Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Private Rainbows, Mikey F. Estes

Theses and Dissertations

I make art that refers to how the self is mediated through structures, objects, and images — a kind of self-portraiture that circles around its subject, reflecting a state of simultaneous formation and disintegration. Over the past few years, I have used my iPhone as a tool to make images of everyday life. As the user of this device, I am defined by both my presence and absence. I am interested in the process of locating the self within the scattered yet ordered space of the screen.

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

Jane Austen's Hidden Bodies: Adaptation As Critical Commentary, Elizabeth Gilliland

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Much of adaptation theory calls for a shift away from fidelity discourse, arguing that an adaptation does not need to be a faithful translation of the original, but should rather be viewed as literature in its own right. As such, adaptations are often studied separately from their source texts; yet even so, an unofficial hierarchy sometimes remains in deeming some types of adaptations more ripe for study than others. Further, in separating the adaptation from the original, some of the more radical alterations can be routinely dismissed as an “added” element to the text, rather than exploring what commentary these …

The Making Of Camp Shakespeare For Young Performing Artists, Lauren E. Erwin

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis paper, I will detail the making of Camp Shakespeare For Young Performing Artists, my final graduate short film at the University of New Orleans, from its inception as a script to its final form as a finished short film. In Part One I will examine the personal and cultural influences that led me to develop the script. Part Two will review the pre-production process – how my collaborators and I prepared for the shoot. In Part Three I will scrutinize the day-to-day process of filming. Part Four will chart the post-production process in which the film took …

Foreign Villains Shape The World: Transnational And Global Antagonists Within The Martial Arts Film Trilogy Ip Man, Kelvin Chan

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper explores how foreign antagonists are portrayed and positioned within the Ip Man trilogy directed by Wilson Yip. Typically, protagonists such as Ip Man are the focal point of research, but this paper will examine the historical and contextual use of foreign antagonists such as the invading Japanese, the corrupt and condescending British, and the rapacious American in the Ip Man trilogy and how their portrayals are transmitted transnationally. The examination of these foreign antagonists in relation to the protagonist Ip Man expose themes such as nationalism, national identity, and victimhood to a Chinese diaspora. They also expose a …

Stray Cats, Christian P. Chesnut

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This paper details the making of Stray Cats, a University of New Orleans thesis film. It examines the process of creating the film in three parts. Part one will detail the pre-production, including the conceptualization, writing, and preparation for the project. Part two will cover the production, including the directing, production design, cinematography, and on-set operations. Part three will describe the post-production process, including the editing, color correction, sound design, and musical score. These three components will then be referenced in regards to the theme of the film, and will conclude by analyzing whether or not the final film …

Unintentional Community, Patrick M. Sanderson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The contents of this thesis will detail the entire process I took in making the first episode of Unintentional Community. I have broken up my process into six parts. Part One will discuss the inspirations for the show as well as how it came about. Part Two will cover all of the pre-production work that my team and I went through. Part Three discusses the entire process of my shooting experience as a director and actor. Part Four details the long post-production process. Part Five talks about the show’s bible. Finally, Part Six lays out our entire plan for …

Learning Culture: Cultural Relationship In Masked Lanterns, Yuxuan Ding

Graduate School of Art Theses

Culture shock, or culture conflict, is the unfamiliarity or disorientation an individual experiences after encountering a culture different than their own. To better understand the people around us who share a different culture and the way of life it creates, we need to first respect and understand their culture. In general, Chinese culture stresses that individuals must see themselves as part of a larger group for the benefit of society, while American culture stresses the importance of individualism.

Based on my experiences in graphic design, I decided to further my studies in a studio art context to understand how the …

It's Pink And Nice But We Are Done With It, Taylor Elizabeth Yocom

Graduate School of Art Theses

My work in video, installation, performance, sound, and photography is influenced and inspired by my experience of being a woman. In my work, I draw pink flowers and create pink backdrops. I smash things, eat, drink, drop things, smile, nod, and look at you. Through these works, I explore the gender performativity of female niceness, synthesizing these two separate theories as a social condition and expectation for women. I argue that female niceness consists of bodily and linguistic patterns that women must perform in order to be perceived as feminine.

In my video and installation work, I use a “sickeningly” …

The Role Of Nollywood Film In Combating Sexual Violence Among Female Adolescents In Selected Secondary Schools In Lagos State, Nigeria, Onyinyechi Nwaolikpe

Andrews Research Conference

Sexual violence which has a profound impact on the physical and mental health of women and girls, is one of the most wide spread abuses on women’s rights. It affects the social well being of victims and its effects may be long lasting. This descriptive cross-sectional study therefore, sought to determine the role of Nollywood film in combating sexual violence among secondary school female adolescents in Lagos State, Nigeria. Three hundred and fifty female adolescents between the ages of 12-17 years were selected in four secondary schools in Ikeja, Lagos State, Nigeria using multi-stage sampling. Data were collected using self-administered …

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own …

East Asian "China Doll" Or "Dragon Lady"?, Joey Lee

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

This paper argues that the representation of East Asian women in popular media is harmful through its exaggerated portrayal of the ‘China Doll’, and ‘Dragon Lady’, ultimately further exoticizing and dehumanizing East Asian women, ensuring the dominance of the West. I will study these portrayals and their impacts through historical and modern film, modern magazines, and intersectional oppression that the restrictive categorizations place upon women of East Asian descent.

