Digital Commons Network^™

Mitt Romney In Denver: “Obamacare” As Ideological Enthymeme, Justin Ward Kirk

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This paper argues that surface-level analysis of political argument fails to explain the effectiveness of ideological enthymemes, particularly within the context of presidential debates. This paper uses the first presidential debate of the 2012 election as a case study for the use of “Obamacare” as an ideological enthymeme. The choice of a terminological system limits and shapes the argumentative choices afforded the candidate. Presidential debates provide a unique context within which to examine the interaction of ideological constraints and argument due to their relatively committed and ideologically homogenous audiences.

No More Mind Games: Content Analysis Of In-Game Commentary Of The National Football League’S Concussion Problem, Jeffrey Parker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

American (gridiron) football played at the professional level in the National Football League (NFL) is an inherently physical spectator sport, in which players frequently engage in significant contact to the head and upper body. Until recently, the long-term health consequences associated with on the field head trauma were not fully disclosed to players or the public, potentially misrepresenting the dangers involved in gameplay. Crucial to the dissemination of this information to the public are in-game televised commentators of NFL games, regarded as the primary conduits for mediating in-game narratives to the viewing audience. Using a social constructionist theoretical lens, this …

Course Syllabus (W16 Online) Coli 331: "Pulp Fiction And Quentin Tarantino", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Objectives and Expected Learning Outcomes:

Rejecting the standpoint of the passively entertained consumer, our shared objectives in this course will be (1) to bring our selected cinematic and written texts into interaction in such ways as to produce high-quality scholarly writing. It is hoped that, by the end of the semester, each student’s active engagement with our course material should have enabled him/her, (2) to deepen and broaden his/her knowledge base concerning the social problematics we will have treated in such ways as to inform and encourage constructive social action.

We will view Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Reservoir …

Gender Games: The Portrayal Of Female Journalists On 'House Of Cards', Chad Painter, Patrick Ferrucci

Communication Faculty Publications

This textual analysis focuses on the portrayal of female journalists in House of Cards. The uneven depictions of six female journalists could have a socializing effect on the audience. The researchers argue that the character Zoe Barnes is depicted as childlike, unprofessional, and unethical, while the character Ayla Sayyad is portrayed as a dedicated watchdog journalist. The researchers then explore the ethical implications of these portrayals through the lens of social responsibility theory.

In His Image: A Content Analysis Of Evangelical Youth Books For Their Representation Of Gender Roles And Ideals, Taryn Renee Vis

Honors Projects

This content analysis discusses the results of the analysis of twelve major Evangelical books for young adults and their representation of gender roles and gender ideals. The background of the Evangelical church’s handling of gender, particularly in relation to media beginning in the 1970s is established and discussed at length in order to situate this analysis amongst previous discussion of Evangelical gender roles. This analysis found that each of the books discussed four main themes of gender roles and relations: biological essentialism, complementarianism, counter-cultural branding of gender, and sexual purity (especially for young women).

Be Your Own Guru: Authoritarianism And The Problem Of The Guru In Conscious Evolution, Mcauley, Charles E.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper is an exploration of the problematic nature of the guru/disciple relationship, specifically, in Western Society. It begins with a discussion of the nature of spirituality and the spiritual quest. To contextualize the process, I also discuss my own spiritual path based in Roman Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism and my thoughts on the philosophy of Krishnamurti. I explore the topic of the authoritarian follower in some depth. Its connection is symbiotic to the existence of the authoritarian leader. This connection is demonstrated within this paper as well. Additionally, I look at the flaws in some well-known guru figures and how …

Northside, Jesse L. Houk

Theses and Dissertations--English

The Northside of Lexington, Kentucky is an area with its own culture, community and art. While living in this community I was able to learn, grow and develop alongside this newly renovated area. The people and their lives intersect in such a way that creates a tension at times. However, many social awareness advocates vie for the success of this neighborhood for many years to come. The objective of studying such an area as the Northside in Lexington is to focus on the similarites rather than the differences in culture, community and artistic endeavor. With a collection of essays and …

Pseudonymous Disguises: Are Pen Names An Escape From The Gender Bias In Publishing?, Nettie Finn 16

