American Popular Culture Commons^™

The Cast Of A Giant's Shadow, Angela Kay Steineman

Masters Theses

Adapting fairy tales and folklore has been an ongoing endeavor by storytellers and artists since the very first story was repeated. The evidence can be seen in the many versions of fairy tales like those of the sleeping beauty, from Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia” to Walt Disney’s Maleficent. However, unlike their European counterparts, adaptations of American tales outside of children’s literature are not as ubiquitous. My writing rectifies this by adding to the resurging interest as seen in recent retellings like Matt Bell’s Appleseed: The Monstrous Birth (2019).

In an effort to reframe the American tall tale …

Youtubers Influence Of Young People, Matisse Melendres

Pop Culture Intersections

Youtube Influencers are the new form a fame in our society, and young people of the ages 13-17 spend a huge portion of their free time watching Youtube videos. Youtube Influencers, also known as Youtubers, have a huge amount of influence of young people. In this article, it will discuss that reaction based videos not only attract young people, but also behavior and actions in that video can be easily transferred to the young viewer. In addition, the excessive amount of time young people spend on Youtube can determine the amount of influence Youtubers have amongst the youth.

Holding The Line: A Dynamic Salary Cap For European Association Football, Kavi Sachania

Pop Culture Intersections

European association football’s domination by a select few teams with the plentiful resources to buy talent exposes how a sports league can develop runaway disparity without the presence of any wage spending controls. With the introduction of the UEFA Financial Fair Play rules to keep teams from furthering their debt, much discussion has ensued on whether these financial laws need to be expanded to address competitive imbalance. While salary cap systems have been proposed before, none have been able to balance the interests of owners, fans, players, and regulators within the European Union. I plan to add to the discussion …

The Relationship Between Entrepreneurship, Business And Mental Health, Madison Bregman

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will cover the relationship between entrepreneurship, business and mental health. As entrepreneurship has become increasingly popular in culture, many people aspire to be entrepreneurs. However, the "darker side" of it - the mental health challenges that often come with it - is less talked about and can have a significant impact on the "success" of an entrepreneur.

The Effects Of Scrolling: Social Media Takeover, Bianca Mancini

Pop Culture Intersections

The present research and argument examines how social media (influencers) negatively affect individuals by causing envy and low self esteem. Results suggest that many factors play a role, including time spent on social media and the individual’s level of self-esteem. To support my background research I will pull from my personal experience and a study I conducted. From these results, I have determined that we as a society have to take envy, low self-esteem, age, gender, and location into consideration when we are examining the link between mental health and social media. In the study, I will show that females …

Assistance From Alexa: The Social And Material Benefits Of The Internet Of Things, Sara Bunyard

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will apply the uses and gratifications theory to examine why people adopt products from the Internet of Things. Previous studies have applied the uses and gratifications theory to analyze why consumers have adopted forms of new media and technology, including social media and the Internet of Things. There are also many articles on the potential flaws of the Internet of Things, especially privacy concerns. This article will expand on this research by combining the benefits and concerns about the Internet of Things to asses user satisfaction. It argues that the Internet of Things satisfies user needs successfully despite …

Video Games And Social Relation, Feiyang Yu

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be discussing how multi-player games encourage social interactions. It will over multiple games as examples to illustrate the argument. The article has two focus: game mechanics and player psychology.

Influences Of Religion In Rap Music, Joey Rubino

Pop Culture Intersections

This article covers the intersection of religion and rap music. It covers many popular rappers of the current era and how their success has been bolstered by religious influence in their music.

The Impact Of The 90’S-2000’S Boy Bands, Tamia Braggs

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be covering the impact that top tier boy bands, The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC made in the 90's with Masculinity as well as Marketing aspects.

