Digital Commons Network^™

Piercing The Veil In Sinners: Theological Insights From The Juke Joint, Antonio D. Sison Cpps

Journal of Religion & Film

Celebrated as a critical and commercial success, Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying opus Sinners has also been considered as one of the most culturally significant films of 2025. It also promises to be one of the most theologically resonant films of the year. This is evinced not only in its thematic and literary bases but, importantly, in its very audiovisual language and grammar, its stylistic strategies qua film. As reasoned in this essay, Coogler’s film is a rich locus theologicus, a nexus for theological discovery and insight.Sinners kindles the hermeneutical impulse to dialogue with African American/Pan-Africa theologies exemplified by the …

Gendered Discourses And Classed Access Routes For Feminist Djs In Irish Subcultural Scenes, Andrea Cleary

Irish Communication Review

This article examines feminist collectives in Ireland’s electronic/dance music (E/DM) and music technology (MT) scenes, focusing on how gender and class intersect to shape access and participation. Drawing on thematic analysis of interviews with five collective members active between 2016 and 2025, it traces paths to participation from "musical homes" to instrument education to university DJ societies. To do this, it examines the overlapping family, cultural and subcultural capitals which shaped their journeys. Finally, this article considers the role of feminist collectives in creating alternative educational spaces and networks for women and gender minority participation in E/DM cultures.

Introduction – Musiques Au Proche-Orient Après Le Tournant Numérique, Amr Abdelrahim, Thomas Michel, Nicolas Puig

Regards

Le développement des pratiques du do it yourself, l’avènement des home studios et la multiplication des circulations sonores (samples, échantillons sonores, etc.) grâce aux supports numériques et aux plateformes d’écoute ont modifié en profondeur la production musicale au Machreq. Cette introduction dresse le tableau des études produites sur la musique au Proche-Orient depuis l’avènement du numérique au début des années 2000 ; elle passe en revue les différents paradigmes mobilisés et propose une approche centrée notamment sur les Science and Technology Studies pour comprendre le sens des évolutions en cours.
Elle décrit ensuite les différentes contributions qui alimentent ce …

Contentious Culture: The Convergence And Contestation Of Class And Identity In Egypt’S Mahraganat Scene, Elisa Schouten

Regards

Since its inception in the early 2000s, Mahraganat music has undermined traditional cultural gatekeeping and reshaped Egypt’s music scene, becoming one of the country’s most debated music genres in recent history. This paper aims to examine Mahraganat within the broader context of cultural identity formation and technological developments and contextualize the criticism of the genre and its makers. Building on research conducted in Egypt’s capital between 2019 and 2024, this paper explores the history of cultural gatekeeping and argues that social class lies at the core of the heated debate surrounding Egyptian music and Mahraganat in particular. It shows that …

Sonic Acts Of Care: Friendship-Based Networks And Grassroots Activism In Beirut, Rim J. Irscheid

Regards

The article examines a Beirut-based network of self-funded, independent musicians that translate memories and their emotions into artistic and activist practices. Drawing on musical albums created since the 2020 Beirut port explosion, the article explores the social and emotional impact of artist-run spaces for music production. Focusing on a friendship-based network around the collectively-run recording studio Tunefork Studios, it examines how care, trust, and solidarity with Lebanon’s citizens and music producers are translated into both their creative practices and their production and distribution strategies. I argue that Beirut-based musicians increasingly thematise the emotional toll and personal investment in political, infrastructural …

The Tragic Outlaw Hero In Modern Egyptian Fiction: A Case Study On Naguib Mahfouz’S "The Thief And The Dogs", Manar Ellethy

Regards

This article examines the outlaw figure in modern Egyptian fiction

through the lens of the conceptual framework of social banditry and classical

tragedy. It offers a unique angle of analysis of one of Mahfouz’s most prolific

works that emerges in times of growing political anxiety following the Egyptian

Revolution of 1952. Reading the 1962 film adaptation of Naguib Mahfouz’s The

Thief and the Dogs directed by Kamal El-Sheikh as a projection of the socio-

political uncertainty of the post-revolution Nasser era, this paper considers the

outlaw figure within the condition of social alienation. Using the conceptual

borders set by Eric …

Liner Notes On Black Trans Girlhood: Afrofuturist Affect & Black Popular Music As A Praxis Of Self-Fashioning, Shawn J. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Liner Notes on Black Trans Girlhood: Afrofuturist Affect & Black Popular Music as a Praxis of Self-Fashioning interprets Black musical performance in identity-making, with a focus on how music and Black trans identity intersect and informs Black trans girlhood. As such, Black trans girls render ourselves legible, i.e. understood without shame or judgment, by constructing our identities through the music by Black women we listen and dance to, or watch and sing. These musical connections affirm the possibilities of Black femme expression. This expression of Black femininity is due to what I call an Afrofuturist affect, by which I refer …

Independent Visions Of Marginal America: Reimagining A Nation Through Outsiders, Searching, And Non-Arrival, Z Evan Long

