Television Commons^™

'Why Don’T You Just Go Back Where You Came From?' Or 'Slight Yams': 'Pangs' Of Regret And Unresolved Ambivalence In Joss Whedon’S California, Tereza M. Szeghi, Wesley Dempster

English Faculty Publications

Joss Whedon’s two longest-running television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) (1997-2003) and Angel (1999-2004), which together constitute the “Buffyverse,” often focus on questions about the degree to which past actions bear on one’s present moral character. Particularly in the case of reformed demons and vampires, regret for past sins weighs heavily on the present and motivates current benevolent and heroic deeds.

For the ensouled vampire Angel most especially, the need to make amends for centuries of sadistic cruelty and bloodshed stamps him with his ever brooding-personality and his nearly ceaseless attempts to balance the scales—while knowing that the scales …

Anime And War, Carol Sun

Honors Papers and Posters

This poster examines the growth and development of anime in Japan in post-World War II Japan, particularly its ability to make audiences question the trajectory of humanity and society and to "critique the society that relies on technology...as a means to prevent or discourage war and conflict".

Life After Nbc’S “The Biggest Loser”: The Experiences And Perspectives Of Former Reality Tv Contestants, Darren D. Moore, Clinton Cooper, Toiya Williams, Kai Zwierstra

The Qualitative Report

Utilizing Qualitative Description influenced by aspects of phenomenology, we conducted fifteen open-ended, semi-structured interviews with former contestants of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser.” The purpose of the study was to explore experiences of significant weight loss. We focused on challenges, emotional well-being, and relational dynamics of contestants transitioning through their weight loss journeys, which included what happened after the show was completed. Further, we analyzed perspectives regarding the utility of Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs) in working with this population. In the study, three themes emerged which included: (1) Living at the ranch: It’s reality TV, not reality; (2) After the …

Identity And Scene: Alterity And Authenticity In Taxicab Confessions, Steven W. Schoen

Faculty Publications

This essay examines the visual rhetoric of HBOs reality TV program Taxicab Confessions, New York, New York (2005). Drawing on Burke’s rhetorical understanding of scene and Straw’s approach to scene as a category for the analysis of urban culture, I argue that the taxicab interior and nighttime street images of New York City structure a scene of indeterminacy, intimacy, and “reality,” thus framing the passengers’ self-presentations within a context of “authenticity.” The program’s visual structure locates passengers simultaneously outside of and within social norms and reinforces hegemonic notions of race, gender, and sexuality. Passengers are situated within a scene that …

The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Dramatization of Cultural Hybridity and the "In-Between" Turkey in Fazıl's Künye" Önder Çakırtaş addresses Turkey's historical context and exposes how political, social and cultural changes were expressed in Turkey's public sphere. Using Niyazi Berkes's theory of secularism as proceeding of modernism Çakırtaş discusses different examples of stylistic strategies of cultural hybridity in the playwright's historical-based play, Künye. He investigates how political changes in pre-Turkey times signify Turkey's national striving, and how the Ottoman-conservative past metamorphoses into Turkic-secular. The study juxtaposes the perceptions of 'introduction to Westernization' and 'departure from Islamic past' in a period …

Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire T. Solomon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (1929-2016)" Claire Solomon analyzes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope as an apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand). More precisely, her article models how such tropes imply modes of reading anachronistically and metafictionally that decontextualize gestures of resistance and conflate female writers, performers, and characters across time and place. Solomon offers a situated formalist reading of Argentine playwright Salvadora Medina Onrubia's 1929 drama, Las descentradas, revealing an avant-garde counterpoint of melodrama and metafiction as an ambiguous alternative to capture.

Approaching The Value And The Future Of The Novel: A Book Review Article On Boxall's Scholarship, Yili Tang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Fat Female Bodies Of Saturday Night Live: Uncovering The Normative Cultural Power Of A Countercultural Comedy Institution, Katharine Cacace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite its reputation as one of the most countercultural and anti-establishment voices in mainstream television comedy, Saturday Night Live helps produce and reproduces cultural norms. Using weight and gender as a lens, this paper investigates Saturday Night Live’s methods of creating, imitating, and evoking the fat female body in order to limit female agency and police unruly female power. It contends that even the inclusion of nonnormative female bodies—fat bodies, queer bodies, and bodies of color—is merely a reiteration of the techniques of neoliberal multiculturalism for the television audience.

Explicar El Fracaso: Casa De Mi Padre (Piedmont, 2012), Liam Baldwin

Spanish: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Directed By God: Jewishness In Contemporary Israeli Film And Television, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book Directed by God: Jewishness in Contemporary Israeli Film and Television.

