Television Commons^™

Is Snow White Still The Fairest Of Them All? How Once Upon A Time Reinvents The Image Of The Disney Princess, Hannah M. Gonneville

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

A modern fairy tale drama on the ABC network, Once Upon A Time recasts the animated Disney princesses as live-action heroines. Building on Disney scholars' research, I study how the company uses synergy to establish a connection between a primetime television show and a children's franchise. Through a textual analysis of the show's main princess, Snow White, I discover that Once Upon A Time's Snow White establishes a more modern, dynamic image of the original princess, indicating that the Disney Company is moving in a new direction. However, the show still preserves the character's status as a traditional Disney princess …

#Prettylittleliars: How Hashtags Drive The Social Tv Phenomenon, Melanie Brozek

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Twitter is used by many TV shows to promote discussion and encourage viewer loyalty. Most successfully, ABC Family uses Twitter to promote the teen drama Pretty Little Liars through the use of hashtags and celebrity interactions. This study analyzes Pretty Little Liars use of hashtags created by the network and by actors from the show. It examines how the Pretty Little Liars official accounts engage fans about their opinions on the show and encourage further discussion. Fans use the network-generated hashtags within their tweets to react to particular scenes and to hopefully be noticed by managers of official show accounts. …

As The World Turns...Gay, Not Queer: Privileging Heteronormalized Representations Of Sexuality In American Soap Operas From 1977 - Present, Brett Edward King

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project argues that American daytime soap operas, since the1970s, have adopted prevailing discursive ideas of queerness, re-articulated them, and introduced new discursive understandings of queerness into popular culture. Most often, these re-articulated representations reflect a heteronormalized model,owing to myriad historically-situated discourses related to human sexuality (e.g.,mental health, AIDS, and gender identity). This point is made through a broad examination of these shifting discourses, coupled with a direct analysis of salient queer characters and storylines that appeared concurrently within daytime serials. Building on Feminist and Media theory, this project includes Queer theory to frame a comprehensive historical-discursive understanding of queerness …

Is There A Future Audience For Small Market Broadcast Television News?, David W. Madsen

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Local television stations, especially in smaller markets of 100,000 to 200,000 TV homes, are constantly looking for adults between the ages of 25- 54 to watch their TV newscasts. TV stations must nurture younger audiences (of adults 18-34) to grow into older, desired audiences of loyal TV news viewers. Because of technological innovations such as the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, younger audiences are spending less time watching local TV news.

Existing research on younger audiences has largely focused on news consumption in general (TV, radio, newspaper, Internet), used more of a national news focus, and was often conducted in large …

The Forgotten Chancellor, Lorne Fultonberg

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Every past chancellor of Syracuse University has had something named for him. Every chancellor except for one.

The Forgotten Chancellor examines the administration of John Corbally, the only past chancellor without a campus namesake. Does SU’s eighth headman actually create a lasting legacy in his 18 months on campus? And most importantly, does he deserve anonymity?

The project took on the form of a documentary, using pictures and sounds to truly transport the viewer back to Syracuse in 1968-1971.

The story relied on the people who were there to retell it and bring it to life. The search for eyewitnesses …

Being Somali Bantu In The City: A Look At The Life Of A Somali Bantu Student In The Syracuse City School District, Bailey Nay White

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

“Saturdays with Egal” is a documentary for the Capstone thesis “Being Somali Bantu in the City: A look at the life of a Somali Bantu student in the Syracuse City School District. The film focuses on Egal Adan, a Somali Bantu, fourteen-year-old refugee. It is a story about my relationship with Egal as a tutor and mentor. “Saturdays with Egal” also delves into the adversity he has had to overcome and his accomplishments in school, sports, extracurricular activities, and at home despite his hardships.

I chose to create a documentary because of the organic relationship it creates between viewers and …

An Investigation Of Lesser-Known Environmental Issues In The United States, Amy Lipman

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This Honors Capstone Project focuses on lesser-known environmental issues in the United States, mainly on the East Coast. The topics at hand are nuclear waste storage at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, racism in the workplace at the Savannah River Site, mountaintop mining in West Virginia’s Appalachian mountains, and the ramifications of hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania and how they apply to the future of the practice in New York.

This project consists of four mini-documentaries totaling 45 minutes in length. To put the first three pieces together, I reviewed interviews and conducted research on the subjects, wrote and …

Prospects: An Original Tv Pilot, Kevin Slack

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My capstone project is a television pilot script about the trials and tribulations of a minor league baseball team’s front office. Following around the new general manager and his various colleagues and colorful characters around the ballpark, the show, tentatively titled Prospects, is meant to be optimistic and warm-hearted, but still with a bite of humor and cynicism.

For the composition of this piece, I initially used the free screenwriting software Celtx, as well as your standard tools of writing: pad and pen.

My goal for this project was to create a quality ensemble-driven show that, while centered around the …

Smart Kids The Documentary, Hannah Louys

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Smart Kids was a program, started in 2009, that was created as a joint venture between the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the School of Education at Syracuse University. Professors and students from these two schools worked with kids from Syracuse elementary and middle schools, teaching them how to use cameras and video editing software to tell their own stories. The goal of the program was to aid urban education reform, but more so than that, to truly give kids a voice when it comes to their education.

