Digital Commons Network^™

Marshall University Special Collections Photo Preservation Workshop, Caitlin Noelle Walker, Nat Debruin

Librarian Research

Workshop presented at the West Virginia Library Conference in Flatwoods, WV on April 2, 2014. The workshop focused on the history of photography with an emphasis on identifying different types of photographic processes and images. The second half of the workshop provided the participants with knowledge about the environmental and chemical challenges to preserving photographic images and possible solutions to solving problems in their institution's collections.

Assuming Identities: Gender, Sexuality, And Performativity In The Silence Of The Lambs, Lynne Stahl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In the introduction to Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick discusses the instability of the ignorance/knowledge binary, which generally equates the latter with power and the former with impotence. She argues that ignorance (or the appearance thereof) can be a tool of power as well, citing as an example the 1986 ruling by the United States Justice Department that employers “may freely fire persons with AIDS” provided that those employers “can claim to be ignorant of the medical fact, quoted in the ruling, that there is no known health danger in the workplace from the disease” (5). That this …

The Lifestyle Of The "Urban Tribe", Nichelle D. Mcnabb, Rachel Friedman

Communications Faculty Scholarship

It was once the norm for people to get married in their early twenties,

perhaps right after college or maybe during college. Once married, there was

the need to start a family as soon as possible. However, nowadays, people

appear to be substituting (at least for this period of time after college) the

traditional family structure with a new one – the “urban tribe.” This paper

takes a critical approach to examining portrayals of rituals in “urban tribes”

in two television shows – Will & Grace and Friends in which we argue that

the progressive elements of these shows counter …

The Providence College Student Film Festival 2014 Entry Form, Providence College

Playbill and Promotions

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

The Providence College Student Film Festival 2014 entry form

Providence College Department Of Theatre, Dance & Film Main Stage Performance Schedule Spring 2014, Department Of Theatre, Dance & Film

Promotional Materials

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

Main Stage Performance Schedule

Spring 2014

[Sabbatical Report], Joon Sung

Sabbatical Reports

The primary purpose of this sabbatical project was to film. edit and produce short video pieces based on the footage collected in Tokyo, Japan.

The Evolution Of The Villain In American Cinema, Kelsey Mcclure

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

The villain character has evolved greatly throughout American cinema. Post World War II, the evolution is most striking by comparing films from the 1950s, 1970s, and 2000s. With a selection of four movies from each respective decade, the villains will be contrasted to identify any similarities and differences across decades to determine if the political environment has an impact on the way in which the villain character is portrayed.

Objective:

The purpose of this project was for me to determine if villains were constructed based on views of the American people at the times in which the films were created. …

College Students' Lingering Negative Emotional Reponses To Movies Viewed During College, Brianna M. Kuck

Selected Honors Theses

Although much research has been conducted on children’s negative emotional responses to movies, and even negative emotional responses to the media in general, limited research has been conducted on college students’ lingering negative emotional responses to movies they have viewed during their college years. Through a qualitative analysis using a focus group at a Florida Christian college, this thesis will examine what kinds of disturbing movie content and elements cause these lingering negative emotional responses in college students. The lingering negative emotional responses these students have will also be discussed in detail, as well as what triggers the reemergence of …

Pathos, Spring 2014, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Ryan de Laureal

Volume 8 No.3

The Effect Of Color On Emotions In Animated Films, Andrew Kennedy

Open Access Theses

Lighting color in animated films is usually chosen very carefully in order to portray a specific mood or emotion. Artists follow conventional techniques with color choices with the intention to create a greater emotional response in the viewer. This study examined the relationship between color variations in videos and emotional arousal as indicated by physiological response. Subjects wore a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor and watched two different videos: one portraying love and one portraying sadness. The videos were watched multiple times, each with variations in the lighting color. No significant effects on emotion for either hue or saturation were …

Senescence: An Aging Based Character Simulation Framework, Suren Deepak Rajasekaran

Open Access Theses

The 'Senescence' framework is a character simulation plug-in for Maya that can be used for rigging and skinning muscle deformer based humanoid characters with support for aging. The framework was developed using Python, Maya Embedded Language and PyQt. The main targeted users for this framework are the Character Technical Directors, Technical Artists, Riggers and Animators from the production pipeline of Visual Effects Studios. The characters that were simulated using 'Senescence' were studied using a survey to understand how well the intended age was perceived by the audience. The results of the survey could not reject one of our null hypotheses …

Images For A Nation: The Role Of Conservation Photography In American Environmentalism, Nathaniel W. Yale

Pomona Senior Theses

Photographs have long been integral in revealing American values, ideals, and identity. Accordingly, a study of environmental, or "conservation," imagery offers insight into America’s relationship with the natural world. In an examination of key figures and their conservation photography work, this thesis explores how the national conservation dialogue has been shaped by powerful images that, in some cases, even led to crucial acts of federal conservation. The first section highlights four photographers and their context and influence in this dialogue: W.H. Jackson’s photographs from Hayden’s 1871 survey of Yellowstone, Carleton Watkins’ work at Yosemite and Mariposa Grove in the 1860s, …