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

This thesis explores critical responses to American-ness, American identity, and most significantly American myth, in independent films about America in cultural terms, and their attempts to deconstruct the myths of nation and culture. The independent films about America analyzed in this thesis range from the 1960s to the 1990s, made by filmmakers across movements and cultures, but they all contain in some measure three key concepts: the “outsider,” the “search,” and a narrative “non-arrival.” Easy Rider (1969) will be explored as the prototype for this paradigm, contrasted with films that reinterpret the road-movie structure away from existential angst and toward …

Sounding Ethics: Musical Signification Of Moral Choices In Video Games, Hayden Mesnick

Honors Projects

Interactivity is what distinguishes video games as a medium. In “moral choice video games,” or games in which the moral alignment of player choices affects plot and gameplay, the music often reflects the branching storylines. While scholarship exists that explores musical signifiers in video games, and scholarship alike exists that investigates moral choice video games, a gap in literature exists at the juncture of these two topics. This paper explores two moral choice video games—Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games, 2018)—in order to identify musical signifiers used by each game’s composer to represent these levels …

A Comparative Analysis Of Music And Sound In J-Horror Films And Their American Remakes, University Of Denver

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

It has been long established that music has the potential to influence a listener’s emotions. Likewise, visual stimulation can influence our emotions. Horror movies rely heavily on the combination of these two systems working together to create tension and fear. This essay will analyze the use of sound, music, and silence in Japanese horror films as compared to their American remakes. I will explore the instrumentation and compositional methods through the lens of traditional Japanese kabuki theatre conventions as well as classical American film scoring to compare my perceived scariness of each film’s most stressful scenes.

A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Nigerian Popular Music Genres: A Culture And Heritage Approach To Nation Branding, Cecilia Ashibel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the potential of Nigerian popular music as an approach to nation branding. The study employs qualitative content analysis to analyze select Nigerian music genres to examine how Nigeria is portrayed to international audiences and the economic benefits that can be derived from this form of branding. The analysis focuses on narrative themes of “the value of hard work,” “ethnic pride,” “lavish lifestyle,” and the impact of differences which were derived from the data. Findings indicate that Nigeria is globally reckoned for its musical prowess and rich cultural heritage. In highlighting the role of music in Nigeria’s political …

Director's Statement, Andrea Leland

Jamesie: King of Scratch

No abstract provided.

Analog Matters: Labels, Cassettes, And Alternative Economies In Argentina’S Independent Music Scenes, Maria Agustina Checa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a multi-sited ethnographic study of current cassette production and circulation in Argentina. It analyzes the work of independent labels that record music available online onto cassette tapes, incorporating a variety of music styles. I examine practices of production, circulation, and exchange, and the alternative economies performed around cassettes, with particular attention to the materialities constituting these processes. Through cassettes, I conceptualize and trace "relational value," a notion to understand objects with different kinds of social agencies valued for their abilities to generate connections. Relational value is a theoretical construct that emerges from the ground-up approach to studying …

The King With The Vīṇā Flag – Perspectives Of Rāvaṇa In Film, Achintya Prahlad

Journal of Religion & Film

Rāvaṇa, the ten-headed Rākṣasa (‘demon’) king of the epic the Rāmāyaṇa, is the most fascinating of all the antagonists in films based on Hindu mythology, so powerful that even the Sun cannot rise without his orders, and celebrated as an unparalleled musician-scholar and great devotee of the god Śiva. His passion for the vīṇā, a string instrument with divine associations, is so great that this instrument adorns his royal flag as its emblem. His consciousness of his supreme powers and great knowledge soon gives way to ahaṅkāra (hubris) and lust, which leads to his eventual downfall and death at the …

Incongruous Surrealism Within Narrative Animated Film, Daniel Mccabe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A pop music video is a form of media containing incongruous surrealistic imagery with a narrative structure supplied by song lyrics. The lyrics' presence allows filmmakers to digress from sequential imagery through introduction of nonlinear visual elements. I will analyze these surrealist film elements through several post-modern philosophies to better understand how this animated audio-visual synthesis resides in the larger world of art theory and its relationship to the popular music video. This analysis coincides with the practical and theoretical experimentation evident in the film companion to this thesis, Slapper the Cat: A Musical Cartoon. A long-form animated music video …

The Modes Of Intervention In Alvin Lucier’S I Am Sitting In A Room, Daniel Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1969) is an icon of experimental music and sound art. The sizable literature addressing the aesthetic and philosophical implications of this piece rarely discusses the performance practice beyond what is indicated in the score itself. This is problematic for two reasons: 1) The meaning that is derived from the piece often hinges not just on what sounds are obtained, but on how they are obtained. 2) Over the past 50 years, changes in the performance practice have altered what constitutes the work: magnetic tape was used until 2000 when it was replaced …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

A Failure Of The Music Industry: The Frustration Of Women Of Color, Christina Estes-Wynne

Backstage Pass

Throughout the history of the music industry, women of color have not received the same recognition as their male counterparts because males have dominated the industry resulting in lack of female representation. Women have been oversexualized reducing their clout in their fields and the lack of acknowledgement of success, which discourages future generations of colored women from attempting to reach their highest potential.

