Digital Commons Network^™

"It's Not The Same Anymore" (2023): A Reflection On The Creative Process Behind My Queer Coming-Of-Age Short Film, Olivia Lee

University Honors Theses

"It's Not The Same Anymore" stands as a poignant queer coming-of-age short film crafted by individuals who share the queer experience, with the intention of resonating deeply with the queer community. The narrative intimately captures the journey of a young queer woman as she navigates the realms of love, heartbreak, and the quest for self-discovery. Amidst a media landscape that frequently falls short in its representation of LGBTQ+ voices and authentic lived experiences, this film aspires to bridge the gap and bring forth a much-needed sense of belonging and recognition.

A link to the short film can be found here: …

In A Condition Of No Light, Alana Perino

Masters Theses

In a Condition of No Light is an autofictional investigation into lineages of familial domesticity. The performances therein circumnavigate one family in one domestic environment, yet are in dialogue with repertoires learned and rehearsed within legacies of myth, literature, theater, film, music, and image; as well as through the otherwise untraceability of embodied memory and inherited trauma. The methodologies used are primarily photographic but also encompass practices reaching towards sculpture, installation, and performance. The line of questioning reserved for this inquiry is how a home, its objects, and inhabitants generate, spacialize, and embody the conditions of wealth, whiteness, and gender. …

“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson

Criticism

Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed’s work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new …

Towards An Experimental Bibliography Of Hemispheric Reconstruction Newspapers, Joshua Ortiz Baco, Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, Jim Casey, Sarah H. Salter

Criticism

Digital collections of newspapers have drawn broader attention to the fragmented and scattered print histories of minoritized communities. Attempts to survey these histories through bibliography, however, quickly meet with a fundamental problem: the practice of bibliographic description calls for creating a static record of social affiliations. Given the overwhelming scholarly consensus that categories such as race, ethnicity, and language are socially constructed, this article introduces an experimental bibliographic method for mapping the vast landscape of historical newspapers. This method extends the machine learning affordances of a recent project called Newspaper Navigator to enumerate the newspapers in Chronicling America according to …

New Mapping, Dowon Yoo

Masters Theses

Tools determine the shape of most of the worlds that are manufactured or measured. Taking the Earth as an example, territory is shaped and transformed by the tools of the earth's plate movement, the sea, and humans. A map, a recognized territory, is represented through numerical instruments, mathematical formulas, and visual devices such as lenses.

The instrumental perspective is one of the powerful lenses that will work effectively into the past, present, and future. So I started to apply an instrumental perspective to digital space. Digital space which is Non-physical has become one of the most important worlds for contemporary …

Describe The City You Live In, Jingfei Hu

Masters Theses

I dive into the fields: frequency (sound), wavelengths (light), shapes (conversation): they build connections. What is action without reflection? Now I’m a city drifter. Through art making and dialogue I try to drop the anchor into the futuristic turbulent ocean (of society, speed, and the status quo ). Did I drop it? Not sure. I grew up in the most fast- paced city in China, Shenzhen. I feel pressured there. Do I feel that pressure here? of a precarious, unpredictable future? These questions push me out of the turbulent ocean to grab the present.

There are three stages of time: …

Movement, Mechanization, And Coexistence, Yukyung Chung

Masters Theses

A movement is a tool that expresses the subject I pursue, ‘mechanization of human beings’. There are many technologies that replace humans these days, such as artificial intelligence. This makes me skeptical and afraid of being replaced as an artist in the future. Paradoxically, people, including myself, are enthusiastic about it, indicating that we do embrace the mechanization process as a society.

I will reveal this phenomenon of coexistence by demonstrating the possibility that machines cannot replace us, through motion experiments where rules increase, first starting with the reliance on intuition. I will explore not only the things that machines …

Superbland, Dougal Henken

Masters Theses

"A thin wafer is placed in the mouth of a kneeling woman and becomes flesh. A man masturbates quietly in a darkened room to a 3D model of a popular film actress. A car drives through an abandoned town and decelerates as it approaches a sign reading “Slow Children Playing.” A man fastidiously mows an artificial lawn while watching the sun dip low over a vast desert horizon. Superbland opens up new paths in understanding graphic design within the realm of the hyperreal. It begins with a study of simulation in graphic design contexts, building upon established forms of meaning-making …

Coast To Coast, Zeyuan Ren

Masters Theses

This essay contains four bodies of work created during my graduate studies, all of which take place on either the West or East coasts, incorporating performance, photography, and video. In the first half of the paper, I examine how the theme of “displacement” is established in my initial works, and highlight the significance of the state of “being displaced” in my process of imaging and (re)understanding the ocean.