The Porn Crisis: This Generations Sexual Outlet, Daniela Williams

Pop Culture Intersections

With the development of technology, we opened a world, not only to new ideas and innovations but also to the world of pornography. Pornography has invaded our culture, in music, television shows, movies even social media. Advocates for the production and consumption of pornography claim pornography to be a form of self-expression that is healthy and essential to discovering their sexual experiences. However, this paper argues that the lack of regulation is contributing to the damaging effects pornography has on the consumers’ psyche and behavior, it is also factoring into our society’s decline of public health. This claim is supported …

Effects Of American Pop Culture On The Political Stability Of The Arab Spring!, Mina Alsadoon

Pop Culture Intersections

The Arab Spring was an act of rebellion by the youth to ask for freedom of speech, a relief from the dictatorship era, and to demand basic civil rights. It all started in Tunisia when a policewoman slapped a young boy in public when he was trying to sell merch on the sidewalk to support his family, the boy resulted to burning himself in public as its a shameful thing that a woman hit a man. That in a way started a revolution to enlighten people's minds, and be conscience to reality. In 2009, the Middle East started to get …

The Misconception Of College Life: How Popular Media Is Making It Worse, Jenna Bucher

Pop Culture Intersections

This article explores the misconceptions of the life of a college student and the daily struggles that get overlooked. Colleges provide support for the most prevalent cases of mental illness but disregard those who do not display these obvious signs. This focus on only those with extreme needs leaves the majority of students feeling lost and not knowing where to go for help; their feelings are not warranted and unless they are suicidal, it is not of a concern. I will argue that on top of the stresses of acclimating to college, daily work and social pressures, social media has …

Two Poems: Stop Time Before; Forsaken Ones, Ánh-Hoa Thị Nguyễn

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This creative work features two poems: Stop Time Before; Forsaken Ones

‘Some Foods Are Considered Aphrodisiac Because They Resemble Sexual Organs’: On Isabel Allende’S Aphrodite, Anke Klitzing

Articles

At the age of 56, well into her second marriage and a grandmother herself, novelist Isabel Allende decided to find out whether aphrodisiacs are all they are made out to be. She wrote Aphrodite: The Love of Food and Food of Love after extensive research into erotic literature across some centuries and continents, and this foundation of age-old wisdom also means that the book, while published in 1998, remains a timeless source of inspiration and enjoyment.

Between The Living And The Dead, Laura Henriksen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout my studies at the Graduate Center, I have attempted to deepen my understanding of how some people, such as myself and my family, came to be white, and what that means, and how it can be undone. This question of whiteness has pushed me further back ontologically, or deeper down, to include how some people came to be human, and then even further, how some matter came to be living. In my thesis project I attempt to participate in dismantling one of the most fundamental binaries in binary thinking — the strict and uncomplicated division between the living and …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided …

Teaching Visual Literacies: The Case Of The Great American Dust Bowl, Mary F. Rice, Ashley K. Dallacqua

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Teachers and students require a range of tools to engage with visual texts. Using The Great American Dust Bowlby Don Brown (2013) as an exemplar text, we outline four conceptions of visual literacy: rhetorical, instructional, industrial and visuo-spatial and discuss their use in our literacy education practice. In addition, we provide a brief model of a second text, The Arrival (Tan, 2013) and a list of suggested texts for students at different levels (elementary, middle, and high school). We argue that these tools have the potential to deepen conceptions of visual literacies and empower teachers and students to understand …

My Mother On Dream Interpretation And The Lack Of Finality In Death, Liz Johnston

Comparative Woman

This is an interview with my mother, a dream interpreter. Here, we explore her practice of reading dreams and discuss her experiences in communicating with spirits.

The American Dream As A Cultural Movement, Thomas W. Raskay

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This piece investigates the relationship between the American Dream and automobility through a generational lens, assessing cultural change in each renewal of the American Dream. Comparing generations of Americans exploring and reforming cultural space reveals evidence of the American Dream as a tendency for generations to expand to new frontiers balanced by a duty to reform current social space. Automobility multiplies Americans’ options for exploration and explodes the rate at which modern generations engage with different spaces. Now that automobility is routine, Millenials have expanded to the new social space frontier in cyberspace, but a limitless frontier may disrupt the …

A Genealogy Of Self-Development In Modern America, Kelsey M. Binder

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article offers a hypothetical conversation between various authors and creators who have embarked on progressive self-development journeys under the influence of a shared society that intermittently embraces and rejects the structures of the American Dream. While examining the instinctive human motives that cause the radical decision to actualize one’s life, this paper attempts to bridge the psychology of the desire for personal growth to our influential cultural landscape. It explores and analyzes the self-development journeys of individuals such as William Least Heat-Moon and Chris McCandless, as well as the recent message of self-development found in a cinematic pop culture …

