Film and Media Studies Commons^™

All You Can Eat, Kelly Schiesswohl

Theses and Dissertations

All You Can Eat is a 2D-animated horror short following the patrons and inhabitants of a bakery as they prepare for its annual pie-eating contest. As the contest nears, tensions rise after the discovery of a dark secret amongst the staff inspires rebellion. Through the visual metaphor of pie and the pie-eating contest, this film explores how sexual violence functions on a systemic level. It explores our collective conditioning to a range of behaviors that contribute to patriarchal oppression and the social cycles that reinforce them across generations. Through design and surreal storytelling, this film captures the urgent threat of …

The Tales Of Maruni, Sikuma Rai

Theses and Dissertations

Sikuma Rai journeys into the fading indigenous genre of Maruni—an eastern Nepali song and dance form—narrating letters to her late grandfather. Accompanied by her father, and a devoted folk musician from an upper-caste background, she traces echoes of memory, identity, and the fragile inheritance of indigenous culture.

Body Of Light, Lucy C. Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Body of Light is a two channel video installation, incorporating a combination of archival material and present day footage to explore and speculate upon the traces of Audrey Munson’s life that remain, a ghostly presence creeping into our current world.

Storytelling Or Telling Stories: An Analysis Of Disnarration In Music Videos, Victoria Garrett

Honors Theses

Music videos have grown in popularity in recent years and have begun to augment the stories being told by the lyrics of their songs. This is done by using narrative techniques, such as disnarration, to develop complex narratives that can conflict with the lyrical content. Through analysis of the videos "Willow" (2020 dir. Taylor Swift) by Taylor Swift, "The One That Got Away" (2012 dir. Floria Sigismoni) by Katy Perry, and "One Beer" (2020 dir. Justin Clough) by HARDY, the distinction between the plots of the videos and the lyrics can be brought into focus. This distinction in the stories …

Cartoon Kinship, Kelsey Bell Quinn

Master's Theses

Most people view cartoons as mindless entertainment exclusively for children. They dismiss the genre as if it only contains zany and overzealous characters who deal with simple, predictable challenges, easily resolved by the end of the episode. The negative attitude towards cartoons—or seemingly anything animated—undermines the importance of the lessons and the themes many shows do impart on their viewers, regardless of their age. Shows like Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender cover a plethora of complex themes, but due to its status as an animated work, it has been disregarded as a show for children rather than being appreciated as …

Fugitive Colors, Natalie Rose Eddings

Theses and Dissertations

My objects are meditations on intertwining themes of labor, rest, and interiority and their shadow sides—power, subjugation and the gaze. I couple materials that have millenia-long histories such as metals, glass, paper and clay with found objects and plat materials to illustrate narratives and exhume memories. Drawn from nature and technologies of land, plant stewardship and the domestic realm, I imagine my sculptures as life supporting vessels or magical enclosures.

Through sculpture, photography and printmaking, I build structures that are space of quiet to be filled with thought, healing and development. Like incubators and seed pods, my work is protective …

Feral And Free: The Queering Of Motherhood In Rachel Yoder’S Nightbitch, Cassandra Haskell

Master's Theses

This thesis explores motherhood from a perspective that seeks to inform and challenge the patriarchal definitions of motherhood in order to simultaneously confront its restrictions and create new meanings from its institutionalized definition. The main text that this thesis analyzes is the 2021 novel Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, as well as the 2024 film of the same name, critiquing how it successfully queers motherhood by questioning, challenging, and defying the impractical expectations placed upon mothers by society. Some secondary scholars whose works that I utilize to support my argument are authors such as Audre Lorde, Jessica Calarco, Adrienne Rich and …

Student Film Fest 2025 Playbill, Providence College Department Of Theatre, Dance, & Film

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

John Bowab Studio Theatre, Smith Center for the Arts

Student Film Fest 2025

Thursday, May 1, 2025, 7PM

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS:

Fr. Ken Gumbert

COMPETING FILMS:

Will Drew ‘25, A Day in the Life: Luke Fonts, 3:49

Nariah Scott ’25, No Limit Just Miles Ft. Kimberly May, 4:25

Teddy Lucier ’25, The Growing Game, 5:53

Janet Newman ’27, Marvelous, 5:00

Rodney Lopez ’25, Lost and Found, 7:24

Gavin Sheridan ’25, Born to Die, 9:52

JURY DELIBERATIONS

The 2024 Film Festival winning film will be screened while jury …

Student Film Fest 2025 Poster, Providence College Department Of Theatre, Dance, & Film

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

John Bowab Studio Theatre, Smith Center for the Arts

Student Film Fest 2025

Thursday, May 1, 2025, 7PM

Toujours Beaucoup: Representations Of Childhood And Education In 20th Century French Literature And Cinema, Delaney Drury

Poster Presentations

This project explores French literature and cinema with significant representations of education for the purpose of examining to what extent educational ideals are upheld or undermined.

