American Film Studies Commons^™

Fame Gone Wild (2015: An Era Of Self-Invention), Stephanie E. Kang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Entertainment has become one of the fueling fires of society. In today’s world of nonstop broadcasting and streaming, many begrudgingly trudge through their 9 to 5’s only to live for their few post-work hours of leisure, which have been reserved for this week’s latest items on the viewing queue. Netflix and Hulu have become the opium of the masses. Consequently, this obsession with constant entertainment has now morphed into a shared yearning for the people that are watched and followed religiously through the screen – the celebrities. In this cultural moment, the concept of fame has become a vital element …

Intersectionality In Jane Eyre And Its Adaptations, Laurel Loh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the almost 170 years since Jane Eyre was published, there have been numerous adaptations in many different mediums and genres, such as plays, films, musicals, graphic novels, spin-off novels, and parodies. The novel has been read in many different critical traditions: liberal humanist, historicist, feminist, and postcolonial approaches dealing with topics such as the problem of female authorship and consciousness. In addition, it has been read in terms of an ideological struggle based on race, class, and gender; xenophobia and imperialism; female labor politics; and genre issues, to just name a few. As literary critics have explored numerous themes …

Emerging Feminist Voices On Media And Representation, Diana Depasquale, Cassie Tenorio, Alyssa Wells, Savannah Fulmer

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

The work featured in this panel is from students in WS2000, Introduction to Women's Studies. I created an assignment called "Choose Your Own Adventure." These projects include: an examination gender in film, and a revised version of the Bechdel Test, sexism and misogyny in gaming culture expressed through a series of comics, a painting on canvas using a variety of materials and techniques representing the control of women's reproductive rights and the damage done to female bodies by patriarchal language and rhetoric, and an analysis of womanism, scripture and Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

Each student engaged with issues related …

Neglecting The Subjects Of The Drag Performance In White Chicks, Hannah Sylvester

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

As a temporary transvestite film, White Chicks tackles racial issues as well as gender issues and performance. While the statements made on behalf of racial issues are strong, the statements concerning gender are much weaker. The paper will give a summary of the film followed by a description of it as a temporary transvestite film alongside other films within the genre. Issues concerning gender roles--specifically the concept of femininity--are addressed within the film, but are never challenged or changed. Indeed, society's heterosexual hegemony are upheld within this film as they are in similar films in the genre. Homosexual instances in …

Cumulative Index Of Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture (1999-), Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Happily Ever After: Is Disney Setting Us Up? A Study On Disney Princesses And Their Influence On Young Women And Their Personal Love Narratives, Brittany Danielle Minor

Theses & Dissertations

This study discusses the issue of whether the influence of Disney films affects the girls who watch these films once they become adult women. Disney "princess" films are animated movies produced by Disney, featuring princess characters such as Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and Pocahontas. The purpose of this study is to discover how watching Disney princess films as a child affects the decisions adult women aged 20-37 make when it comes to their love lives. A survey, completed by 40 females aged 20-37, was conducted and relating literature was explored for data collection. The surveys were analyzed …

Obesity Among Young American Indian Adults In North Dakota, Abby Omahen

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Obesity among American Indian young adults is a significant health problem. There is an increase in the prevalence rate of diseases associated with obesity which tend to have high medical costs and high mortality rates. Fruit and vegetable consumption, exercise, gender and education are factors which could affect obesity among American Indians. Therefore, the primary purpose of the current study was to determine if there was an association between certain factors (fruit and vegetable consumption, exercise, gender and education level) and obesity among young American Indian adults in North Dakota. The secondary purpose was to determine if there was a …

Using Stable Isotope Analysis To Study Altitudinal And Latitudinal Bat Migration, Lily Arias

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The general lack of knowledge on basic aspects of the biology of temperate and tropical bats, their low reproductive rates, and threats such as white-nose syndrome, wind farms, and habitat loss, make them very susceptible to population declines. My research uses an innovative technique, the analysis of stable isotopes, to study the ecology of bat migration with the main goals of contributing significantly to the understanding of bat biology and assessing the conservation status and susceptibility of bats. In the first chapter, I measured the content of hydrogen isotopes in fur samples of migratory bat species killed at a wind …

