Visual Studies Commons^™

Praxis With Self-Advocates: Exploring Participatory Video As Radical Incrementalism, Kathleen C. Sitter, Amy C. Burke

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

In this article, the authors report selected findings from a larger study where self-advocates from the disability rights movement created a series of short videos as part of a participatory research project. Self-advocates subsequently integrated these videos into a greater community organizing initiative. While the research process of this study has been published elsewhere, this piece will explore the idea of bridging participatory video, a collaborative research methodology, with community-based advocacy initiatives. The authors contend that this presents an opportunity for radical incrementalism in which to create a praxis driven predominantly by the voices on the margins versus the academic …

Climbing A Ladder To Heaven. Gnostic Vision Of The World In Jacob's Ladder (1990), Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

Journal of Religion & Film

Contemporary film-makers quite willingly employ motifs typical of various gnostic trends. The author shows that ancient gnosticism is a treasury of motifs and a source of aesthetical and narrative strategies present in contemporary cinema. The article treats Jacob’s Ladder (1990, dir. Adrian Lyne) which is analyzed through Gnostic beliefs. In the author’s opinion, this film can be treated as a model where the gnostic thought has been presented in a coherent and systematic manner.

You’Ve Gotta Keep The Faith: Making Sense Of Disaster In Post 9/11 Apocalyptic Cinema, Matthew Leggatt

Journal of Religion & Film

Abstract: Chronologically examining the role of faith based narratives in the Hollywood apocalypse since the mid-90s, this article charts their reintroduction in the period after 9/11. Through the study of an extensive array of contemporary films the different structures of faith they offer and an exploration of how such faith is used in order to make meaning from disaster, I assert that post 9/11 apocalyptic movies have grappled with issues of faith and meaning in a far more complex way than in the films of the 90s, questioning the value of such faith in a post-disaster world. In concluding, I …

Pathos, Fall 2015, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Philip King

Volume 10 No. 1

Blood, Tits And The Modern Depiction Of Antiquity – Sparatcus: Blood And Sand And The Display Of A Historical Myth, Frank Jacob

Publications and Research

The article is dealing with the depiction of antiquity in the TV series Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Hollywood’S Image Of The Second World War - David Ayer’S Fury (2014) And The Depiction Of Violence In War, Frank Jacob

Publications and Research

The article describes the way in which violence is depicted in David Ayer’s World War II movie Fury (2014). It also deals with the general question how violence is visualized in current Hollywood movies.

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.