My job, when it came to this project, was to …

Green Sisters: Bringing Spirituality And Environmental Awareness Together At Homecoming Farm, Marisa Decandido

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

“Green Sisters: Bringing Spirituality and Environmental Awareness together at Homecoming Farm,” addresses the topic of the “green sisters” movement and its presence at Homecoming Farm, a Community-Supported Agriculture project located in Amityville, New York. The green sisters movement, started in the 1980s in Caldwell, New Jersey, entails groups of Catholic nuns who are beginning to pursue “Earth ministries,” and dedicating their lives to environmental education and practicing sustainability. One example of this is found at Homecoming Farm, where the Sisters of Saint Dominic in Amityville created an organic farm in 1992 to nurture the surrounding community in body and spirit. …

Seinfeld: A Show About Economics And Irrationality, Josh Sufilka

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

The show Seinfeld is much more than a show about nothing. In each episode, unnoticed by the average viewer, common principles of economics are being presented. However, these principles are being presented in a way that differs from the typical neoclassical economic view, which is every person makes rational decisions. This paper questions the view of the writers, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, on their understanding of human behavior. More importantly, by focusing on two episodes, this paper argues that people do not always make rational decisions and as a result, questions neoclassical economics as a whole.

Yolanda Barco's Impact On The Cable Television Industry, Piper L. Peteet-Kilgore

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to take a detailed look into the life of cable television pioneer Yolanda Barco and demonstrate that her achievements in cable telecommunications have directly impacted the success of the cable telecommunications industry.

The daughter of cable television pioneer George Barco, Yolanda Barco worked alongside her father advocating for the rights of cable television during the early years of the industry. Following a biographical story framework, this research follows a timeline of her career discussing her family life, education, how she became involved in the cable television industry, achievements in cable television and the lasting …

Ambanasom's Son Of The Native Soil And The Western Concept Of The Tragic Hero, Denis Fonge Tembong

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ambanasom's Son of the Native Soil and the Western Concept of the Tragic Hero" Denis Fonge Tembong discusses the view that although African and Western literatures are fundamentally different as they exhibit or represent distinct cultural values, they nevertheless share some common notions. The concept of a tragic hero is one of those convergent loci where the two literatures meet. With this in mind, Tembong examines in Aristotle's and Shakespeare's concepts of the tragic hero and demonstrates how the ideas exploited in Macbeth are similarly used in Shadrach A. Ambanasom's Son of the Native Soil against the …

Ecocriticism In An Age Of Terror, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ecocriticism in an Age of Terror" Simon C. Estok argues that we cannot ignore the context of terror in and through which ecocriticism works and that the relationships between the imagining of terror on the one hand and the conceptualizing of hostile environments on the other is in very serious need of critical analysis. Changes in how we think about nature are also long overdue, as are changes in how we think about doing ecocriticism. Working toward these changes now in our scholarship will take us leaps and bounds closer to the activist intervention about which ecocriticism …

Towards A Framework Of A Semiotics Of Dance, Nikoleta Popa Blanariu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Towards a Framework of a Semiotics of Dance" Nicoleta Popa Blanariu constructs a framework of based on de Saussure's, Peirce's, and Barthes's thought. She applies Ferdinand de Saussure's concept of semiosis defined as a cultural system of conventions. In dance this occurs when choreographic signs are encoded, for example in magic, ritual, or religious expressions of movement. Further, Charles Sanders Peirce's concept of the role of "intelligent consciousness" is crucial for the engendering of signification and thus to dance. In dance, the choreographer "interprets" the world and by means of selection and interpretation, the choreographic sign …

Recognizing A Collective Inheritance Through The History Of Women In Computing, Erika E. Smith

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Recognizing a Collective Inheritance through the History of Women in Computing" Erika E. Smith engages with the following question: how might we create the space for women in the history of computing that is deserved? Even with the proliferation of social, political, and historical engagement with feminist theory and computing technology, there remains a lack of scholarship on the topic of women in the history of computing. Given the dearth of historical accounts on the role of women in computing, the task of delving into such history becomes necessary, although difficult. Smith's objective is to examine a …

Cross-Cultural Interpretation And Chinese Literature: A Book Review Article On Owen's Work In Sinology, Qingben Li, Jinghua Guo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Egyptian Enlightenment And Mann, Freud, And Freund, Rebecca C. Dolgoy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Egyptian Enlightenment and Mann, Freud, and Freund" Rebecca C. Dolgoy discusses various ways in which ancient Egypt is used in three works from the 1930s: Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, and Karl Freund's film The Mummy. By showing the similarities and differences in how these works use Egypt, Dolgoy develops the concept that memory is the way in which the past is used. Dolgoy follows the structure of a cinematic shot casting: The Mummy as the long shot which both sets up the general Egyptomania characteristic of …

Text, Textile, And The Body In Baudelaire's 'A Une Mendiante Rousse' And Devi's Indian Tango, Michelle C. Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Text, Textile, and the Body in Baudelaire's 'A une mendiante rousse' and Devi's Indian Tango," Michelle C. Lee aims to rethink the post-romantic division between aesthetics and politics through a reconsideration of the idea of complicity in Charles Baudelaire's poem and Ananda Devi's novel. Lee argues against the claim that aesthetics needs to remain autonomous in order to be able to radically critique bourgeois society. Through a reading of the trope of clothing in each of the texts, Lee re-evaluates the formation of autonomous modernist aesthetics and attempts to show that avant-garde self-reflexivity engages in the …

Frye's Thought And Its Implications For The Interpretation Of Nigerian Narratives, Ignatius Chukwumah

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Frye's Thought and Its Implications for the Interpretation of Nigerian Narratives" Ignatius Chukwumah applies Northrop Frye's theoretical work on archetypes, mythos, and modes for the analysis of Nigerian literature. Chukwumah's application in the interpretation of Nigerian literature results in the understanding that the hero as conceived by Frye is not exactly the same with Africa's or Nigeria's and requires that scholars and critics of African texts fill up the ellipses generated by Frye with an autochthonous, resistant, rewarding, African-related symbolic templates in order to make the sense of the hero in both traditional and postcolonial African/Nigerian literatures …