Long May She Reign: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender Expectations In Disney’S Tangled And Disney/Pixar’S Brave, Caitlin J. Saladino

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This project addresses messages about gender expectations in Disney princess narratives. The two films included in my project are Tangled (2010) and Brave (2012), which feature the most recently inducted princesses to the marketed Disney Princess line (Rapunzel and Merida, respectively). Using genre as an organizing principle, I argue that Rapunzel and Merida are different from the past Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, etc.) because their narratives reflect new ideas about gender expectations in modern society. The central tension appearing in both films is the opposition between the image of woman as traditional, domestic, and dependent and woman …

Knowing And Being Known: Sexual Delinquency, Stardom, And Adolescent Girlhood In Midcentury American Film, Michael Todd Hendricks

Theses and Dissertations--English

Sexual delinquency marked midcentury cinematic representations of adolescent girls in 1940s, 50, and early 60s. Drawing from the history of adolescence and the context of midcentury female juvenile delinquency, I argue that studios and teen girl stars struggled for decades with publicity, censorship, and social expectations regarding the sexual license of teenage girls. Until the late 1950s, exploitation films and B movies exploited teen sex and pregnancy while mainstream Hollywood ignored those issues, struggling to promote teen girl stars by tightly controlling their private lives but depriving fan magazines of the gossip and scandals that normally fueled the machinery of …

Queer Pedagogical Desire: A Study Guide, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This essay explores the queer pedagogical desires that attended my writing of the Study Guide for the documentary film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard, 2012). The analysis takes up Robyn Wiegman’s central question in Object Lessons, “What is it we expect our relationship to our objects of study to do?”, which is of particular importance to the discipline of queer studies insofar as the field is oriented around the desire to meld social justice with critical pedagogy. The queer professor’s desire in the case of the Study Guide-as-object was to create a text that …

[Sabbatical Report], Dawn Hall

Sabbatical Reports

Using a feminist and cultural studies perspective, my project discusses the independent film industry and its treatment of women directors and female oriented narratives. It begins with a snapshot of male filmmakers' challenges and opportunities with a focus on Kelly Reichardt's career, definition of success, and specific model of filmmaking, with a brief comparison to other female filmmakers whose definitions are different and who have chosen a more commercial path. In addition to discussing industry data and feminist film theory, the body of the work focuses on Reichardt's feature films (one per chapter) framing each within her larger political statements. …

Bias In A Just World? Sexual Prejudice, Gender Self-Esteem, And Intimate Partner Violence, Crystal D. Mahoy

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Each year, approximately 835,000 men and 1.3 million women are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV; American Bar Association, n.d). Although the prevalence of same-sex intimate partner violence (IPV) is approximately the same as IPV in heterosexual couples (Alexander, 2002), fewer studies have examined perceptions of IPV in same-sex couples or of IPV perpetrated against heterosexual men compared to heterosexual women. In the current study, Just World Theory (Lerner & Miller, 1978) is used as a framework for understanding factors associated with perceptions of heterosexual and same-sex IPV, including sexual prejudice and gender self-esteem. Perceptions of IPV were examined in …

Happily Ever After Take Two: Rewriting Femininity In Hybridization Fairy Tale Films, Megan Estelle Troutman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The tradition of fairy tales has evolved drastically over the past five hundred years. At the beginning of the 20th century, fairy tale cartoons became widely popular as an independent medium, as well as introductions to larger films. In 1937, Walt Disney started the tradition of fairy tale cinema with the release of Snow White. Since that time, Disney has released and re-released eleven princess fairy tale films. Critics and parents alike ridicule Disney for its depictions of women as submissive and subservient. Recent films have used fairy tale tropes, without referring to a specific classic tale, in order to …

"Thrown On Their Own Resources": Collaboration As Survival In Imitation Of Life, Kristi Branham

Gender & Women's Studies Faculty Publications

The article presents an analysis of the film adaptation of "Imitation of Life," a 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst. It states that the repetition of the story across the first half of the twentieth century shows its resonance for U.S. audiences. It mentions that the woman question and the race question are brought together in the passing story in both the 1934 and 1959 film versions of the novel.