Public Opinion & U.S. Foreign Policy: Investigating The Impact Of Political Television Dramas On Audience Perceptions Of Current U.S. Foreign Policy Engagement And Effectiveness, Lynzee Flores

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Political TV dramas have become increasingly popular with audiences as a source of entertainment after the 2016 presidential election, particularly programs depicting the functions of the executive branch of government (CenturyLink, 2017).

This research investigates how political TV dramas, as compared to network news coverage of U.S. foreign policy events, influence the perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs of U.S. audience viewers.

Using agenda-setting as the theoretical frame, this study employs a quantitative experimental design in order to measure participants’ pre- and post- attitudes on two variables; perceived issue familiarity and perceived issue importance of U.S. foreign policy events and U.S. diplomacy …

Las Montañas Desheredadas: Lo Fantástico Y Las Hurdes (Luis Buñuel, 1933) Como Docuficción, Mario Sánchez Gumiel

Nomenclatura: aproximaciones a los estudios hispánicos

En este ensayo me propongo argumentar dos ideas: la primera, cómo, pese a su conocido e incuestionable carácter subversivo, Las Hurdes (Luis Buñuel, 1933) respeta en verdad las convenciones del género documental y, en consecuencia, cómo el cineasta calandino, a pesar de sus juegos formales con el surrealismo, era un hombre conocedor de (y alineado con) la práctica vigente de tales códigos genéricos. La segunda, que por medio de dicho respeto escrupuloso a las convenciones del documental, Buñuel consigue articular ese momento que Tzvetan Todorov (1938-2017) localiza alrededor de la duda que, entre creencia y descreencia, surge hacia aquello que …

Invisible In 'The Archive': Librarians, Archivists, And The Caswell Test, Bridget Whearty

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric Faculty Scholarship

This presentation, "Invisible in 'The Archive': Archivists, Librarians, and The Caswell Test," was given at the 53rd International Congress for Medieval Studies, on May 11, 2018. It argues that medievalists, and humanities scholars more broadly, have erred in writing and theorizing about "the archive" as an abstract, depopulated space, untouched by human labor and laborers. Building on the work of M. L. Caswell, Eira Tansey, Amy Hildreth Chen, Myron Groover, and other scholars of library and information sciences, it proposes that humanities scholars adopt what I call "The Caswell Test."

Based on the famous "Bechdel Test" for gender representation in …

Player-Response: On The Nature Of Interactive Narratives As Literature, Lee Feldman

English (MA) Theses

In recent years, having evolved beyond solely play-based interactions, it is now possible to analyze video games alongside other narrative forms, such as novels and films. Video games now involve rich stories that require input and interaction on behalf of the player. This level of agency likens video games to a kind of modern hypertext, networking and weaving various narrative threads together, something which traditional modes of media lack. When examined from the lens of reader-response criticism, this interaction deepens even further, acknowledging the player’s experience as a valid interpretation of a video game’s plot. The wide freedom of choice …

Luncheon, Tomasz Gubernat

Theses and Dissertations

Documenting the apparently prosaic activities of nearly two hundred Polish immigrant senior citizens, “Luncheon” is an observational portrait of a place that seems foreign and significantly removed from its New York City surroundings. For this dwindling demographic, daily activities and commemorative performances provide a way to revivify collective memories and maintain individual identities that are still deeply connected to a place far removed in both space and time. “Luncheon” is an exploration of how memory and identity are constructed and maintained, nationality imagined, and communities preserved.

The Market, Claudia Zamora Valencia

Theses and Dissertations

The Market is a short science fiction essay film that explores ideas and values attached to the “local food” movement, and how they manifest themselves in the act of consumption at a farmers’ market in a gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

The Archivettes, Megan D. Rossman

Theses and Dissertations

The Archivettes is a feature-length documentary film about the Lesbian Herstory Archives and the personal lives of the women involved in it. The film provides a comprehensive look at the history of the group, the materials it protects and the challenges arising as the founders face their final years.

The Lesbian Herstory Archives began in 1974, when a group of women involved in the Gay Academic Union realized that lesbian history was disappearing as quickly as it was being made (Edel). It is now home to the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities.

The Pond & The Sauna, Kaija Siirala

Theses and Dissertations

Combining interviews, observational footage, animation, archival images, video and film, The Pond & the Sauna examines the construction of home and family through an intergenerational collection of memories. Drawing on oral history traditions, the project traces the foundational threads that run through the lives of an extended family from past into the present. How do the values we learned as children manifest in our lives now? How do we negotiate our place within a wider social context? How are we moving through the cycles of life and what do home and family mean to us now?