Print Versus Digital: How Medium Matters On 'House Of Cards', Patrick Ferrucci, Chad Painter

Communication Faculty Publications

This study utilizes textual analysis to analyze how journalists are depicted on the Netflix drama House of Cards. Through the lens of orientalism and cultivation, researchers examine how depictions of print and digital journalism would lead viewers to see digital journalists as less ethical and driven by self-gain, while also viewing technology as an impediment to quality journalism. These findings are then discussed as a means for understanding how these depictions could affect society.

Melodrama, Masochism, And Biopolitical Encounters In The Fosters, Jaime Brunton

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Since the television drama The Fosters, which centers on the daily struggles of two lesbian moms (Stef Foster and Lena Adams) and their multi-ethnic family of foster and adoptive children, debuted on ABC Family in 2013, the show has garnered numerous awards and nominations. . . . The Fosters has struck a chord with American television audiences and critics. While part of the show’s appeal no doubt rests in its representations of LGBTQ people and people of color (as its awards suggest) and its dealing with topical issues such as gay marriage and racial profiling, it also worth noting …

Speech Equality: A Gendered Analysis Of Children’S Television Shows, Rikki N. Bergen

Anthropology Presentations

Childhood is an exciting time and kids are just learning who they are and who they are expected to be. The role television plays in their understanding of gender, racial, cultural, economic and social identity cannot be denied and it is therefore important for scholars to examine the types of ideas that are being presented. The gendered attitudes portrayed both explicitly and implicitly in children’s television shows can have a negative effect on childhood development and a child’s perceptions of self and the world around them.

Rhetorical Commonsense And Child Molester Panic--A Queer Intervention, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article considers how contemporary representations of child molesters in scholarly, political, and popular culture participate in projects that revolve around the recuperation of heteronormativity. I argue that these multimodal obsessions with child molestation displace the resilience of entrenched homophobic fears, prejudices, and dispositions, giving the lie to the commonplace that the political advance of same-sex marriage in the United States signals the apotheosis of gay rights. My analysis focuses on two representative popular and scholarly texts: the long-running television series Law and Order: SVU and a scholarly article about the Jerry Sandusky case published in jac. The former …

The Politics Of Engagement In The Digital Age, Sherlynn Allen-Harris

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Prime, Perform, Recover, Patrick Harkin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the formal and conceptual framework of my artistic practice as it culminated in the installation of my thesis exhibition, Prime, Perform, Recover. My exhibition seeks to operate as an analysis and critique of the separation inherent in media presentation and rhetoric surrounding natural disasters.

I utilize the aesthetics and vocabulary of disaster capitalism and prepping culture in order to pose direct questions about ecological and social change. I examine the role of images within mass media image production as an all encompassing Now-Time. In this paper I describe frameworks that my practice proposes as potential solutions to …

"If You Want To Be The Man, You've Got To Beat The Man": Masculinity And The Rise Of Professional Wrestling In The 1990'S, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper traces the relationship between the shifting representations of masculinity in professional wrestling programs of the 1990s and the contemporaneous shifts in conceptions of masculinity, examining the ways each of these shifts impacted the other. Most important among these was a growing sense that the biggest enemy in wrestling and in day-to-day life is one’s boss. Moreover, the corporate corruption theme continues to underscore the WWE’s on-screen and off-screen coverage, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Thus, the paper provides a template for considering a widely consumed popular cultural form in ways that challenge the determinism …

Stealing Home: The Akron Baseball Documentary, Daniel Cermak

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My honors project focused around the elimination of the Akron baseball program in the summer of 2015. I produced, directed and edited this project. The potential audience for this project is anyone in Northeast Ohio with some knowledge on the University of Akron and their sports teams. I did most of the work on this project during the Spring semester of 2016, where I travelled to interview former players and others to comment on the cutting of the team and the future of the players, program and school. During the summer of 2016 I conducted research and reshot interviews and …

Steven Avery, A Case Study: Making A Murderer Or Making An Identity, Allison Grussing

Masters Theses

Steven Avery, a Wisconsin native, has spent the majority of his adult life in prison, once for a crime he was later exonerated from, and then again for murder. The Netflix series Making a Murderer documents Avery's murder trial, and uses only first hand accounts. Ultimately, this research had two goals: one was to better understand how the series utilized framing to engage in advocacy for Avery and the second was to uncover what identity was constructed by the producers and series for Avery. With a thematic analysis approach and open and axial coding this research revealed three themes that …

The Place Of Faith, Doubt, And Sacrament In The Post-Apocalyptic Worlds Of The Leftovers And The Walking Dead, Scott Culpepper

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

No abstract provided.