Study Guide For United In Anger: A History Of Act Up, Matt Brim

Open Educational Resources

The United in Anger Study Guide facilitates classroom and activist engagement with Jim Hubbard’s 2012 documentary, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. The Study Guide contains discussion sections, projects and exercises, and resources for further research about the activism of the New York chapter of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The Study Guide is a free, interactive, multimedia resource for understanding the legacy of ACT UP, the film’s role in preserving that legacy, and its meaning for viewers' lives.

Bibliography For Work In Travel Studies, Carlo Salzani, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Bibliography For The Study Of Cultural Discourse In Taiwan, Yu-Chun Chang, I-Chun Wang, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Selected Bibliography Of Work On Identity, Migration, And Displacement, Li-Wei Cheng, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Judy Holliday's Urban Working Girl Characters In 1950s Hollywood Film, Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

A Jewish-created urban and cosmopolitan working girl feminism persisted in the 1950s as a cultural alternative to the suburban, domestic consumerism critiqued so eloquently by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. The film persona of Jewish, Academy Award-winning actress Judy Holliday embodied this working girl feminism. Audiences viewed her portrayals of popular front working girl heroines in three films written by the Jewish writer and director Garson Kanin, sometimes in association with his wife, the actress Ruth Gordon, and directed by the Jewish director George Cukor in the early 1950s: Born Yesterday (1950), The Marrying Kind (1952), and It …

The Social Dimensions Of Fiction: On The Rhetoric And Function Of Prefacing Novels In The Nineteenth-Century Canadas, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. The Social Dimensions of Fiction: On the Rhetoric and Function of Prefacing Novels in the Nineteenth-Century Canadas. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher (Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn), 1993. ISBN 3-528-07335-7 188 pages, bibliography, index. Data and analyses of nineteenth-century English- and French-Canadian prefaces to novels with theoretical and methodological frameworks for the study of rhetoric, the sociology of literature, audience research, and genre studies. Copyright of the book was released to Tötösy de Zepetnek by Westdeutscher Verlag in 2003.

Bibliography Of Works By And About Imre Kertész, Nobel Laureate In Literature 2002, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

The Study Of Literature And Culture Online (Theory And Application), Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

History Of Ricl: Research Institute For Comparative Literature, University Of Alberta 1985-1999, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Selected Bibliography Of Work On Canadian Ethnic Minority Writing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, Asma Sayed, Domenic A. Beneventi

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Balancing Rosie And June: A Study Of Lynchburg College Postwar Alumnae And The Impact Of The Feminine Mystique, Dinah Watson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In 2003, the movie Mona Lisa Smile debuted describing the frustrations that many college women may have faced in the years after World War II. Wellesley College was the elite all-female institution that openly and proudly prepared its young women with the proper rules of etiquette and correctness. Despite Wellesley’s own excellent academic reputation, its close proximity to the prestigious single-sex male college, Harvard, made it even more appealing and convenient for the Wellesley girls to find a “suitable” husband. The novice young art instructor, Katherine Watson, was unique in that she wanted to offer her students not only a …

You Know How I Know You're Gay? : Masculinity And Homophobia In Mainstream Comedy, Lijah Barasz

Senior Scholar Papers

You Know How I Know You're Gay?: Masculinity and Homophobia in Contemporary Mainstream Comedy is a three-part senior scholars project that consists of a critical analysis of homophobic humor in contemporary mainstream comedy, an original feature-length comedy script entitled Don 't Be that Freshman, and a DVD of selected scenes from Don't Be that Freshman. The critical analysis first establishes the existence of homophobic humor in mainstream comedy and then links this homophobia to masculine anxiety, applying the ideas set forth in Michael Kimmel's essay, "Masculinity as Homophobia," to contemporary, mainstream, homosocial comedies. The paper goes on to examine audience …

History Of Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Selected Definitions For Work In Communication And Media Studies & Selected Bibliography Of Publications In Comparative Media Studies, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Toward A Framework Of Audience Studies In Comparative Cultural Studies, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.