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Book Review: The History And Politics Of Star Wars: Death Stars And Democracy, Petra Hendrickson Sep 2026

Book Review: The History And Politics Of Star Wars: Death Stars And Democracy, Petra Hendrickson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Book Review: The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy


Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim Sep 2026

Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project traces the contours of the Japanese folk dance tradition of Bon Dance in Hawaiʻi through the nuances of public scholarship, diaspora, and racial capitalism by producing an original play which aims to perform the knowledge and praxis which the performance ritual puts forward. Treating Bon Dance as muse, the original play examines the necessity of turning to the past in order to disrupt a future made inevitable by oppressive systems; a fiction that comments on and critiques the predictive and generative technologies that have embedded themselves into society at large. Through intertwining conversations that explore prophecy and …


Going The Distance: How The Disney Renaissance Illustrated The Social And Cultural Changes In America During The 1990s, Deborah A. Bates Aug 2026

Going The Distance: How The Disney Renaissance Illustrated The Social And Cultural Changes In America During The 1990s, Deborah A. Bates

Graduate Masters Theses

The cultural and social history of America in the 90s is examined in this thesis by looking at the Disney Renaissance, a period of ten films made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS). This thesis illustrates how the animators were able to seamlessly incorporate important societal trends of the 90s into their films, portraying a changing world within their films. As they were creating a new style of the animated movie musical, they were creating works that connected to the audiences watching in new ways, by putting up a reflection of society within their films. The way that the …


How Philip K. Dick Used The Unreliable Narrator To Transport Unwitting Acolytes, Michael Barros, Jordi Smith Aug 2026

How Philip K. Dick Used The Unreliable Narrator To Transport Unwitting Acolytes, Michael Barros, Jordi Smith

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay examines the use of the unreliable narrator to transport the reader into narrative worlds, specifically in Philip K. Dick's fiction. By exploring the phenomenon of narrative transportation and the role of emotions in engagement with fiction, we argue that Dick's use of the unreliable narrator significantly engages and transports readers into his narrative worlds. Subsequently, we contend that his belief in the fundamental reality of those worlds is effectively positioning himself as a gatekeeper and mediator between the narrative world and the real world, which sets him, in his mind, as a prophet, using fiction as a tool …


Ai And The Music Industry: Its Current Status And A Speculative Projection Of Its Evolutionary Trajectory, Rhett D. Morris, Clayton Rosati, Stefan Fritsch Aug 2026

Ai And The Music Industry: Its Current Status And A Speculative Projection Of Its Evolutionary Trajectory, Rhett D. Morris, Clayton Rosati, Stefan Fritsch

Honors Projects

Music serves as one of society's biggest cultural outlets, allowing millions to share in what used to be a uniquely human form of expression. The commodification of music has built a huge industry full of companies and platforms that have used technology and property laws to shape music's relationship with the public. This study aims to look into the future to see how AI and its implementation could affect the structure of the music industry. To look into the future, this piece establishes two of the most pressing kinds of AI technology for the music industry and looks to contextualize …


Review Of Supernatural: A History Of Television’S Unearthly Road Trip By Erin Giannini, Duane Ebesu Jul 2026

Review Of Supernatural: A History Of Television’S Unearthly Road Trip By Erin Giannini, Duane Ebesu

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

No abstract (book review)


Liberation Landscapes: Writing Freedom In A Black Geographies Classroom, Cornel Grey, Muna-Udbi A. Ali Jul 2026

Liberation Landscapes: Writing Freedom In A Black Geographies Classroom, Cornel Grey, Muna-Udbi A. Ali

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.


Regarding World(S): A Review Of Elisha Cohn’S Milieu: A Creaturely Theory Of The Contemporary Novel (2025) And Daniel Wright’S The Grounds Of The Novel (2024), Katarzyna Bartoszyńska Jun 2026

Regarding World(S): A Review Of Elisha Cohn’S Milieu: A Creaturely Theory Of The Contemporary Novel (2025) And Daniel Wright’S The Grounds Of The Novel (2024), Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan Jun 2026

World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Some of the most influential pronouncements on world literature have been made by the kind of authors who are most likely to emerge as representatives of world literature once we agree on a definition, including Goethe, the young Marx, Tagore, Gorky, Hesse, Kundera, and the distinguished signatories of the manifesto for a world-literature in French. Breaking out of this vicious circle by referring to the authority of pure theorists of world literature is not the solution, as this would only pull us into a new vicious circle where most of these theorists would mostly remind us of the names that …


A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson Jun 2026

A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Working with Fredric Jameson’s influential discussions of utopia and world literature, the essay suggests that the prospect of utopia is frightening and also possibly boring insofar as it threatens to drain away the already waning possibility of experience in a postmodern, globalized world. In this world, resentment of the present seems to go hand in hand with a nostalgia for a fictitious past, underscoring the difficulty of conceptualizing new social, cultural, and economic arrangements. Viewing world literature as a possible source of a new utopian thought, a utopia unlimited to its contemporary dystopian guises, the essay retraces Jameson’s pronouncements on …


