Visual Studies Commons^™

Course Syllabus (Fa15) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "Material Aesthetics", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

An examination of questions concerning aesthetic experience from the standpoint of the structural and functional logics of the capitalist mode of production

Film Review: The Look Of Silence, Nicole Rafter

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Grids And Gestures: A Comics Making Exercise, Nick Sousanis

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Grids and Gestures is an exercise intended to offer participants insight into a comics maker’s decision-making process for composing the entire page through the hands-on activity of making an abstract comic. It requires no prior drawing experience and serves to help reexamine what it means to draw. In addition to a description of how to proceed with the exercise, this piece also includes conceptual grounding in the form of a brief theoretical discussion of the ways comics convey meaning as well as personal notes on the development of the exercise and how it has been used.

The Role Of Critical Thinking In Reader Perceptions Of Leadership In Comic Books, Renee Krusemark Edd

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This study qualitatively explored how readers use critical thinking to perceive leadership in The Walking Dead comic books. Sixty-nine participants gave responses regarding their thoughts about leadership in the comic via an online survey. A majority of the participants indicated a wide range of values for comics as a learning experience. Most participants perceived leadership in the comic books as an individual who protects others and makes decisions. After completing the online survey, 22 participants gave acceptable and relevant responses about their perceptions of leadership and how they form these perceptions. Information was collected through email interviewing. The study concluded …

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Revision In The Multiversity: What Composition Can Learn From The Superhero, David Hyman

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Constant and ongoing revision is the compositional tactic through which many contemporary superhero narratives negotiate the powerful struggle between reiteration of the genre’s past, and creative expression of its future. Instead of a gradual succession of improved renditions of a text, each one effacing and superseding the imperfections of its predecessors, revision is revealed as the production of multiple versions whose differences and diversities are “capable of being in uncertainties”, as Keats describes the creative attitude which he terms Negative Capability: ontologically equal textual variations that wear their inconsistencies openly, and reject the pressure to resolve their multiplicities into the …

Pim Pedagogy: Toward A Loosely Unified Model For Teaching And Studying Comics And Graphic Novels, James B. Carter

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The article debuts and explains "PIM" pedagogy, a construct for teaching comics at the secondary- and post-secondary levels and for deep reading/studying comics. The PIM model for considering comics is actually based in major precepts of education studies, namely constructivist foundations of learning, and loosely unifies constructs inherent therein with other available frames and frameworks for studying comics. As such, the article fills a dire need in the scholarly literature on comics pedagogy and paves a way for those who seek to teach comics courses in the future but who need direction and for those who seek to study/read comics …

Mallory Makes Meaning: How One 8th-Grader Made Meaning With A Graphic Novel, Aimee A. Rogers

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article presents how one 8^th-grader, Mallory, made meaning with Amulet: The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi. Data was collected via a think-aloud procedure, a retrospective think-aloud, questions specific to the book and an interview. The data analysis indicates that Mallory was able to use a breadth of reading strategies, applied to both the visual and textual modalities, in order to make meaning with the graphic novel text.

Overviewing Software Applications For Graphic Novel Creation In The Post-Secondary And Secondary Classroom, Jeffrey S.J. Kirchoff Phd, Mike Cook Phd

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

It is well established that the 21^st century literate student needs to be able to effectively craft and interpret texts that use multiple communicative modes. Graphic novels are one text type that facilitates such literacy instruction, as the seamless relationship between words, image, and sound (in the form of sound effects) are inherent to the medium. Though there is a wealth of scholarship on the importance of how reading graphic novels facilitate multimodal literacy, there is less scholarship on how writing graphic novels facilitate multimodal literacy. This article demonstrates not only how writing graphic novels enables multimodal literacy, but …

Analyzing The Selfie: Exploring Gender Identity Through Nude Photography, Darby Gieringer

Theses and Dissertations

As the use of photography increases in contemporary society, so does the need to understand the role of self-photography as a form of identity expression. While forms of selfies have existed for centuries, technological advances provide a vehicle through which people can express themselves with complete autonomy, altering power dynamics and traditional expectations of perception. This project utilizes a multimodal, interdisciplinary framework, as it incorporates digital selfies, studio images, and written questionnaires, which are analyzed through Gender Studies and Rhetoric lenses. Twenty people participated in the project, completing nude, faceless selfies and questionnaires to reflect on their experiences. Of those, …