Transitional Violence In King Of New York, Soren G. Palmer

Journal of Religion & Film

Abel Ferrara’s violent and controversial film, King Of New York, follows the escalating violence and resulting trail of corpses between mobster Frank White (a psychotic sort of Robin Hood) and a group of detectives attempting to arrest him. The goal of this paper is to utilize Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg’s grammar of transition as a structural device to identify negative connections that highlight and foreshadow sources of violence in King of New York. However, simply noting the process of these transitions is insufficient to the paper’s broader purpose; if one is to investigate the causal elements of violence through …

The Virgin Mary On Screen: Mater Dei Or Just A Mother In Guido Chiesa’S Io Sono Con Te (I Am With You), Timothy J. Johnson, Barbara Ottaviani-Jones

Journal of Religion & Film

Guido Chiesa’s Io Sono con Te (I Am with You) offers a unique, albeit controversial take on Mary, the mother of Jesus. Filmed in Tunisia, and subject to criticism by Italian Catholic authorities and film critics alike, Io Sono con Te presents a rich anthropological-theological reflection on religion, culture, gender, and sacrifice. Not surprisingly, Chiesa draws on René Girard’s scapegoat theory throughout his film as he fashions Mary as the forceful protagonist in a familiar yet controversial story.

Preaching In The Darkness: The Night Of The Hunter’S Subversion Of Patriarchal Christianity And Classical Cinema, Carl Laamanen

Journal of Religion & Film

Upon its release in 1955, The Night of the Hunter did not find favor among audiences or critics, who failed to appreciate Charles Laughton’s vision for the Davis Grubb’s bestselling novel of the same title. While poor marketing certainly played into the film’s colossal collapse at the box office, I believe there is a deeper reason behind the rejection of the film in the 1950s—its portrayal of women and the female voice. In The Night of the Hunter, Miz Cooper (Lillian Gish) ultimately defeats Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), the corrupt Preacher, through the use of her voice, and by …

The Holy Fool In Late Tarkovsky, Robert O. Efird

Journal of Religion & Film

This article analyzes the Russian cultural and religious phenomenon of holy foolishness (iurodstvo) in director Andrei Tarkovsky’s last two films, Nostalghia and Sacrifice. While traits of the holy fool appear in various characters throughout the director’s oeuvre, a marked change occurs in the films made outside the Soviet Union. Coincident with the films’ increasing disregard for spatiotemporal consistency and sharper eschatological focus, the character of the fool now appears to veer off into genuine insanity, albeit with a seemingly greater sensitivity to a visionary or virtual world of the spirit and explicit messianic task.

“Love, What Have You Done To Me?” Eros And Agape In Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, Catherine M. O'Brien

Journal of Religion & Film

Despite its pre-Vatican II setting, Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) has retained a notable relevance in the twenty-first century. Although the titular act of confession is unsurprisingly significant, the diegesis actually foregrounds Matrimony and Holy Orders – two sacraments that remain under the spotlight during a tumultuous era for the Catholic Church. Alongside the traditional Hitchcockian theme of “an innocent man wrongly accused,” the plot really hinges on love – a subject that is intelligible to people of all religions and none. While examining the mise-en-scène of the director’s most Catholic film, this article offers an exploration of I Confess …

Filming Reconciliation: Affect And Nostalgia In The Tree Of Life, M. Gail Hamner

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper uses the affect theory of Gilles Deleuze, Raymond Williams, and Lauren Berlant, and the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to examine how affect constellates to film Christian reconciliation in Terrence Malick’s 2011 release, The Tree of Life. As a working shorthand, we can understand affect as the fungible set of bodily processes that affirm, sear, or reshape a body’s and society’s relational structures. I contend that the film’s fluid montage—analyzed with Deleuzian film theory—generates a non-reactionary nostalgia that binds Christian theological hope to the persistent melancholy of loss through the blurring of perception, memory, dream, and fantasy. Such blurring …

Plato's Watermelon: Art And Illusion In The Brothers Bloom, David L. Smith

Journal of Religion & Film

Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom is a sophisticated film about storytelling, pitting the idea that stories are an enhancement of life against the suspicion that stories are a deception. Set in a world of con artistry and illusion, it raises issues similar to those introduced in Plato’s allegory of the cave and in the critique of religion as illusion. Specifically, it follows one character’s desire for an “unwritten life”—a life free from artifice—through various logical and interpersonal challenges, and ends with a profound meditation on the coinherence of faith and skepticism.