The Influence Of Individualistic Ideas On American Mobility, Markus Magiera

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

In this paper I showcase the influence of individualistic thinking ranging back as far as Age of Enlightenment on the development of mobility in America since the eighteenth century. My goal is to identify the factors that shaped the evolution of travel. In order to do so I start by analyzing texts from the early nineteenth century, where travel by foot was the common thing. Next I focus on new means of mobility; first the bicycle, and later on the automobile. I aim to convince that modernity's main instigator was the change in thinking brought forth in the Age of …

The Effects Of Media Coverage On Mass Shootings In The United States, Lisa Chen

Pop Culture Intersections

This paper discusses the effects media coverage and media portrayal have on mass shootings in the United States. As the occurrences of mass shootings in the United States have increased, the depiction of these events through news outlets, media stories and journal articles have also increased. With these devastating events on the rise, the perceived public safety within the nation is at stake. By evaluating the effects of media coverage on mass shootings, we are able to uncover whether it may be encouraging the increasing trend. Through the examination of multiple news articles, scholarly journals, and books through a behavioral …

The Power Of Influence: Traditional Celebrity Vs Social Media Influencer, Melody Nouri

Pop Culture Intersections

This article examines how YouTube and Instagram micro-celebrities are able to influence pop culture trends in regards to fashion and beauty at greater extents than the traditional celebrity. From their ability to create communities where users feel more connected to the influencer through higher levels of engagement, authenticity, and reliability, we can conclude that social media stars have the upper hand in endorsing products. From the implications of the social media star’s greater amount of influence on consumers, I conclude that product marketing efforts should prioritize using social media celebrities as their main advertising platform due to more efficient audience …

The Impact Of Podcasts In Education, Thomas Goldman

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be covering the impact of podcasts in education. Multimedia has been apart of education and classroom environments for over 40 years. With the recent rise in podcast creators and consumers, it is natural that this aspect of media would also spread into education. The use of podcasts in education is controversial, one side argues that podcasts have no place in education and are merely a distraction. The same was said about PowerPoint presentations and in-class videos at one point of time, however multimedia in the classroom has become the new norm. This article will provide the argument …

Marketing Influences Through Strategic Campaigns And Sustainability, Oliver Martin

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will present how marketing can transcend boundaries and promote future globalization. The implementation of the triple bottom line consisting of environmental, social and economic values has proven to be successful in the growing of brands beyond their product and services. One study illustrates that consumers' purchasing patterns are affected by brand culture and ethics. The companies Starbucks, Ikea and Unilever utilize their extensive marketing reach not only to promote their business, but future change and equality. This article will argue how the interconnectivity of marketing campaigns will transcend barriers and create a common ground, which we so desperately …

Private Equity Success: High Returns In A Risky World, Ross Corey

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be covering how a private equity firm, despite the firm’s investment preferences, can lessen their risk without negatively affecting the potential gains in their assets and capital by making the right considerations. Investing in platforms such as stocks, bonds, and real estate may offer good long term returns. A small percentage of people look to invest in private equity markets. A reason for this is because funds have high minimum investments which makes private equity more exclusive compared to many public markets. A private equity investment, in most cases, is an opportunity for higher returns, with the …

Streaming Services, Binging, And Cultural Consequences, Sean Flanagan

Pop Culture Intersections

This article discusses how streaming services such as Netflix are affecting cultural ideas and attitudes towards media.

Rap Music As A Positive Influence On Black Youth And American Politics, Natalie Wilson

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will examine the impact of rap music on Black American youth as well as contemporary American politics with an emphasis on police brutality.

Social Media And Consumer Culture: Addicted To The Idealized Consumer, James Laeder

Pop Culture Intersections

For better or for worse, social media has become party of the fabric of society. As technology and social networking sites increasingly affect the behavior and culture around us, signs of digital addiction are on the rise. This article discusses the connection between consumer culture and social networking site addiction.

The Effect Of Cws On Adolescent Health, Mitchell Shi

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be covering the problem of celebrity worship. Celebrity worship has been in debate over the past few years regarding whether it is a harmful activity or not among adolescents, but with the recent established psychological disorder of Celebrity Worship Syndrome, it can be shown that it has become a serious health issue. One side argues that celebrity worship is harmless, even a helpful practice to pursue. The other side, however, argues that celebrity worship is detrimental to the mental and physical wellbeing of the adolescents. It is important to understand what celebrity worship entails, the different tests …