Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Coming Out Of The Coffin: The History And Present Of Queerness In The Vampire Genre., Bailey Drummond

Honors Projects

This essay delves into the captivating and lasting influence of vampires on popular culture since their creation. The fascination with vampires can be traced back to literary works such as John Polidori's "The Vampyre" and Bram Stoker's classic "Dracula," which have served as foundations for vampire mythology across different media platforms. Despite the evolution of media and cultural contexts, certain themes surrounding vampires have persisted throughout history. Notably, vampires have been portrayed as symbols of sexuality and queerness, reflecting societal fears and desires from past eras to the present day. These themes have been critically analyzed and dissected in various …

Audio Dramas As Self-Expression For Marginalized Identities, Athena Towne

Honors Projects

Fiction podcasts, also knows as Audio Dramas, often afford a level of creative freedom to potential creators that is not seen in other popular media. This is seen explicitly through the marginalized representation that popular works in the medium allow. This work seeks to explore why the medium allows for such stories to flourish, as well as how these stories are received. Then, to test this theory, this paper documents the process of creating an audio drama, from conception to completion.

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 …

Creating Character, Alexa Tenney

Honors Projects

This project explores the relationship between merchandise development and narrative development, with a specific focus on the creative development between dolls and animation. Through exploration of these creative mediums, I began to question: How does the creative process combining animation and merchandise develop, and what is the impact on the final product? This concept is broken down even further to focus specifically on characters, and how creative characters are developed for dolls. This project provides an overview of the history of animation and merchandising beginning with Felix the Cat in the 1920s. Felix represents an instance of an animated character …

The Language Of Filmmaking And The Troubles Of Modern Illiteracy, Gabriel A. Blank

Honors Projects

An examination of cinematic language and its development over the last century of filmmaking. This paper discusses the effect of cinematic "illiteracy" and the divide between critics and mass audiences.

The New Wbgu: A Social Media Marketing Strategy, Brittany Line

Honors Projects

This project looks to find the most effective ways of growing and engaging a social media audience for WBGU-FM. Included in this is strategy used to interact with more people, an analysis of what elements were effective, and ways to increase content. Social media holds growing importance in promoting and connecting with an audience. This project is needed because recently, WBGU-FM has not been frequently or effectively using their social media platforms to connect with the community. As the shift of WBGU-FM’s purpose takes effect to focus on more community aspects of radio, it is important to have multiple ways …

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? A Marxist Analysis Of "Hamilton" And Its Relationship To The Broadway Economic System, Alana Ritt

Honors Projects

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mega-hit Hamilton: An American Musical has been both a critical and academic darling since its premiere in 2015. A historical retelling of America’s inception through the eyes of an oft-ignored founding father, the musical weaves together a diverse cast and hip-hop musical stylings in order to tell the story of “America then, as told by America now.” While many critics and scholars alike have praised the musical for putting an exciting and accessible twist to American history, others have argued that the musical is not nearly as “revolutionary” as it claims to be. This essay is designed to …

Living On Heaven's Doorstep: A Multimedia Project With The Warm Beach Senior Community, Justina Grace Brown

Honors Projects

Having a website is no longer a luxury but a requirement. Nonprofits need to take advantage of the digital age to better reach their constituents yet, overall, they struggle to do this well. Because of lack of resources, their reliance on volunteers, and the inability to keep up with the evolving demands of a website, nonprofits (especially small ones) are not using the web to their full advantage. Taking the research and applying it to a nonprofit retirement community—Warm Beach Senior Community—the challenges are seen first-hand.

"You See, My Wife's Dad Is Real Well Off" -- Money Obscured In The Coen Brothers, Sarah Mae Fleming

Honors Projects

I am most concerned with the depiction of money in American film since the shift in the 1970s to a post-industrial, neoliberal economy. This shift to an informational capitalism places value on immaterial labor, such as a service, knowledge, and communication.3 Because of this change, industrial careers have vanished, along with the security that once came with them. Material labor has become essentially disposable in the US, due to outsourcing and automation. The American Dream has transformed dramatically; no longer can a typical family support itself with one income. Today, working-class and middle-class finances have become increasingly more precarious. As …

Dismantling Communism In The Early Cold War: Themes In Children's Media, Jennifer Lilly

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the messages found in American children’s visual media during the early years of the Cold War. Many producers in the film and television industry took to the screen to express concerns about possible Communist infiltration. These fears had grown over several decades of political and international instability, beginning in the early twentieth century and the first Red Scare. Thus, the explosion of the Cold War prompted producers to create media intended to socialize children around American ideals which would challenge the growing threat of Communism. The events which led to production of this media will be interpreted …

The Keepers: A Collaborative Constructive Narrative Podcast, Shay Carroll

Honors Projects

This is a fictional podcast series that presents a story that is completed through roleplaying. The structure follows that of a video game, with the main characters, or "players," interacting with a set plot while deciding their own course of action. I act as the narrator for the story, controlling the plot and setting as well as non-player characters, or "NPCs." For the purposes of consistency and making sure the characters do not do anything that would be considered too over-powered or unrealistic, I have chosen to use the rule guide and statistics modifier system presented by Wizards of the …

There Will Be Oil: The Celebration And Inevitability Of Petroleum Through Upton Sinclair And Paul Thomas Anderson, Sarah Mae Fleming

Honors Projects

An analysis of the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair and the film There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, with a focus on the presence of oil in these texts.