At the core of the thesis, I investigate the wave-piloting of Marshall Islanders and a particular cartographic model, the “stick chart,” which is a mnemonic device embedded with the voyager's somatic memories, …

Rooted In Topsoil, Jiaying Wang

Masters Theses

Disillusioned by my transnational identity, I have come to realize that my sense of belonging is no longer attached to any physical location, but instead to a state of mind, to an intimacy with the world. My notion of home is an obscure and unsettled—at times utopian—idea, which can be infinitely decoded, re-positioned and re-established psychologically. This thesis is an investigation of that liminal state, questioning the paradoxical place at the intersection of longing and belonging, interior and exterior, rootedness and uprootedness. Through a collection of short essays that accompany projects, I seek to unpack the precarious emotional complexities that …

Austentatious Aspirations: How Janeite Women Writers Create And Expand Their Own Cultural Communities Through Recounting And Adapting Jane Austen's Original Works In Literature And Film, Kerri L. Bennett

Student Theses and Dissertations

In comparison to Jane Austen’s purportedly quiet, unassuming life, her six novels have had an ostentatious and extensive impact upon Anglophone literature, culture, and history, particularly through the innumerable adaptations that have been created, written, and produced by her most ardent admirers. As such, this research explores the ways that their various literary and filmic adaptations of Austen’s original narratives both create and expand their communities. Additionally, this project situates Janeite cultural production within the framework of Jacques Derrida’s theory of archival expansion, as well as the scholarship of Claudia Johnson, Abigail Derecho, and Sarah Glosson, among others. The texts …

Présence Francophone, Numéro 100

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Sembène Ousmane, Un Cinéaste En Guerre, Léthicia Obono Ngou-Milama

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

If he is mobilized, enlisted in the corps of “Senegalese Riflemen” of the French army during the Second World War, the war inflicts a deep wound to Sembène Ousmane. This shocking and traumatic experience will tirelessly inspire his literary and cinematographic work. With his camera and his acerbic gaze, the Senegalese filmmaker will address the tragic fate of African soldiers and will restore the indelible imprint of war and colonialism on Africa in his films Niaye (1964), Emitaï (1971) and Camp de Thiaroye (1988).

Hybridité Et Ironie Dans Le Mandat D’Ousmane Sembène, Florence Leca Mercier

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Hybridity is the discursive pattern which best expresses the postcolonial experience. Given the interweaving of the aesthetic and the political projects in Sembène’s work, we would like to show that stylistic hybridity in the short story Le mandat emerges in three fields, lexical, enunciative and intertextual, and generates irony, thus connecting aesthetics and politics. In terms of lexicon, hybridity means a combination of idioms or registers; as far as enunciation is concerned, hybridity meets the “discours mixtes” as defined by Laurence Rosier; finally, we can see an intertextual hybridity: Le mandat is built on an underlying folktale structure which relevance …

Éditorial, Jean Ouedraogo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Les Actes Révolutionnaires De La Gent Féminine Dans Les Bouts De Bois De Dieu D’Ousmane Sembène, Assane Ndiaye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As a committed writer, Ousmane Sembène reminds the critical struggles led by women during the railway workers’ strike with the intention of taking part in the establishment of more fair world. The social commitment of the man originated from Ziguinchor is supported by various feminine figures embodying the ideology of the Senegalese novelist about freedom of speech. In order to show that Sembène is a revolutionary, we focused on ten militants in Les bouts de bois de Dieu. Through a sociocritical approach, this article has tried to reveal women’s activism.

Index (N° 100)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Front Matter And Table Of Contents (N° 100)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

De Marseille À Moscou : Retour Sur Le Contexte Politique Des Années De Formation D’Ousmane Sembène (1946-1962), Gabrielle Chomentowsky

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article seeks to reconsider through some archival documents and testimonies the first years of political and artistic formation of the writer-filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, from his years in Marseille to his first trips to the Soviet Union in 1958 and 1962.