The Use And Implications Of The Visual Presentation In The 2024 Presidential Debates, Emma L. Rasmussen

Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this study, the two 2024 presidential debates were analyzed for a variety of different trends including: who was on screen, the different camera shots used, and camera movement. Looking specifically at who was on screen, coding counted the moderators, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Six different camera shot types were also analyzed including: wide-overview shot, split-screen format, single medium shot, two-shot head on, two-shot low camera angle, and two shot high-camera angle. Camera movement behaviors were: counterclockwise motion, clockwise motion, zoom-in, zoom-out, and no movement. Video formats of the 2024 CNN and ABC debates were run through …

“How Can I Make This Real Life?”: Realism, Politics, And Simulational Rhetoric In Video Games, Samuel Rowles

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Video games are becoming an increasingly relevant aspect of modern culture, both shaping discourse around topics of labor, play, and art, and being shaped by the society they are created within. Scholars have examined the link between video games and player behavior since the 1990s and found that there is little concrete proof that video games alter behavior on their own and are simply one part of a much larger context. But with video games increasing in complexity and accuracy, it becomes necessary to examine whether video games are capable of convincing players about truths of the real world through …

The Marginality Of Women In Narratives: Reflections On Iranian Women's Struggles Through Saeed Roustayi's Films, Narges Azami

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Using the concept of intersectionality, this thesis explores how women are marginalized in three post-revolutionary Iranian films (made after 1979), directed by Saeed Roustayi. In these three films, Life and a Day (2016), Just 6.5 (2019), and Leila’s Brothers (2022), the intersectional lens helps investigate how different types of oppression, such as gender and class, often come together to affect women’s lives. In the analysis, four main themes emerge, including emotional labor, symbolic erasure, limited visibility, and intersectional oppression. Roustayi’s films point out how systems like patriarchy, poverty, and tradition hold women back. The study also explains how multiple social …

“More Than What [They] Made Us To Be”: From Passing To Perception In Victorian And Modern Vampire Media, Lauren Sieberg

English (MA) Theses

Throughout Victorian Gothic horror fiction, vampires function as deviant figures, maneuvering within social confines of passing until their status quo-threatening identity is exposed. Of the popular vampires from this period, most gradually fail to maintain status as social insiders—as demonstrated with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, who possess the temporary capacity to pass until their hidden monstrosity is revealed over time. Even if Gothic monsters are confined to a limited space and time far from society, this is still not enough; in accordance with the Victorian culture of morality policing by dominant groups, the vampiric Other …

Gendered Film Criticism And “Intolerable Images”: Representation Of Female Trauma In Brady Corbet’S Vox Lux (2018), Alison Kreul

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

This thesis explores Brady Corbet's 2018 film Vox Lux, focusing on its portrayal of female trauma and the subsequent gendered division in its critical reception. The film centers on Celeste, a survivor of a school shooting who rises to pop stardom, depicting an eighteen-year narrative that transforms her personal trauma into a public spectacle and a critique of American culture. Through theoretical frameworks from Judith Lewis Herman, E. Ann Kaplan, Jacques Rancière and Susan Sontag, this thesis examines how the film's fragmented narrative and stylistic shifts represent the long-term psychological aftermath of trauma, manifesting as emotional dysregulation, substance abuse, …

A Narrative-Focused Machine Learning Approach To Predicting Feature Film Success, Arisa T. Trombley

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MS) Theses

For decades, the field of film production has been driven by marketability, and it has relied on gut feelings and subjectivity to produce feature films. The analysis of the relationship between a screenplay’s narrative and a film’s success has been widely overlooked due to the challenges involved in data acquisition and complexity. This study investigates the predictive power of narrative structure on film success and aims to build evidence for hypothesized narrative principles. The results suggest that narrative structural elements exhibit moderate predictive power, with strong support for the alignment of the 2nd act crucial moments and the 2nd act …

Double, Double, Toils And Troubles: Analyzing The “Magical” Relationships Between University Leaders’ Personality Traits And Their Self-Efficacy In Leadership Situations, Fay Ludvine Boudreaux

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This present study investigated the relationship between higher education leaders’ personality traits and their self-efficacy in leadership situations. A total of 151 leaders employed across the nine institutions within the University of Louisiana System completed a survey that prompted them to identify their personal values, traits, and skill sets, as derived from the online Pottermore quiz, the official Harry Potter Hogwarts House sorting instrument. This niche personality metric was chosen to cater to higher education’s evolving landscape, as it welcomes an influx of Millennials into leadership positions. Participants’ responses were eventually recoded to “sort” them into their respective Houses: Gryffindor, …

Dancing In The Digital Age: How Social Media Shapes The Commercial Dance Industry, Luke Lisowski

Honors College Theses

Social media has fundamentally transformed the commercial dance industry, reshaping how dancers establish careers, connect with industry professionals, and promote their artistry. This thesis examines the impact of social media platforms – such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube – on career growth by facilitating networking opportunities, increasing visibility, and redefining industry standards. The research explores how digital platforms have shifted the traditional pathways to success, enabling dancers to showcase their work independently while also creating challenges related to self-promotion, competition, and mental health.

Through a series of in-depth interviews with professional dancers and choreographers actively working in the industry, this …

Phenomenologies Of Women's Illness In Ingmar Bergman's 1970s Films, Sophia Rubino

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

It is no surprise that the chronically ill Ingmar Bergman featured recurrent motifs of illness throughout his oeuvre. What is more surprising is that this consequential component of these works remain largely unexplored. Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop, 1971), Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte,1976), and Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978), are pivotal examples of this shift, where illness is not merely an individual experience for these women but a complex, embodied phenomenon that profoundly shapes interpersonal relationships, particularly within family structures. This thesis conceives phenomenologies of illness in three 1970s films by Ingmar Bergman – Cries and Whispers, Face …

He Who Rules "Cinema" Rules Everything: Kalimán As Bridge Between 1960s And 1970s Mexican Cinema, Jose Emilio Reyes Rocher

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

Kalimán is a Mexican superhero whose adventures, along with his sidekick Solín, take them around the world and across various media platforms: radio, comics, and cinema. The cinematic tales of Kalimán reflect significant changes in Mexican cinema, society, and culture. The two Kalimán films, El Hombre Increíble and El Siniestro Mundo de Humanón, occupy a unique liminal position in Mexican National Cinema, capturing the transformations that took place during the early 1970s until 1976, a time now known as the Prodigious Decade.1 The Kalimán films also draw inspiration from “churro” films, particularly from the Luchadores genre, films often considered excessive …