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

“I’M Here To Do Business. I’M Not Here To Play Games.” Work, Consumption, And Masculinity In Storage Wars, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay examines the first season of Storage Wars and suggests the program helps mediate the putative crisis in American masculinity by suggesting that traditional male skills are still essential where knowledge supplants manual labor. We read representations of “men at work” in traditionally “feminine” consumer markets as a form of masculine recuperation situated within the culture of White male injury. Specifically, Storage Wars appropriates omnivorous consumption, thrift, and collaboration to fit within the masculine repertoire of self-reliance, individualism, and competition. Thus, the program adapts hegemonic masculinity by showcasing male auction bidders adeptly performing feminine consumer practices. Whether the feminine …

Religious Pluralistic Language In A Computer-Mediated Context: Effects Of Intergroup Salience And Religious Orientation, Jennifer Kienzle, Chad M. Wertley, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the degree to which religious pluralistic language varies as a function of the intergroup salience of a context and religious orientation. Based on a 2 (Religious Salience of Context) × 3 (Religious Salience of Topic) experimental design, participants (N = 239) were instructed to compose an e-mail to an interactional partner based on the randomly assigned condition. Messages were coded for religious pluralistic language, and participants completed measures of religious orientation and evaluations of the conversational partner. Modest effects were found for both intergroup salience of the context and topic as well as religious orientation.

Chastity For Democracy: Surplus Repression And The Rhetoric Of Sex Education, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Moving from opposition to participation, the Adolescent Family Life Act (1981) and the development of abstinence education marks the conservative movement’s pivot to a rhetorical strategy of tolerance that enabled it to coopt the public culture of sex discourse. Working from Herbert Marcuse’s theory of “surplus repression,” I argue that the New Right seized the liberationist argument for open public discourse about sexuality to sublimate libidinal desires into a national project of familial (re)productivity. The AFLA is significant in the rhetorical history of sex education because it demarcates the transition to a productive form of biopolitics that sought to manage …

The Man-Pocalpyse: Doomsday Preppers And The Rituals Of Apocalyptic Manhood, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay argues that recent male performances of disaster preparedness in reality television recuperate a preindustrial model of hegemonic masculinity by staging the plausible “real world” conditions under which manly skills appear necessary for collective survival. Representations of masculinity in uncertain times intensify the masculinity-in-crisis motif to cultivate anticipation of an apocalyptic event that promises a final resolution to male alienation. An examination of Nat Geo’s Doomsday Preppers illustrates how these staged performances of everyday life cultivate a dangerous vision of apocalyptic manhood that consummates a fantasy of national virility in the demise of feminine society.

Camp Horror And The Gendered Politics Of Screen Violence: Subverting The Monstrous-Feminine In Teeth (2007), Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay argues that Mitchell Lichtenstein’s film Teeth (2007) is an exemplary appropriation of the femme castratrice, a sadistic and castrating female figure that subverts the patriarchal mythologies undergirding the gendered logics of both screen violence and cultural misogyny. The film chronicles Dawn’s post-sexual assault transformation from a passive defender of women’s purity to an avenging heroine with castrating genitals. First, I illustrate how Teeth intervenes in the gendered politics of spectatorship by cultivating identification with a violent heroine who refuses to abide by the stable binary between masculine violence/feminized victimhood. This subversive iteration of rape-revenge cinema is assisted by …

Embracing Discursive Paradox: Consultants Navigating The Constitutive Tensions Of Diversity Work, Jennifer Mease (Also Peeksmease)

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article addresses how diversity consultants manage the dual demands of social justice and organizational goals or priorities. I suggest that navigating this “discursive paradox” is one of—if not the—defining feature of diversity work. To investigate this discursive paradox, I analyze diversity work as a process (rather than a collection of products) as evidenced in interviews with 19 diversity consultants. The results offer two derivative discursive paradoxes that emerged in consultants’ talk about diversity work: the tension between broad and narrow constructions of human differences and the tension between emphasizing change at the organizational and individual levels. Rather than …

