Visual Studies Commons^™

The Disappearance Of The French New Wave, Emir Kulluk

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

The French New Wave is considered to be one of the most influential waves within cinema history, starting from the end of the 1950s, going all the way through the 1960s. Thanks to the directors of this era, there have been a myriad of movies that challenged the norms of filmmaking, redefining the techniques used and the stories told within cinema. However, if this era was so fruitful and is deemed to be so valuable for cinema in general, then why did it not continue? In this paper, I will be taking a look at French society, external influences, as …

Fractured Selves, Gearoid Dolan

Theses and Dissertations

Fractured Selves is a self-portrait that examines the histories and points of conflation and diversion of my four public personas. In the style of a Zoom meeting, they chat with a host against animated backgrounds. Interactivity creates non-linear consuming of the content and user directed navigation through four timelines

How Bojack Horseman Got Too Real: Audience Engagement And A Critique Of Capitalism, Camille Le Pioufle

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

What can a cartoon tell us about the state of capitalist societies? This study examines the case of Netflix adult animated TV show BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) with the aim of understanding the mechanisms at play in the formation of the critique of capitalism. It investigates the narrative and cinematographic devices employed by the show to construct a realistic portrayal of American capitalist system and its harmful consequences on individuals and society in general.

Through the analysis of realism, self-referentiality and intertextuality, the star system, and processes of subsumption and commodification, this work comes to the conclusion that BoJack Horseman ‘got …

Appropriation Of The Highest Order: A Study Of Harry Smith’S Master Work, Film No. 18 Mahagonny In Relation To The Brecht-Weill Opera The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny And Duchamp’S The Large Glass, Rose V. Marcus

Theses and Dissertations

Harry Smith’s Film No. 18, Mahagonny, 1970 – 1980, is a transmutation of the original Brecht-Weill opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a 1930, into a feature-length experimental film. This paper shows how the original opera and Duchamp's The Large Glass prove inherent to Smith’s double-pronged homage to both original works of art. The failure in the opera narrative and the chance shattering of The Large Glass inform Smith’s complex methodology to approach and spatialize cinema. Harry Smith’s use of the tools of the screening apparatus are traced in order to study Mahagonny in detail. The …

Final Master's Portfolio, Jonathan Correa

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Jonathan G. Correa's Master's Portfolio

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …

Media’S Portrayal Of Women And Its Impact On Body Image And Self-Esteem, Hannah Bareis

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project addresses the portrayal of women in media and its damaging effects on body image and self-esteem. It raises two critical questions: What negative impact is media creating on women? What can be done to combat these destructive effects?

According to a study done by Common Sense Media, "American teens use an average of 9 hours of media daily, not including for school and homework" (Common Sense Media, 2015). This data, along with many others, shows the severity of media exposure to teens. This has brought a valuable discussion to the table. How has this impacted female body image, …

Beautiful People: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Fashion Industry's Thin Ideal, Shane White

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Negative body image among women has become an extremely relevant topic in the last decade. The “ideal” female body image and what a person should look like according to marketing and advertising has become a highly controversial issue. This project seeks to show how the fashion industry has, over centuries, shaped how people think they need to look and in today’s time and show how it has been a root cause of issues like body image complexes leading to negative self-perception, eating disorders, mental illnesses like anxiety, depression and addiction, and even suicide. Over the last three to four decades, …

Saga Beyond The Gate: Chapter One, The Coming Of The Gate Ghost, Tristan B. Miller

MSU Graduate Theses

“Saga Beyond the Gate: Chapter One, the Coming of the Gate Ghost” explores performance sculpture used as religious ritual. My work emphasizes ritual, creation myths, relics, physical manifestations of lived religion, and the power of narrative belief. One often turns to religion, science, or spirituality, to seek answers to questions about being a conscious entity, and one’s journey to the end. This saga uses scripts from all three of these schools of thought, placing the world of the Gate Ghost into tangible reality, as a play on a stage. Artefacts represent objects of power and mystery. Characters embody morality tales, …

Pennies From Heaven: Death And The Afterlife In World War Ii Fantasy Films, Elise Williamson

Film Studies (MA) Theses

Wartime fantasy films produced by major Hollywood studios during World War II integrate the supernatural (i.e., ghosts, angels, and the afterlife) into wartime settings with relevant protagonists and themes to address the psychological trauma of wartime death and loss. Three case studies – The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown, 1943), A Guy Named Joe (Victor Fleming, 1943), and Between Two Worlds (Edward A. Blatt, 1944) – explore fantasy narratives and conventions unconventionally blended with the war film genre, and illustrate how the war film setting (home front vs. combat front vs. war zone) influences character focus (civilians vs. military), the …

Personification In Advertising: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Digital Video Ads In The Insurance Industry, Dorm Kpedor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Major companies in the insurance industry—notably Allstate, Progressive, and Farmers—often employ personification as a creative rhetorical tool in digital video advertisements. By leveraging brand characters in various ways, these companies seek to establish trust and engender emotional impact in customers. Allstate ascribes destructive characteristics that are associated with house cats to its Mayhem character; in doing so they evoke the desired emotional responses of humor and fear. Progressive creates and deploys the Motaur character, a visual personification and play on the Centaur; in this case, the company’s rhetorical strategy is to evoke humor and nostalgia that resonate with motorcycle owners. …