Écritures Dans Les Films D’Ousmane Sembène : Enjeux Linguistiques Et Réception Cinématographique, Louis Ndong

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The article deals with the written elements in Ousmane Sembène’s films. I point out all aspects relating to the written canal in Sembène’s cinematographic productions (opening and end titles, signs, mentions on cars, etc.). The interest of the study lies in the functions assigned to the written canal in interplay with the dialogues and sounds, but also in the use of languages in writings and the challenges that are linked to it. Through the analysis, we can observe written elements in Wolof as well as in French, two languages which play an important role in Sembène’s cinematographic aesthetics.

La Diffusion En France Des Longs Métrages D’Ousmane Sembène, Claude Forest

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Ousmane Sembène is one of the French-speaking South Saharan African directors who has been the most prolific, but also, with Idrissa Ouédraogo, the one who has been the most broadcast in French cinemas during his lifetime. Although many of his films were favorably received by critics, they met with very little enthusiasm among French viewers, its recognition by certain cinematic circles and its aesthetic aura being thus incomparable with its commercial success. The analysis points to Ousmane Sembène’s real strategy, which adopted a strategy of international recognition by festivals, not by foreign audiences.

Logique Mathématique Dans Le Docker Noir D’Ousmane Sembène, Pierre Ndemby Mamfoumby

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The present article examines Le docker noir taking into account the narrative trajectory of Diaw Falla as well as the triangular relationship between Diaw-Catherine-Ginette which inscribes the novel in what we call a "double negative narrative". The narrative, through intertextual contamination with the story of Sirius, the slave trader, not only translates the separation/loss of Senegalese symbols and identity on the other side of the Atlantic, but also allows us to look at the novel as an indication of inequality, a place of sometimes impossible transmission and reconciliation with African historical memory through slavery. Studying the narrative from a mathematical …

Du Dialogue Au Dialogisme : Enjeux Du Style Dans Le Mandat, Fortuné Nkonene-Benha

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article takes an analytical look at the Ousmane Sembène’s novelistic prose: precisely he proposes a poetic and stylizing reading of Le mandat. First grasping the textual structure of this classical work from dialogue, we show its characteristics (psittacism of the characters, polemical exchanges under apparent dialectical interactions, presence of epistolary exchanges). In a second movement, the enunciative heterogeneity laid bare enables us to confirm a cultural hypotext that deeply works on the Sembenian literary language, putting it on a popular invoice. Finally, the analysis succeeds in identifying the “literal novel” as an aesthetic category and scriptural parade that …

Chronologie D’Ousmane Sembène : Trajectoire, Oeuvres Et Contextes, Edoardo Cagnan

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This chronology is based on several research works, as well as on several other chronologies. Conceived as a pedagogical tool, its aim is to show Sembène’s trajectory in the literary and cinematographic fields. The novelist-filmmaker’s life and work are linked to other political and cultural events that have marked Senegal, sub-Saharan Africa, the black world, and the French-speaking world.

Livres Reçus (N° 100)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Abstracts (N° 100)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Parties Annexes (N° 100)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Exploring Friendships In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Novels And Adaptations: A Study In Social Media, Fandoms, And Variations, Ashley D. Anderson

Student Theses

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy and their adaptations all reveal the importance of friendship and fandom. Utilizing theorists Walter Benjamin and Henry Jenkins the friendship theme is seen in the various stylistic elements in the films and novels; additionally, a look into the fandom presence on social media, their knowledge, and merchandise reveals why the stories have continued to interest audiences over many generations.

A Diachronic, Scale-Flexible, Relational, Perspectival Operation: In Defense Of (Always-Reforming) Medium Specificity, Jordan Sjol

Film and Media Arts Faculty Publications

At least since Friedrich Kittler declared fiber-optic cable the “end of media,” there has been an idea in cinema and media studies that as all media become digital, the concept of medium specificity makes less and less sense. Meanwhile, many wonder if our field is coherent, as media scholars turn their attention to such objects as dust, cities, and whales. I argue that digital convergence makes medium specificity more rather than less vital, though in a reformed formulation. While our far-flung objects cannot cohere our discipline, a use of medium specificity as a diachronic, scale-flexible, relational, perspectival operation can.

Présentation, Mbaye Diouf, Edoardo Cagnan

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.