Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Science Fiction, Eng 2420, Syllabus And Course Outline, Jason W. Ellis

Open Educational Resources

This Science Fiction, ENG2420 syllabus and course outline was written for an online, asynchronous class taught in the Department of English at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. It was designed to compliment the OER Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT) and have a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) approach with readings and viewings found primarily through the Internet Archive. The course follows a historical approach to the science fiction genre covering the Origins of Science Fiction, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Proto-SF, Pulp SF, SF Film Serials, Golden Age SF, SF Film Through the 1950s, New Wave …

A Romantic Austen: The Discordant Feminist Discourse Of Adapting Sense And Sensibility, Evan Teigland

Honors Projects

This undergraduate thesis explores the intertextual and critical conversations around Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and the 1995 screen adaptation of the same name, with a focus on how each text understands the interplay between feminine romance and feminine agency. A non-essentialist theory of adaptation is applied to construct an interpretive model that esteems Emma Thompson’s version of the story and considers its consequence to different communities of Austen readership, which is measured by the distinctly feminist themes detectable in the sexuality of Sense and Sensibility fanfiction. This investigation uncovers the importance of expanding the interpretive power and possibilities of …

Understanding Travis Bickle: The Incel Prototype, Abigail Lydia Oakley

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In this essay, I analyze the character Travis Bickle from the 1976 film "Taxi Driver." I use theory from and about masculinity in the 1970s, context of the Vietnam War, psychology of incels, character analysis of Travis, critical reviews from the time, and primary sources from incel forums to connect Travis to the modern day incel.

Written In Blood: The Cultural Work Of Family, Sexuality, And Race In Adaptations Of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, Ariana Alvarado

Undergraduate Theses

Anne Rice’s gothic novel “Interview with the Vampire” (1976) has not only stood the test of time as a cult classic, but has continued to be told and retold through a film adaptation (1994) and recent AMC television production (2022). Looking through the lens of adaptation theory and the ideas of Nina Auerbach in Our Vampires, Ourselves, this presentation highlights how both the original novel and subsequent adaptations use the figure of the vampire to represent the social changes of the era of its creation, particularly in regards to queerness and sexuality.

Spaces Of Citizenship: Negotiating Belonging Through Cold War Literature And Culture, Daria Goncharova

Theses and Dissertations--English

At the height of Cold War containment culture, when fears of Communism and nuclear warfare overlapped with anxieties about homosexuality, gender inversion, miscegenation, and juvenile delinquency, formal citizenship—narrowly defined as one’s legal status—did not provide all American citizens with a sense of belonging, equal access to civil liberties, and a reasonable degree of safety. Instead, spatialized identity, rather than civic responsibilities and legal rights, came to define the boundaries of proper citizenship. In this context, highly exclusionary suburbs, which sprang up outside major metropolitan areas in the late 1940s-1950s, emerged as a cornerstone of the cultural narratives defining American citizenship. …

The Impact Of Emma: Destroying Stereotypes Through Nuanced Characters In Text And Film, Julia Mccool

English MA Theses

This paper explores Jane Austen’s Emma as a response to stereotypes in 18th century novels and moral tales, and Autumn De Wildes’s Emma. from a feminist lens. Examining both of these works reveals that Emma was originally, and still is over 200 years later, transforming stereotypes in literature and film adaptations. The novel seems to be responding to a common stereotypical female villain found in many 18th century novels. In viewing Emma as a subversion of this stereotype, it is clear that Austen was responding to the sexist notions behind the character type, and writing a heroine more in line …

Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez

English Language and Literature ETDs

There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …

What Makes A Salesman: Death Of A Salesman And The Politics Of Adaptation, Thomas Alvarez

Honors Scholar Theses

Arthur Miller has regularly been regarded as one of the most prominent American playwrights of all time, producing timeless and often innately political works designed in part to speak to his perspective on history as it has taken shape. This thesis will discuss the 1951, 1966, and 1985 American adaptations of Death of a Salesman—one of his greatest defining works—to draw attention to his specific perspective while exploring how this messaging can be recontextualized when decades and mediums separate an adaptation from its source text. Furthermore, this thesis will explore choices made by actors and screenplay writers, working to ascertain …

