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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

An “Other” Experience Of Videogames: Analyzing The Connections Between Videogames And The Lived Experience Of Chronic Pain, Gracie Straznickas Apr 2023

An “Other” Experience Of Videogames: Analyzing The Connections Between Videogames And The Lived Experience Of Chronic Pain, Gracie Straznickas

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue for the connections between the lived experience of chronic pain and videogames, exploring what interacts with and influences them. To answer this, I draw on cripistemology as I engage in autoethnography, close-reading and close-gameplay, restorying, mixed methods design, formal interviews, surveys, and inductive coding. I further argue for pushing back against the unhelpful binaries that define the “human” and a false idea of “universal” experience or ability, instead pointing to the intersectionality that better reflects the biopolitics of disability, including both debility and capacity. I engage with these methods in three specific projects that consider …


Graduation Simulator: A Virtual Reality Conversation Experience For Second-Year College Students Living Through A Pandemic, Dylan Cohen Jun 2022

Graduation Simulator: A Virtual Reality Conversation Experience For Second-Year College Students Living Through A Pandemic, Dylan Cohen

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

Many second-year college students have struggled to socially transition back to in-person schooling. After a significant period of enforced isolation, there is a need to aggregate loose connections activated or maintained online. Through conducting UX/ethnographic research on current second-year students who have lost out on major life milestones between the years 2019-2021, synthesizing research from fields of media studies, interpersonal communication, and art/design that incites self-disclosure, and collaborating with a group of student designers, I responded to this issue by creating Graduation Simulator (2022) over a period of 8 months. Graduation Simulator facilitates emotionally vulnerable discussion through a VR scavenger …


The Plan Starts Now: A Study Of Juvenile Delinquency And A Re-Entry Program Back Into The Community, Lynell Porch Apr 2021

The Plan Starts Now: A Study Of Juvenile Delinquency And A Re-Entry Program Back Into The Community, Lynell Porch

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

African American youth are five times as likely as whites to be detained or committed to youth facilities; 1 out of 10 high school dropouts are institutionalized. $8–21 billion is spent locking up juvenile delinquents. The educational system has failed many African American youth, which can lead them into delinquency. These youth are disregarded in the educational system, placed in overcrowded classrooms, and often dismissed as unable to learn. The results of this are school to prison pipeline. Many youths have learning disabilities that are not addressed by teachers, so youth began acting out. These are acts of attention and …


Built Bodies: Representations Of Monstrous Transsexuality In The Frankenstein Film, 1945-1975, Carmilla M. Morrell Jun 2020

Built Bodies: Representations Of Monstrous Transsexuality In The Frankenstein Film, 1945-1975, Carmilla M. Morrell

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

This thesis considers the relationship between representations of the Frankenstein’s Monster on film and the transsexual identity to argue that they can be ontologically consolidated into the figure of the Monstrous transsexual: a constructed, hybrid being whose uncategorizability within conventionally rigid structures of sex and intolerable embodiment of incongrous “parts” renders them as simultaneously powerful with radical potential and vulnerable from ostracization, oppression, and hostility. By analyzing both Frankenstein films from the post-war era of 1945-1975 and the power dynamics of the gender clinics in which the modern understanding of transsexuality was established, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which …


"#Does This Count As Poetry?": A Genre Analysis Of Tumblr Poetry, Selena Cotte Mar 2020

"#Does This Count As Poetry?": A Genre Analysis Of Tumblr Poetry, Selena Cotte

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

This thesis canonizes “Tumblr poetry” as a distinct and separate genre of poetry, closely related to other digital poetry movements but ultimately its own phenomenon. Through historical analysis, the criticism against Tumblr poetry and digital poetry as a whole become familiar in a cycle of negative reactions to changing poets and changing audiences. Through textual analysis of poems found on Tumblr, common attributes and style changes are identified and contrasted with more traditional contemporary poetry, signifying a distinct formal shift. Finally, through a platform analysis, poetry communities on Reddit and Instagram are similarly analyzed and contrasted with Tumblr poetry to …


Trans Sports Illustrated: Identities And Experiences Of Transgender Athletes Assigned Female At Birth, Sophia Neely Nov 2019

Trans Sports Illustrated: Identities And Experiences Of Transgender Athletes Assigned Female At Birth, Sophia Neely

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

This empirical study explores how transgender athletic adults assigned female at birth narrate their identities and experiences related to gender and sports participation. Using the methodology of social science portraiture filtered through a lens of queer feminist theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two trans men and three nonbinary participants. The participants are diverse in terms of age (21 to 54), race (white, Asian American, and African American), current primary sports interest (squash, CrossFit, powerlifting, baseball, and rock climbing), and pronouns (he/him/his, ze/zir/zirs, and they/them/theirs). Media reports and extant research on transgender athletes tend to recount bleak histories of exclusion, …


Selling True Stories: A Cultural Analysis Of Manufactured Realism In The Docudrama Crime Film, Jamie Schleser Jun 2010

Selling True Stories: A Cultural Analysis Of Manufactured Realism In The Docudrama Crime Film, Jamie Schleser

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

This paper examines the cultural function of docudrama crime films. The docudrama is a hybrid of the conventional Hollywood fiction film and the documentary. Blurring fact and fiction, these films manufacture an illusion of realism around the framework of the standard feature film using visual and narrative appeals to real life and real events. By asserting that they are "based on a true story," these films are able to shape and enhance a desired reading of the text in order to convey a particular social message to audiences. To understand the initial development of the docudrama crime form and how …