The current study is a discourse analysis investigating anti-idyllic cinematic representations, specifically in the horror genre, of rural people, places, and cultures. Findings reveal that anti-idyllic images and discourses are prominent within recently released horror films, which rely heavily on framing rural people as the deviant “other.” Special attention is given to the cultural work of these stereotypical depictions and the associated social harms for rural communities. Specifically, we argue that (1) corporations, particularly film companies, contribute to social harm in rural areas by disseminating negative and anti-idyllic representations; (2) these portrayals have tangible and detrimental effects on both people …

America’S Spectacle: The Business Of Female Beauty In Professional Cheerleading, Marlene Adelman

Capstone Showcase

The National Football League (NFL) is built on values that also represent the deep rooted patriarchal structures within the country it exists in. The NFL is more than a game; it’s a mirror of America’s powerful subjugation of its women. Using one of the most recognizable cheerleading teams, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, this thesis aims to illustrate how gender is constructed and commodified in professional sports media, which reinforces the male gaze, furthers racial and gender inequalities, and contributes to women’s mental health and body image issues. This paper uses several theories, including male gaze, gender, and intersectionality, along with …

Visual Aids And Numeracy In Healthcare: Leveraging The Drawing Effect, Zephyr J. Markley

Capstone Showcase

Healthcare decisions often require patients to interpret numerical risk information under stress, yet many struggle with low numeracy, which can distort comprehension and undermine informed consent. Well-designed visual aids can improve diagnostic inference, calibrate confidence, and support better choices, especially for patients with limited numeracy, but their impact depends on whether users can actually interpret the format accurately. Drawing may further enhance these tools by adding a tactile, generative layer that engages visual, semantic, and motoric processing while helping patients organize information into concrete models.

Passive visual aids appear useful but limited because they often position patients as observers rather …

The Split Child: Fragmented Temporalities And Selves In Post-Francoist Horror Cinema, Harper A. Denniston

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis interrogates the prolific figure of the spectral child in post-dictatorial horror cinema in Spain. During the renaissance wave of the horror boom (a period between the late 1990s and early 2000s that experienced a surge in horror films), narratives of haunting often presented the ghost in child form, blending childhood and horror. This thesis examines the spectral child as depicted in the seminal horror films The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and The Orphanage (2007). First, I establish the historical context behind these films, exploring the traumatic history of children during the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship, Spain’s cultural …

(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 …

Performing Brazilian Identity: The Cultural Politics Of Carmen Miranda, Nicole M. Pineiro Serrano

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This honors undergraduate thesis examines how Carmen Miranda’s performances shaped Brazilian national identity in both Brazilian cinema and Hollywood in the mid-twentieth century. Through film analysis, historical research, and cultural theory, the study examines Miranda’s public persona and the symbolic significance of the Baiana costume, with respect to Brazil’s Estado Novo regime, and Hollywood’s own depictions of Latin America. Overall, it argues that Miranda’s image functioned as a site of cultural negotiation, where Brazilian cultural expression met Hollywood’s exoticizing portrayals, but the encounter did not always stay as a fixed stereotype. The study also examines the tensions between authenticity, commodification, …

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 …

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 …

The Ethereal Being That Is Me, And Maybe You, Hwiy Chang

Theses and Dissertations

The Ethereal Being That Is Me, and Maybe You is a 23-minute video collection of short stories accompanied by an installation at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. This thesis explores the work’s creation as a visual and narrative meditation on self-transformation, drawing from personal experiences in therapy and philosophical texts including Carl Jung’s concept of the unconscious. The paper examines how each story represents a distinct stage of transformation—from recognizing patterns to confronting setbacks to reshaping internal dialogue—and how watercolor’s fluid, unpredictable nature serves as a visual metaphor for the process of change. The installation component …

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 …

The Confidence-Man Goes To The Moving Panorama: Herman Melville’S Confidence Narrator And United States Imperialism, Bradley J. Lee

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis argues that Herman Melville fashioned his novel The Confidence-Man; His Masquerade (1857) after the moving panorama, a popular entertainment technology contemporary with the novel. More specifically, the thesis argues that the novel recalls Banvard’s Mississippi Panorama (1846). Using Jay Leyda’s The Melville Log and John Hanners’ record of Banvard’s performances, I establish beyond reasonable doubt the possibility that Melville saw this painting, or, at the very least, was aware of it, its content, and its social position. Tracing the novel’s engagement with this panorama reveals what seems at first to be its imperialist, Manifest Destinarian undertones. The novel’s …

‘Politics! Not My Thing!’:The Misrepresentation Of Anne Boleyn In Six: The Musical, Natalie M. Bowen

Undergraduate Research Posters

With the rise of Hamilton and Come From Away, stage musicals have become the next hottest form of historical reenactment, and the six wives of Henry VIII are no exception. These modern spins on Tudor history are typically riddled with inaccuracies that leave audiences with a skewed idea of Tudor England. The wives of Henry VIII, in particular, are the victims of centuries of historically inaccurate fictional media. Six: The Musical is a modern musical spin on this centuries-old story, following the six wives of Henry VIII as they reclaim their narratives in a pop concert competition on who had …

Hot Topic Of The Cold War: Analyzing The Bomb In American Media During The Late Twentieth Century, Ryan Lambert

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores nuclear war–related media (i.e., media involving “the Bomb”) from the late twentieth century, beginning in the early 1950s and ending in the late 1990s, although media from the 2000s and beyond are briefly touched on. Unlike other studies of nuclear war narratives, this analysis intends to explore this media through a rhetorical framework of an “eroding” society, and the “erosion” concepts of the 50s–70s paved the way for cumulative “erosion” storylines in the 80s (the height of the Cold War), and then “restoration” storylines in the 90s (after the end of the Cold War). This framework is …

Community Resilience Drives Change, Andrew Thomas Solt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The opioid crisis has impacted many Americans. From 1999 to 2023, approximately 800,000 people have died due to opioid overdose (CDC, 2025). What began as overprescriptions of painkillers has quickly evolved into a complex social health issue that is now further worsened by stronger synthetic drugs like fentanyl. Fentanyl and fentanyl analogs (synthetic opioids that are very similar chemically to fentanyl) are often found in illegal drug supplies and in counterfeit pills (CDC, 2025). Thus, individuals who might have been initially overprescribed painkillers might now be pushed towards illegally produced drugs that are significantly more potent than what they were …

Experimental Diegetic Thresholds: A Study Of Adapted Carceral Narratives [The] Nickel Boys And Sing Sing, Leslie D. Muench

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The diegesis is the storyworld of a film, including all the characters, settings, events, and other elements. At certain times, though, that threshold is permeable, particularly when the fictional source material involves lived experiences. Two carceral films model an experimentation with adapted material and the palimpsestuous layering effect that is a result of real-life narratives being transposed into fictional ones. Nickel Boys, directed by RaMell Ross (2024), and Sing Sing, directed by Greg Kwedar (2023), endeavor to humanize a stereotypically ostracized community: Black boys and men who are incarcerated. Through the screenwriting, casting, producing, filming, and sharing of their films …