"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin

Honors Projects

The art of adaptation is a difficult process, and is often hard to please general audiences that have a connection to the source material. As a student who studies both English Literature and Film Production, the question asked through this study is what does it take to write a “successful” adaptation? What qualifies as “successful”? How does an adaptation balance the themes, characterization, and plot of a piece of literature with the continuous momentum and visual complexity that the medium of film requires, all in 120 pages or less? This study engages with these questions by actively practicing adaptation, adapting …

Utopian Promises, Dystopic Realities: Teaching Bell Hooks “No Love In The Wild”, Naimah H. Ford

Feminist Pedagogy

This original teaching activity discusses bell hooks’ film review of Beasts of The Southern Wild and explains how it can be used to encourage students to recognize how popular culture reproduces and reinforces disturbing paradigms. This original teaching activity, based on hooks’ review “No Love in The Wild,” encourages students to be informed while navigating visual images in popular culture. This activity also explains how hooks’ film review and the film can be used to empower students with strategies to analyze film and other visual images that are seemingly progressive but support the strictures and structures that reinforce patriarchy, racism, …

Princes, Princesses, And Socialites: Feminism And Class Transgression In Hollywood Romantic Comedies, Justina Marie Clayburn

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explored how characters in romantic comedies negotiate and transgress class boundaries as the films conform to and challenge genre and social expectations, focusing primarily through a feminist lens. Specifically, it addresses the different ways the films negotiate ideas about American identity and economic systems, simultaneously trying to acknowledge problematic elements while upholding social and nationalistic ideals. Feminism has a complicated relationship with Hollywood romantic comedies. While the genre often focuses on issues of interest to women and forefronts female characters and their professional and personal experiences, the denouement generally reinforces heteronormative monogamous relationships above others and the traditional …

Naruto And Naruto: Shippuden Through The Lens Of Campbell’S Monomyth, Victor Ayon

Literary and Intercultural Studies | Senior Theses

“Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden through the lens of Campbell’s Monomyth” is a comparative analysis of the anime television series Naruto (2002-2007 Japan, 2005-2009 USA) and its sequel Naruto: Shippuden (2007-2017 Japan, 2009-2019 USA) with Joseph Campbell’s monomyth as delineated in his The Hero with the Thousand Faces. These Japanese anime television series that are considered one of the most popular worldwide, and yet the hero’s quest in each series is often overlooked. This study both compares and contrasts how the Campbellian stages of monomyth intersect with Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden animation narratives.

Identifying Loss, Animating Melancholy: Asian-American Narratives In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Spirited Away, And Bao, Jered Connery Mabaquiao

English Theses

Animated film provides a complex illustration of the creativity behind constructing narratives. This thesis aims to explore the way that racial and cultural identity are displayed within animated film. The purpose of this thesis will be paying close attention to the intersections of psychoanalytic theories of loss that are placed on a spectrum with terms such as trauma, mourning and melancholia all within the scope of racial identification. These terms will be worked through from texts from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan as well as works that expand on these notions. These psychoanalytic texts will be applied to Nickelodeon's “Avatar: …

'Play The Book Again': Towards A Systems Approach To Game Adaptation, Johnathan Sanders

Dissertations - ALL

Situated at the interstices of game studies, adaptation scholarship, and literary theory, this dissertation puts forth a theoretical framework for effectively analyzing literary game adaptations (that is, playable digital or analog systems that are based upon a work or works of literature) as expressive intertextual systems which facilitate aesthetic experiences. By integrating contemporary game studies with filmic adaptation studies and literary theory, I argue that game adaptations allow us to see how games, adaptations, and indeed all texts can be productively conceived of as Barthesian networks of meaning: collections of interacting formal, narrative, intertextual, and contextual elements from which a …

A Man Not A Monster : Reimagining Disability In Hollow Crown's Richard Iii, Taylor E. Uphus

Honors Theses

Traditional portrayals of William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592) in film interpret Richard’s physical disability as an outward reflection of his evil. In recent years, disabilities studies scholars have reconsidered the historic association of Richard’s physical deformity with immorality. Unlike previous Richard III films, the BBC’s Hollow Crown: Richard III (Dominic Cooke, 2016) highlights Richard’s mental abuse and trauma. While the film does not shy away from Richard’s villainy, its more empathic depiction of Richard contests the one-dimensional stage and film representation of him as a conniving monster. Ultimately, this film presents Richard III to critique society’s treatment of disabled individuals.