“Uh Oh. Cue The [New] Mommy Wars”: The Ideology Of Combative Mothering In Popular U.S. Newspaper Articles About Attachment Parenting, Julia Moore, Jenna Abetz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Through critique of concordance, we argue that popular U.S. newspaper articles about attachment parenting perpetuate the ideology of combative mothering, where mothers are in continuous competition with one another over parenting choices. Specifically, article writers construct a new, singular metaphorical mommy war between pro-attachment parenting and anti-attachment parenting proponents by prepackaging attachment parenting and its debate, advocating for attachment parenting through instinct and science, and rejecting attachment parenting because of harm to children, relationships, and mothers. A minority of articles, however, avoided reifying this pro-/anti-attachment parenting mommy war by exploring the complexities of parenting beyond prepackaged philosophies. We explore the …

Distributed Cognition In Cancer Treatment Decision Making: An Application Of The Decide Decision-Making Styles Typology, Janice L. Krieger, Jessica L. Krok-Schoen, Phokeng M. Dailey, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly, Nancy Schoenberg, Electra D. Paskett, Mark Dignan

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Distributed cognition occurs when cognitive and affective schemas are shared between two or more people during interpersonal discussion. Although extant research focuses on distributed cognition in decision making between health care providers and patients, studies show that caregivers are also highly influential in the treatment decisions of patients. However, there are little empirical data describing how and when families exert influence. The current article addresses this gap by examining decisional support in the context of cancer randomized clinical trial (RCT) decision making. Data are drawn from in-depth interviews with rural, Appalachian cancer patients (N = 46). Analysis of transcript …

Knowledge And Resistance: Feminine Style And Signifyin[G] In Michelle Obama’S Public Address, Tracy Valgento

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the public discourse of the first African American first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. I argue that Michelle Obama uses the double-voiced discourses of feminine style and African American Signifyin[g] to negate post-race and post-gender mythologies that suggest that American society is “beyond identity”. Looking at three of Obama’s speeches: Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention Speech, The Remarks by the First Lady at Memorial Service for Dr. Maya Angelou, and Remarks by the First Lady at Tuskegee University Commencement Address this thesis argues that Michelle Obama performativity interrogates and questions gender and race relations …

You Will Be Punished: Media Depictions Of Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women, Caitlin Elliott

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The following thesis focuses on media depictions of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women, a list that carries upwards of 1,200 names. The news coverage of these stories is reminiscent of television crime dramas in their depictions of minority victims of crime, specifically in regard to victim blaming. In order to examine this relationship, the present study compares coverage of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canadian news articles to depictions of victims, particularly minority female victims, within crime procedural television shows. An ethnographic content analysis (ECA) was conducted in order to parse out common themes between news articles featuring …

Seksualitas Cyber: Sex Sebagai Kesenangan Dan Komoditas, Puji Rianto

Informasi

Abstract
This paper wants to explore further how sexuality is present in the cyber world. Although the construction of human sexuality age as the man himself, the construction or representation will be largely determined by the social context. Different characters from the cyber world where political authority and the gatekeeper do not contribute significantly will influence the construction of sexuality. The study found that sex is understood as a pleasure and commodities. Various reports of sexual offenders describe how the pleasure of sexual intercourse highly revered. Along with the cult of sexuality as pleasure is sex as a commodity, which …

Introduction: Foreign Films And Higher Education, Heba A.N. El Attar Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Teaching About The Muxes In The United States: Cultural Construct Gender Identity, And Transgression In The 21st Century, Nohora V. Cardona Núñez Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This study focuses on the manner in which gender identities challenge heteronormativity and are understood as a way to interpret the sexed body through culture in the documentary Muxes: auténticas, intrépidas, buscadoras del peligro (2005), directed by Mexican filmmaker Alejandra Islas Caro. In the context of a Gender Issues in Latin America course taught in a North American university, we explored how certain theories by thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler, among others, contend that sexual preference, gender orientation, and sexuality, can be built as a cultural constructs, contrary to popular beliefs on the subject. …

Approaches To Teaching Latin American Culture Through Film: Children’S Plight In Poverty- And Violence-Ridden Countries, Delia V. Galvan Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Students at the beginning levels of foreign language study have many borders to cross and many challenges to negotiate. This paper reports the results of a preliminary study involving the use of full-length films to engender intercultural sensitivity and understanding among two groups of first-year students of Spanish. Both films depict hardships of children in Spanish-speaking countries—as a result of conscription or as a result of child labor. The paper discusses the contextualization of the films for the students, the students’ responses to questionnaires, portions of classroom discussion that indicate growth in the areas of focus, and implications of the …