Prancing Shadow Connecting Worlds, Tiffany D. Randle

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The practice of being conscious about the environment and how shadows, light, and movement create an intellectual space for different interpretations allows the viewer to make their own associations. Concrete, the ground that people of different shades walk on, to one person can look and seem like an ethereal and unknown environment, but to another may seem like a moving body of liquid. When artists stop and look at the simple things such a concrete, and water, or passersby they can capture a moment in time that transcends the mundane and suddenly the artist is in a position to present …

Book Review: (Re)Thinking Orientalism: Using Graphic Narratives To Teach Critical Visual Literacy, Antonio Lopez

Journal of Media Literacy Education

(Re)Thinking Orientalism’s primary aim is to offer a pedagogical model for using graphic narratives in the classroom to explore and contest what Jones calls a dominant “visual Orientalist” discourse in Western media. Graphic narratives are fiction and nonfiction stories told in comic form, and can range from graphic novels to comic journalism. The book also examines news media, photography, comic books and television in post-9/11 USA. In particular Jones focuses on several works that deal with the representation of the Islamic Other, especially Muslim women and their primary sign of difference in Western culture, the veil. As the title …

Delinquent Youth: The Ofuna New Wave, Basil Swartzfager

Anthós

In 1960 the Japanese film studio Shochiku Co. announced "the Ofuna New Wave" a revolution in Japanese filmmaking similar to France’s immensely popular Nouvelle Vague. This paper attempts to discover whether this Ofuna New Wave was simply a marketing ploy Shochiku developed in order to attract a larger youth market, or whether it constitutes a legitimate artistic movement along the lines of France’s New Wave. The methods used were a combination of primary research of four Shochiku films released in 1960 as well as secondary historical research regarding the studio and time period. The Shochiku films were then compared to …

Green Documentary: Environmental Documentary In The 21st Century By Helen Hughes, David M. Lawrence

The Goose

David M. Lawrence reviews Green Documentary: Environmental Documentary in the 21st Century by Helen Hughes.

Artificial Infinite, Brandon Daniels

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis examines the complex history of the sublime, specifically the sublime Void of the Romantics and the newer concept of the technological sublime. From there, I examine the genre of science fiction and it relationship to the sublime, the Void and the grotesque. I use specific examples such Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and a few others to better understand and apply these concepts. Beginning with these examples, I start to posit what role special effects play in how these films embody these philosophical concepts.

Building on this foundation of research, I go on to …

Culture On The Move: Depression-Era Documentary And Migrant California, Joseph Entin

Criticism

California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the Making of a New Deal Narrative by Jan Goggans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Pp. 368. $40.00 cloth.

Fame Gone Wild (2015: An Era Of Self-Invention), Stephanie E. Kang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Entertainment has become one of the fueling fires of society. In today’s world of nonstop broadcasting and streaming, many begrudgingly trudge through their 9 to 5’s only to live for their few post-work hours of leisure, which have been reserved for this week’s latest items on the viewing queue. Netflix and Hulu have become the opium of the masses. Consequently, this obsession with constant entertainment has now morphed into a shared yearning for the people that are watched and followed religiously through the screen – the celebrities. In this cultural moment, the concept of fame has become a vital element …

Multimedia Reporting: Creating Unique Content That Spans Multiple Platforms, Joshua Carl Holland

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

With the continued ease of access to the internet, it has become a vital medium to distribute news and sports information. This study documents the process of starting from a relatively absent online product to developing daily web content. Trial and error of different original content ideas for online as well as experimentations with translating broadcast content into a web product are coupled with interviews from professionals to create a framework of how to go about establishing an internet presence in an age of instant news. The case is generally focused on sports media due to the nature of my …

Seeing The Sacred, Emily Potter

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Seeing the Sacred is a multidisciplinary arts project exploring the purposes of sacred art and its relationship with community identity. The project highlights three common purposes of sacred art: to represent a worldview, to express identities as members of a community, and to connect with something bigger than ourselves. This Capstone Experience/Thesis Project developed through an intersection of three primary interests: visual art, community engagement, and religious studies. This project includes an overview of the CE/T’s origins and evolution, a written analysis of research goals and experiences, a review of relevant literature, a series of related artwork, and a collaborative …

Gather, Katie M. Meek

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Food is both basic and multifaceted. It nourishes satisfies, levels, defines and gathers us. Food unifies and brings people together as part of the human experience. When people embrace food and make it their own, it can shape and define their lives in big ways.

Food can cultivate a lifestyle, preserve cultural identity, foster a small business, nurture relationships and serve a community.

This project is a documentation of five different groups of people that experience food in uniquely different ways. Through photo essays and written stories I strive to capture what how food brings people together in specific ways …