The Reflective Age: Nostalgia At The End Of History, Zachary Griffith

Theses and Dissertations--English

This project investigates the ways in which nostalgic American media of the last decade reflects the sociopolitical conditions of the end of history. It begins with the assertion that the end of history represents a confounded, contradictory moment in which large-scale political change is relatively scarce, and belief in a progressive future has largely been abandoned, while cultural change has also accelerated at a pace never before seen––spurred on, in particular, by the constant return of dead styles and dormant IP. In other words, it seems as if nothing is changing and everything is changing simultaneously. The recent boom in …

Writing In Film Studies: Poetics And Pedagogy, Bryan Mead

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is writing instruction inside undergraduate film courses. While the existence of textbooks devoted to teaching students how to write about film highlights the need for such instruction, evidence suggests many courses underuse or neglect such texts. Instead, most instructors focus their efforts on content instruction, expecting students to translate an increased content knowledge into written argumentation. Yet, as is the case across the disciplines, students struggle to write successfully in these disciplinary courses. One of the main reasons for this disparity between instructor expectation and student success is the notion of disciplinarity, and how influential …

A Leap Into Communion: Kierkegaard And Spiritual Practices In _To The Wonder_, Madeleine Hall

Honors Theses

The study of metaethics contains the question of where value comes from. Different theories of goodness encourage tracing goodness back to God, saying that goodness is that which is like God (the resemblance thesis) or that which perfects nature (the perfection thesis). Kierkegaard participates in these questions of goodness, and in Fear and Trembling concludes that the moral absolute of the akedah reveals a good, Divine mystery. Fear and Trembling is a work of Christian existentialism that encourages an internal faith that embraces mystery rather than attempting to conquer it. Rather than trying to understand exactly who God is, Kierkegaard …

Big Community In Little Chinatown: How Asian Americans (Re)Present Their Community Today, Meghan Morrison

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper looks at a series of modern Asian American pieces of media in order to analyze how women and LGBT+ depict and create their community, especially in relation to another marginalized ethnic group. By examining the relationship between these groups within popular media, we can uncover how Asian Americans choose to represent themselves and gain a deeper understanding on how marginalized groups choose to portray themselves.

Madwomen And Mad Women: An Analysis Of The Use Of Female Insanity And Anger In Narrative Fiction, From Vilification To Validation., Lindsay Haralu

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This project examines the use of female insanity and anger in narrative fiction, as demonstrated by the character of the madwoman. Madness is a concept that has long been gendered female throughout Western history, in medicine, language, religion, and culture. Socially and culturally constructed madness can be used to determine the boundaries of society, the norms and values from which “madness” deviates, while the character of the madwoman can be used to demonstrate how women have challenged these boundaries and how the roles of women and definitions of femininity have changed over time. This study analyzes the madwoman trope from …

The Case Of Nemo Nobody: A Lacanian Study Of The Traumatic And Neurotic Relationships Of The Man Who Doesn't Exist, Brittany N. Sanders

English Theses

Jaco Van Dormael’s 2009 film Mr. Nobody introduces us to Nemo Nobody, “the man who doesn’t exist.” Nemo is born with the impossible gift of omniscience and exercises this ability to know several of his possible lives before they occur. His childhood is characterized by ontological questions concerning time, existence, choices, and chance. Nemo’s inability to answer unanswerable questions sources the trauma that stems from the moment his life literally splits in two. Nemo’s parents separate when he is nine, and they leave it up to him to decide if he wants to leave with his mother or stay with …

Mapping The Queer Ephemeral, Mitchell Famulare

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to define/theorize and map the queer ephemeral, a cycle of emergence and reemergence of the queer subject within queer time. Straight time consists of the linear timeline where when one matures, attends college, attains a stable job, falls in love, marries, bears children, and lives happily ever after. Whether through movies, television, books, or our own guardians, time is presented to us as something stable, consistent, and reproductive; diverging off the conventional timeline brings societal pressures that isolate subjects who fall out of its fabric. As straight time facilitates the construction of some sort of ideal adult, …

The Auteur As Adapter: From Literature To Film In Rossellini, Godard, And Pasolini, Sundar S. Pratt

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

How Apocalypse Now Adapts Heart Of Darkness’S Imperialist Critique To A New Medium And A Different Culture, Samuel Battle