The Proletarian Moment In World Literature, Anna Björk Einarsdóttir Jun 2026

The Proletarian Moment In World Literature, Anna Björk Einarsdóttir

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

During the interwar period (1918–1939), an international literary movement emerged in relation to internationalist and socialist politics and political struggles. Writers around the world saw themselves as contributors to a new proletarian moment within the historical unfolding of world literature. This movement was international, and writers situated on the peripheries of both the capitalist core and the emerging socialist world looked toward revolutionary Russia and other centers of the socialist world. This paper focuses on three such authors, the American Richard Wright, the Argentinian Roberto Arlt, and the Icelander Halldór Laxness. During the interwar period, all three were involved in …


An Arc Stretched Between East And West: World (Or Universal?) Literature In Maxim Gorky’S Publishing Utopias, Francesca Lazzarin Jun 2026

An Arc Stretched Between East And West: World (Or Universal?) Literature In Maxim Gorky’S Publishing Utopias, Francesca Lazzarin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The Vsemirnaia Literatura publishing house was founded in Petrograd by Maxim Gorky less than a year after the October Revolution. Aligned with the objectives of the new regime, its mission was to translate and publish a substantial body of European and Asian poetry and prose, thereby contributing to the broad cultural education of the emerging Soviet generations. These ambitions clearly reflect a key element of Gorky’s conception of culture as well: for Gorky, culture in its broadest sense (encompassing literature, art, music, and science) had the potential to unite humanity under the ideals of peace and harmony. Within this new …


Introduction: World Literature As World Crisis, Jernej Habjan Jun 2026

Introduction: World Literature As World Crisis, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Marble Bodies: Sculpture, Gender, Race, And Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature, Madeline Olley Jun 2026

Marble Bodies: Sculpture, Gender, Race, And Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature, Madeline Olley

Dissertations - ALL

Marble Bodies reads across both literary texts and sculptures to ask how sculptural logic operates across forms to reveal what sculptors and sculpture offer the field of nineteenth-century U.S. literary studies—formally, theoretically, and methodologically. It argues that sculpture functions not merely as subject matter within nineteenth-century American literature but as an interpretive framework that reveals how bodies are objectified, valued, and assigned cultural meaning. With attention to the formal and material properties of sculpture—stillness, smoothness, and duration—and to the questions of ideality, valuation, and preservation that sculpture generates, this dissertation shows how nineteenth-century writers and artists found in those properties …


[De]Constructing Jimmy's Grin: Doing Cultural Studies Through The Lens Of Boston Globe Editorial Cartoonist Paul Szep's Showcase Of Carter's White House Campaign, Lori Amber Roessner Jun 2026

[De]Constructing Jimmy's Grin: Doing Cultural Studies Through The Lens Of Boston Globe Editorial Cartoonist Paul Szep's Showcase Of Carter's White House Campaign, Lori Amber Roessner

Journal of 20th Century Media History

Heeding journalism historians Hanno Hardt and Bonnie Brennan’s call for inquiries that provide a new understanding of historical working conditions, this study explored the production of a sample of Szep’s editorial cartoons that surrounded Jimmy Carter’s campaign and presidency from 1976 to 1980. In particular, the manuscript considered the historical conditions and personal circumstances that influenced the cultural production of Szep’s body of work surrounding Jimmy Carter’s presidency; representations of Carter and his White House campaign in the sample of 20 editorial cartoons produced by Szep; moments of consumption by active Boston Globe audiences; the practice of identity [de]construction related …


Book Review: Yamin Hu, The Contemporary Construction Of The Chinese Form Of Marxist Literary Criticism , Paul R. Patton Jun 2026

Book Review: Yamin Hu, The Contemporary Construction Of The Chinese Form Of Marxist Literary Criticism , Paul R. Patton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Worldbuilding, Brent Ryan Bellamy Jun 2026

Worldbuilding, Brent Ryan Bellamy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Substantialism, David Janzen Jun 2026

Substantialism, David Janzen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Style, Clint Burnham Jun 2026

Style, Clint Burnham

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Spectrality, Marlon Lieber Jun 2026

Spectrality, Marlon Lieber

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Secularization, Jake Orbison Jun 2026

Secularization, Jake Orbison

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Rhetoric, Fintan Calpin Jun 2026

Rhetoric, Fintan Calpin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Representation, Douglas Spielman Jun 2026

Representation, Douglas Spielman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Real, Colleen Lye, Rumur Dowling Jun 2026

Real, Colleen Lye, Rumur Dowling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Praxis, Tobias Dias Jun 2026

Praxis, Tobias Dias

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Nature, Christina Chalmers Jun 2026

Nature, Christina Chalmers

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Metonymy, Rob Jackson Jun 2026

Metonymy, Rob Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Metabolism, Christian P. Haines Jun 2026

Metabolism, Christian P. Haines

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Mediation, Josh Robinson Jun 2026

Mediation, Josh Robinson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'


Language, Richard Godden Jun 2026

Language, Richard Godden

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'