Closing The Loop: "The Promise And Threat Of The Sacred" In Rian Johnson’S Looper, Brian W. Nail

Journal of Religion & Film

This article examines the ways in which Rian Johnson’s recent film Looper (2012) portrays the complex relationship between violence and the sacred in contemporary society through its exploration of the theme of retribution. Utilizing René Girard’s theory of sacrifice and Roberto Esposito’s explication of the immunitary logic of the sacred, this study argues that the film reveals the double nature of the sacred as a source of both life and death within society. Through an examination of crucial elements of Looper’s plot and setting, and in particular its enigmatic climax, I argue that as a religious film, Looper challenges its …

Uno Native Film Festival, Brady Desanti, Michele M. Desmarais, Beth R. Ritter

Journal of Religion & Film

This is the first year for the University of Nebraska at Omaha Native Film Festival. The Festival was presented Nov. 1-3, 2013, by the Native American Studies Program of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Vision Maker Media. In addition to the movies reviewed below, the Festival included a program of children/family films, a program of short films, an acting workshop with Chaske Spencer (Lakota Sioux), and a workshop on how to use visual media in the classroom presented by Vision Maker Media. Vision Maker Media is a non-profit organization that shares Native stories with the world by advancing …

Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music As Religious Experience, Brandon A. Konecny

Journal of Religion & Film

An earlier version of this book review appeared in Film Interernational, Nov. 13, 2013 (http://filmint.nu/?p=10038). It appears here by permission.

On Ashkenazi’S Weimar Film And Modern Jewish Identity, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

Every scholar of modern Jewish history is familiar with the poet Judah Leib Gordon’s 1862 exhortation to European Jewry: “Be a man in the street and a Jew at home” (as quoted in Ashkenazi, xv, 48). This motto takes on new relevance in the work of historian Ofer Ashkenazi, for whom public and private behaviors play out in the spatial terms of Weimar cinematic representation. Within the world of the street, Jews display only authentic bourgeois mannerisms and appearances; in private, the masquerade ceases to be necessary. According to Ashkenazi, we see this duality reflected in films made by Jewish …

Fallen Sports Heroes, Media, & Celebrity Culture, Lawrence A. Wenner

Faculty Pub Night

No abstract provided.

"Die Mauer Im Kopf": Aesthetic Resistance Against West-German Take-Over, Arwen Puteri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Even 24 years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, modern day Germans are still preoccupied with the contentious dynamics of the post-Wall unification process. Concern with geo-political fractiousness is deeply rooted in German history and the reason for Germany's desire to become a unified nation. The Fall of the Wall, and the subsequent rejection of socialism, was a chance to recover and unify what was perceived to be an "incomplete" nation. Yet, despite these actions, social unity between East and West Germans has never occurred and the Wall still persists as a metaphorical barrier in the minds of German …

P-22 Te Amo Mujer, Ivan Ruiz

Honors Scholars & Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium Programs

Te Amo Mujer is a documentary film project exploring the story of Don Gustavo Jiménez, an old man who lives in a small village in the south of Mexico, and the grandfather of the filmmaker. The film seeks to use the narrative of Don Gustavo to explore the question of why we live where we live. The thesis of the film, or more accurately the suggestion, as the film is a very personal work, is that we live where we do, and how we do, out of love for the people that are closest to us.

The Proto-Pixel Art Of Malevich And Kandinsky: Black Square, Its Digital Descendant And Neo- Vitalist Impulse, Irina Lyubchenko

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

In the beginning of the 20th century Kazimir Malevich, an important Russian avant-garde artist and thinker, created his iconic painting Black Square, which represented what he believed to be the basic unit of visual reality. Around the same time Wassily Kandinsky, another important Russian artist renown for his experiments in purely abstract art, discovered his own unit of representation – the point. This paper examines how the visual and philosophical aspects of contemporary digital reality, reflected in the aesthetic of the pixel, could have sprung from the early 20th century experiments in assembling the visible world from its basic units, …

Rave Culture- A Tale Of Two Scenes, Christopher Mohr

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

This article compares two iterations of rave culture through the perspective on scenes as outlined by Geoff Stahl in his essay "'It's Like Canada Reduced': Setting the Scene in Montreal." By applying both communication and sociopolitical theory to the comparison of the original rave scene to that of today's, a vivid understanding of how scenes and subcultures construct themselves- both within and around the cultural environments from which they are born- will become apparent.

Intertextuality In Beckett's And Ağaoğlu's Work, Elmas Şahín

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Intertextuality in Beckett's and Ağaoğlu's Work" Elmas Şahín discusses Adalet Ağaoğlu's 1973 novel Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die) and Samuel Beckett's 1950 Malone Dies in terms of intertextuality. Şahín employs tenets of comparative literature in order to analyze the two texts with regard to form and content and focuses on the on protagonists' worlds. In Şahín's interpretation, Ağaoğlu's protagonist Aysel is narrated in postmodern intertextuality as an individual of our days alienated from society, searching for her self/selves as she cannot succeed in dying. Both Beckett's and Ağaoğlu's protagonists attempt to "escape" from their selves and …

Subjectivity In 'Attār's Shaykh Of San'Ān Story In The Conference Of The Birds, Claudia Yaghoobi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Subjectivity in 'Attār’s Shaykh of San'ān Story in The Conference of the Birds" Claudia Yaghoobi discusses intersections of transgression, law, inclusion and exclusion, self and Other in Farīd al-Dīn 'Attār's (1142?-ca.1220) treatment of religion with regard to Shaykh San'ān and the Christian girl's love story in The Conference of the Birds. San'ān is an ascetic master who has never transgressed any of the Islamic laws until he embarks on a journey from Mecca to Rome after a dream only to fall in love with a Christian girl, convert to Christianity, and begin drinking wine and …