Undergraduate Projects

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now affirms the key message of its source material, Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, to suggest that the imperialist mindset continues to significantly affect international interactions even in modern times. While the original novella reflects and criticizes contemporary British imperialism in Africa, the adaptation shifts the setting to Vietnam in 1968 and primarily satirizes the American army’s actions during the war. While the subject of the story’s critique is different, Coppola preserves the core message of the novella – that all humans are capable of falling into their inner darkness and …

Playing With Noise: Anne Elliot, The Narrator, And Sound In Jane Austen's And Adrian Shergold's Persuasion, Brianna R. Phillips

The Corinthian

This paper pushes against the critical tradition that views silence or listening in relation to passivity and powerlessness by exploring the role of noise in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and in Adrian Shergold’s experimental 2007 film adaptation of that novel and how sound relates to Anne Elliot’s emotional legibility. Austen fills the narrative landscape with sounds that are filtered almost exclusively through Anne so that even when she is silent, she is “making noise” through her focalizations and through free indirect narration. Both Austen and Shergold align noise with Anne’s emotions such that Anne’s sensorial responses to shocking, loud, and disruptive …

"Strong Female Characters"? An Analysis Of Six Female Fantasy Characters From Novel To Film, Valari Westeren

Honors Projects

This project is twofold. The first section analyzes six female fantasy characters in their literary and filmic incarnations—Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz), Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian), Arwen Evenstar (The Lord of the Rings), Princess Buttercup (The Princess Bride), Hermione Granger (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), and Annabeth Chase (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief)—noting adaptational changes made to each and placing the twelve incarnations in conversation with each other. This conversation centers around the concept of the “strong female character,” …

Super Heroes V Scorsese: A Marxist Reading Of Alienation And The Political Unconscious In Blockbuster Superhero Film, David Eltz

Kutztown University Masters Theses

As superhero blockbusters continue to dominate the theatrical landscape, critical detractors of the genre have grown in number and authority. The most influential among them, Martin Scorsese, has been quoted as referring to Marvel films as “theme parks” rather than “cinema” (his own term for auteur film). Despite this, these films often possess considerably challenging views in regards to social justice, and continue to interface with the pervading theme of alienation in increasingly abstract and progressive ways.

This thesis considers four films (1978’s Superman, 2000’s X-Men, 2013’s Captain America: Winter Soldier, and 2018’s Black Panther) from a Marxist perspective, viewing …

Wombs, Wizards, And Wisdom: Bilbo's Journey From Childhood In The Hobbit, Rory W. Collins

Crossing Borders: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

In The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien constructs middle-aged Bilbo Baggins as a sheltered and emotionally immature ‘child’ during the opening chapters before tracing his development into an autonomous, self-aware adult as the tale progresses. This article examines Tolkien’s novel qua bildungsroman through both a literary lens—considering setting, dialogue, and symbolism, among other techniques—and via a psychological framework, emphasizing an Eriksonian conception of development. Additionally, Peter Jackson’s three-part film adaptation of The Hobbit is discussed throughout with ways that Jackson succeeds and fails at portraying Bilbo’s childlike attributes noted. I argue that Tolkien presents a sophisticated account of Bilbo’s …

“Part Of That (Man’S) World”: Analyzing “Cinderella” And “The Little Mermaid” Fairy Tale Variants Through A Feminist Lens, K. Morgan Mitchell

Honors Theses

Fairy tales are often reduced to nothing more than the moral lesson that can be taught to children. However, when we move past the impulse to search for the simplified moral of the story, we can begin to ascertain the impact of fairy tales on different audiences. This thesis uses both impact theory, which yields a close reading of the textual and cinematic evidence, and reception research, which provides an opportunity to discuss the significance of the material by speculating about the message that readers receive. Under consideration are four variants each of the “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid” fairy …

Course Syllabus For English 1120 - Speculative Fiction, Chad Luck

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This document contains a syllabus for a new version of the large-lecture course English 1120: Speculative Fiction. This version of the class focuses on horror fiction, in particular, and structures the course according to a series of discursive contexts crucial to that genre. So, the course is organized around five thematic units including: psychology, religion, gender, race, and science. Each of these units presents key texts in that given area and asks students to think critically about the relationship of fiction to that particular cultural context. The course, in general, cultivates in students the ability to analyze cultural objects—in this …