Note On Special Issue, Antonio Medina-Rivera Ph.D., Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D., Heba A.N. El Attar Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

El Paseo By Harold Trompetero: Approaching Popular Film From Colombia In A North American Classroom, Matias Martinez Abeijon Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This article explores the manner in which popular films from Colombia—

specifically comedies, such as the movie El paseo, directed by Harold Trompetero in 2010, which has been the highest grossing movie to date in the history of movies produced in Colombia–may be used in the classroom in the context of a World Language, Literature, and Culture department in the United States. It is the contention of this study that such a choice is far from common due to diverse issues, which include the limited access to international distribution of the majority of the so-called “national film” or, in …

Understanding Arab Culture Through Cinema, Abed El-Rahman Tayyara Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

The article examines the use of cinema as a tool for teaching about Arab culture and assesses the process in which learners acquire a higher level of intercultural communicative competence. The essay draws primarily on multilayered class activities and students’ responses to pre- and post- screening surveys related to eight Arab films. The article reveals that the evaluation of the learners’ intercultural competence and their familiarity with Arab culture in particular is a long process that filled with misunderstandings, gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions on the part of the learners. To successfully conduct this type of teaching, the article also points …

Can Films Speak The Truth? Mathieu Kassovitz’S La Haine (1995) And Philippe Faucon’S La Désintégration (2011), Annie Jouan-Westlund Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

La Haine, (Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) and La Désintégration (Dir. Philippe Faucon, 2011), set in France’s urban periphery, depict the struggle of second and third-generation immigrants growing up in the housing projects and their desire to live like ‘other’ French young people. The analysis offers a comparative study of the films’ reception with a community of viewers made of American students in a Contemporary French Culture course. Following the three paradigms of exclusion (social, racial, and cultural); gender representation; and aestheticism and realism, this study demonstrates that, within certain limits, these cinematic propositions, of similar prophetic nature but different …

Intercultural Communicative Competence: Literature Review, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) is a cluster of capabilities that will become even more essential, not only to negotiate borders of many dimensions as globalization proceeds, but also to enhance the ability to maneuver one’s way in a world that changes by the minute. The process of developing ICC prepares the learner to manage and appreciate border crossings on many levels. This brief review of the literature offers a summary of the components of ICC, how it is similar to and different from other competences, and recommendations on how to assess it. This overview may be helpful when considering the …

Christian Chicken Vs. Mainstream Media: A Case Study Analysis Of Chick-Fil-A’S Stance On Traditional Marriage Using Situational Crisis Communication Theory, Christiannn Mcnew

Masters Theses

A crisis can strike an organization at any moment and it is the responsibility of the organization to be prepared with a plan of action. This thesis will explore crisis management, using Timothy Coombs’ crisis management strategies, of Chick-fil-A and then COO Dan Cathy to see if those two parties implemented crisis strategies in a way that benefited the organization following Cathy’s statements in support of the biblical definition of family. Since many interpreted these comments as anti-gay sentiments from Chick-fil-A itself, crisis struck the organization Cathy represented. This thesis will also look at the idea of social activism in …

Table Of Contents, Antonio Medina-Rivera Ph.D, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D., Heba A.N. El Attar Ph.D

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Motherhood As Contested Ideological Terrain: Essentialist And Queer Discourses Of Motherhood At Play In Female–Female Co-Mothers’ Talk, Elizabeth A. Suter, Leah M. Seurer, Stephanie Webb, Brian Grewe Jr., Jody Koenig Kellas

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of motherhood in female–female co-motherhood. Analysis identified two competing discourses: (1) discourse of essential motherhood (DEM) and (2) discourse of queer motherhood (DQM). Speakers’ invocation of the DEM reinscribes the mainstream US cultural discourse that children can have only one authentic (i.e., biological) mother, whereas invocation of the DQM denaturalizes the DEM’s presumptions of authentic motherhood as biological, interrupts monomaternalism, destabilizes the patriarch, and troubles the equation of biological with moral motherhood. Whereas interpenetrations of the DEM and DQM were typically sites of adversarial discursive struggle, in a few …