Understanding Spaces Of Abandonment Through Virtual Frameworks In Landscape Architecture, Aus Perez

Honors Theses, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

In recent years, design professionals have implemented many contemporary landscape architecture projects across the United States. With a primary goal of returning nature to urban environments, contemporary landscape architects and other transdisciplinary partners work diligently to sculpt physical spaces that reflect the human-living experience. However, a leap into the world of video game design could allow landscape architects and urban planners to more freely create virtual social environments to address rising issues of abandonment in today’s urban and rural spaces. Video game mechanics and methodologies can be used extensively in the disciplines of design that value participatory processes, like landscape …

The Retablos Of Teabo And Mani: The Evolution Of Renaissance Altars In Colonial Yucatán, C. Cody Barteet

Visual Arts Publications

From the turn to seventeenth through the early eighteenth century, three retablos (altarpieces) were created in Yucatán that relied on a similar Renaissance design. The retablos located in the ex-convents of Mani and Teabo all adopt the Spanish sixteenth-century Renaissance style of the Plateresque. Further, the retablos are connected by the inclusion of caryatid framing devices that establishes a strong affinity among the works. Two of the retablos are located in Mani: the Retablo of San Antonio de Padua and the Retablo of Nuestra Señora de Soledad (or sometimes called the Dolores Retablo). At Teabo is the Retablo de Santa …

How To Build A World Art: The Strategic Universalism Of Colour Reproductions And The Unesco Prize (1953-1968), Chiara Vitali

Artl@s Bulletin

What role did UNESCO play in the art world of the post-war era? This article makes use of published and archival sources in order to clarify the utopia of a “World Art” that shaped UNESCO and led to the “Archives of Colour Reproductions of Works of Art”, a project of worldwide collect and diffusion of images of “masterworks” inspired by Malraux’s “Museum without walls”. This case study focuses on one particular aspect of the project, the “UNESCO Prize”, conceived by the Brazilian art critic and Marxist intellectual Mario Pedrosa for the 1953 São Paulo Biennial.

The Copy & The Real Thing: Changing Perceptions Between The Rubens Centennials In 1877 And 1977, Griet Bonne

Artl@s Bulletin

In this paper I examine the changing relationship between mechanical reproductions and the original artwork in the context of the Rubens centennials in 1877 and 1977. Drawing on theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Dean MacCannell, Hans Belting and Boris Groys, I argue that the mechanism of copying generates a double logic of image perception: a simultaneous centrifugal and centripetal circulation of images that affects how people perceive art in modern society. I explore this perception dynamic by looking at two photo-exhibitions during the Rubens centennials.

This Must Be The Place: A Short Film, Reagan Shull

Honors Projects

This Must Be The Place is a short film categorized as a Coming of Age Mystery with strong narrative ties to Magical Realism set in the heart of small town America. The key thematic ideas are identity, female relationships, isolation, friendship, and loss. This story emphasizes each person’s struggle for identity, and the isolation that can be brought upon themselves when they do not know who they are. Further, the difficulties regarding the search for one’s dreams without a strong sense of identity are also discussed in this narrative. Ultimately, this story is about dealing with isolation as we grow …

Pathos, Spring 2021, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Humanizing Scholarship: Going Public Via Multimodality, Mario L. Avalos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Humanizing Scholarship” offers a look into the ways that multimodality can be used to make the scholarly conversations had within the academy more accessible to members of the public. This thesis acknowledges and echoes the responsibility academics have to bridging the gap between their research and the people who so often serve as the basis for the ethnographic work being done in academia. My project does two things: First, it brings together some of the conversations surrounding multimodality and public scholarship. Second, it offers some first-hand models of multimodal compositions—the short films Don Armando and The Adjunct, and the screenplay …

Looking While Reading I, Ii, Iii, Sarah Minor

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This article introduces the term “visual essay” by tracing the genre’s history through the concrete poetry movement and the rise of the lyric essay. In describing the aims of visual essays, Minor distinguishes between “illustrative” and “non-illustrative” shaped texts, and suggests connections between “non-illustrative” examples and the aims of “Intersectional Form,” a term coined by scholar Jen Soriano.

Using Visual Resources To Teach Primary Source Literacy, Daniel Davis

Journal of Western Archives

Historic photographs provide an excellent teaching tool for promoting primary source literacy. People like to look at photographs, we all take them, and they illustrate the strengths and limitations of analyzing and interpreting primary sources. In 2019 I spent six months on sabbatical taking a “deep dive” into the new primary source literacy standards as well as the literature for teaching with primary sources. I then created a lesson plan, “Exploring the West in the Golden Age of Photography,” that focused on teaching primary source literacy through historic images. While this lesson plan was aimed at instructors teaching U.S. West …