For The Record: Bill Schurk, Katlyn Westhoven

Honors Projects

For the Record: Bill Schurk is a half hour long documentary about the life and work of William Schurk, also known as Bill. Bill has helped to create the country’s largest music collection and helped advance the study of popular culture within the academic community. The documentary will be told from a first person perspective by Bill with supplemental content coming from interviews with family, friends, and colleagues of Bill through the years. Bill Schurk founded the Bowling Green State University Music Library and Bill Schurk Sound Archives and worked as the head archivist for 50 years before his retirement …

Hellbound - The First Season, Stephen Seiber

Honors Projects

A student short concept film developed in order to pitch a television series.

The Scars Of War: The Demonic Mother As A Conduit For Expressing Victimization, Collective Guilt, And Forgiveness In Postwar Japanese Film, 1949-1964, Sophia Walker

Honors Projects

Contemporary American viewers are familiar with the vengeful and terrifying ghost women of recent J-Horror films such as Ringu (Nakata Hideo, 1998) and Ju-On (Shimizu Takashi, 2002). Yet in Japanese theater and literature, the threatening ghost woman has a long history, beginning with the neglected Lady Rokujo in Lady Murasaki’s 11th century novel The Tale of Genji, who possesses and kills her rivals. Throughout history, the Japanese ghost mother is hideous and pitiful, worthy of fear as well as sympathy, traits that authors and filmmakers across the centuries have exploited. This project puts together four films that have never before …

Media Erotics & Adaptation: A Comparative Textual Analysis Of Carmilla, Rebecca Wait

Honors Projects

This project is concerned with understanding the different ways in which Carmilla (1872), a gothic novella, and it’s 2014 web series adaptation differently approach the same basic narrative, especially with regards to their respective representations of individuals who identify as sexual and gender minorities. One of the major functions of importance in this study was to understand the temporality and cultural conditions, which lead to the perceived need for a postmodern adaptation of a pre-modernist text. Through textual analysis, the author compared J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) to Jordan Hall's adaptation (2014). In this analysis, significant differences existed between …

"This Aggression Will Not Stand": The Coens On Masculinity, Evan Kelly

Honors Projects

This research examines the constructions of masculinity within the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Through textual analysis of three film, Raising Arizona (1987), Fargo (1996), and The Big Lebowski (1998), three key themes emerge: masculinity as performance, children and family as ego extensions, toxic masculinity personified, and children and redemption through rejection of hegemonic masculinity. Comprehensively, the paper seeks to prove the Coens uniquely construct masculinity as a performance which can override public policy and interpersonal prosperity. This research serves several functions. First, it recasts the Coens as cutting-edge progressive filmmakers, despite their protestations to the contrary. What we …

Found In Translation: An Analysis Of Popular American Film In Spain, Emily Dushek

Honors Projects

This research examines American popular film in Spain with the aim of understanding if and how removing a popular text (such as a film) from its original language and socio-cultural context and translating it for consumption in a different language and culture affects the interpretation of the film. The study delves into the very successful 2012 films The Avengers (Joss Whedon) and Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) and uses textual analyses and comparisons of the original English and the translated Castellano Spanish versions of the films, specifically focusing on the translations, as well as analyses of film reviews and critiques written …

An Unchained Analysis Of Racial Tension In America, Moriah Angott

Honors Projects

Modern race issues stem not only from the past but also from a lack of understanding and empathy for each other. How we talk about race will not only inform how we are able to move forward as a society, but it will also say a great deal about how we are evolving as human beings. It is important, and has been recognized as such, that black Americans have the freedom to grapple with that past, to understand it, and to feel connected to those ancestors who suffered in order for the foundation of this country to be built. Is …

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety, Rebecca Schroeder

Honors Projects

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety is a triptych video and artifact piece inspired by the abstract analysis of my dreams. It recognizes worries held within my subconscious and brings them to life through graphic design, photography, and video. The process of creating provides a new perspective of looking at both art and occupational therapy as methods of solving emotional distress.

I have recorded over 80 of my dreams in the past year. In these dreams, regret, grief, and anxiety are common themes. These themes are represented in three triptychs that cycle through past, present, and future problems. The cycling of …

Manifestations Of Masculinity In Crisis: The Noir Films Of Humphrey Bogart, Jason Marzini

Honors Projects

This Honors thesis discusses the direct connection of America’s cultural ideology surrounding the time of the second World War and Humphrey Bogart’s noir films and their depiction of masculinity. Through an analysis of Bogart’s performances in three pinnacle noir films: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep (1946), and In a Lonely Place (1950), the author proved that after World War II there was a clear shift in the paradigm of gendered expectations, particularly those identified under the umbrella of masculinity. Shifts in American mores regarding masculinity can be charted through Bogart’s archetypal chain as he represents the masculine iconic …

Mutual Aesthetics, Joseph D. Sherry

Honors Projects

At first glance, it may seem surprising that I’ve paired Murnau and Ford. Murnau is considered a modernist whose style is rooted in Germany’s stylistic heritage and is best remembered for films noted for their artful aestheticism and technical innovation. Ford, on the other hand, is recognized as a classicist, best remembered today for his mastery of Hollywood narrative filmmaking, in particular the genre of the western, a position crystallized in his famous self-description: “My name’s John Ford. I make Westerns.” Yet despite their diametrically opposed positions on the relationship of film to art, both directors were noted for their …

Honors College Recruitment Video, Michael Pirt

Honors Projects

My Honors project was delivered through the medium of video as I attempted to find out what the Honors College means to its members in hopes of using their answers to inspire incoming students to join the Honors College.

The Disney Strike Of 1941: From The Animators' Perspective, Lisa Johnson

Honors Projects

Identifies and explores the tensions that led to the Disney Strike of 1941. Demonstrates that this Strike exhibited different problems from those typical of strikes during the 1930s and early 1940s, especially regarding intellectual property rights, screen credit, and professional differences over standards of excellence.