Adventure, Intrigue, And Terror: Arabs And The Middle East In Hollywood Film Music, Grant Woods 19

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, And Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Saesha Senger

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This dissertation explores issues of gender politics, market segmentation, and taste through an examination of the contributions of several artists who have achieved Adult Contemporary (AC) chart success. The scope of the project is limited to a period when many artists who figured prominently in both the broader mainstream of American popular music and the more specific Adult Contemporary category were most commercially viable: from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. My contention is that, as gender politics and gendered social norms continued to change in the United States at this time, Adult Contemporary – the chart, the format, and the …

Wukongism: Monkey King, Kungfu/Jazz, And Asian/American Performance, Sissi Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Wukongism offers one of the first non-western epistemic frameworks to examine theatre and performance that traverse beyond the shifting taxonomies of national, cultural, racial boundaries, and in particular, Asian/American theatre and performance. Wukongism, or shapeshifter consciousness, is built on the narrative of Sun Wukong the Monkey King, a supernatural shapeshifting character from the 16^th century classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Juxtaposing physical shapeshifting (plastic surgery and performing of the racialized face) with institutional shapeshifting (reinventing and eliminating invisible and hypervisible boundaries), this dissertation project posits Wukongism as a means to examine the varying, fluid, and precarious …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

From Swing King To Swing Kids: The Jazz Era Of ‘Big Band Orchestras’ In World War Ii, Katie Victoria Burnopp

Student Scholar Showcase

Known as the ‘King of Swing’, clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman (1909-1986) threatened the Nazi cause during WWII. With intent of improving music pedagogy, the purpose of this research was to investigate swing music during World War II. The particular problems of this study were to: (1) identify how the swing music of Benny Goodman (1909-1986) influenced adolescents in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Germany; (2) explore the Nazi party view on ‘swing’ music of the era; (3) examine how the music of Charlie and his Orchestra became used as a tool for Nazi propaganda; and …

Musicking, Discourse, And Identity In Participatory Media Fandom, Aya Esther Hayashi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I study three forms of music-making within media fandom and their respective communities: filk, roughly, the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy fandom; wizard rock, a punk/DIY movement inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels; and the YouTube musicals of Team StarKid and AVbyte. I consider their individual histories and the popular music movements and genres that influenced their respective developments. Even though the practices of these three communities are very different, their participants use similar, if identical, discourses when discussing what they do and why they do it, including but not limited to: openness, …

Yurumein - Homeland Study Guide, Andrea E. Leland, Lauren Poluha

Documentary Study Guides

The Garifuna and Carib communities of St Vincent in the Caribbean collaborated with the documentary filmmaker Andrea E. Leland to produce Yurumein – Homeland: The Caribs of St Vincent, an exploration of the historical and spiritual significance of St Vincent and Baliceaux to Garifuna and Carib communities.

This film guide speaks about the history, culture, music, and food of the peoples that were displaced from their home and, through activities addressing the film's content, informs readers about the movement to bring Garifuna/Kalinago culture back to St Vincent and reconnect Garinagu to their homeland.

Immigration Et Clips Musicaux : Vers La Construction D’Espaces Sans Frontières, Souleymane Ganou

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Immigration is a reality which touches primarily the young in most country. This phenomenon must be undressed of its blaming considerations, in view of its incommensurable contribution in the development of many countries. If the United States of America arrived at the legalization of immigration, by instituting a lottery called “lottery visa”, it is that they are conscious of the benefit that this phenomenon can bring to their nation. Moreover, the United States is a nation built on the bases of the immigration to which they owe their power today. They are numerous these young people who set off to …

A Recipe For Black Girl Magic: A Critical Study Of The Mise-En-Scene In Beyoncé’S Visual Album Lemonade As A Radical Representation Of Black Women, Tatiyana Jenkins

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Lemonade, a visual album released by pop icon Beyoncé Knowles Carter in 2016, crafts a mise-en-scene that redefines the way that black women are allowed to feel and exist in media culture. Contrary to the negative stereotypes and misrepresentations perpetuated in media, Lemonade is a radical attempt to provide audiences with an alternative representation of the experiences of black women. For this honors project, I address the controversy surrounding the visual album’s radical representations of black womanhood. To inform my understanding of the visual album I examine the various creative contributions such as the film Daughters of the Dust directed …

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (2017), directed by Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana.

Graverobber, Individualized Chorus: The Greek Chorus Reinterpreted In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Grace Markulin

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

The rock opera film Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) provides its audience with details regarding the film’s setting and perspectives on the morality of the film’s plot through the character Graverobber, whose sung dialogue expresses this information. Graverobber’s penchant for scene-setting and moralizing within the film classifies the character as a Greek chorus according to the parameters of the Greek chorus in antiquity and modern interpretations of the chorus in twentieth-century musical theater, but the character’s visual distinctiveness, preexisting relationship with an established character, and prominent use of solo vocal lines throughout his sung dialogue demonstrates a degree of individuation …