American Popular Culture Commons^™

The Gender Epidemic: Intersecting Disease, Gender, And Sexuality In A Graphic Novel, Autumn Cejer

All NMU Master's Theses

For my thesis, I wrote a graphic novel set in a world where certain people possess powers that society tries to suppress by viewing them as a disease. The story focuses on two super-powered individuals on opposite sides of the law who handle this oppression very differently. Although these characters would easily be able to overpower the non-powered people in charge, they are too afraid to do so. Internalized guilt from possessing abilities they did not ask for adds an additional layer of conflict, just as women and disabled persons are constantly made to feel like they should apologize for …

The Infinite Crisis: How The American Comic Book Has Been Shaped By War, Winston Andrus

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis project argues that war has been the greatest catalyst for the American comic book medium to become a socio-political change agent within western society. Comic books have become one of the most pervasive influences to global popular culture, with superheroes dominating nearly every popular art form. Yet, the academic world has often ignored the comic book medium as a niche market instead of integrated into the broader discussions on cultural production and conflict studies. This paper intends to bridge the gap between what has been classified as comic book studies and the greater academic world to demonstrate the …

Art And Aids: Viral Strategies For Visibility, Stephen Baylor Pillow

Honors Theses

“Art & AIDS: Viral Strategies for Visibility” examines the complex relationships between social stigma, healthcare, homophobia, and mortality, and how these impacted the lives of Western artists and manifested in their works. Most of the art discussed in this thesis was produced during the height of the AIDS crisis (late-1980s to mid-1990s). During this period, gay artists and their allies employed new strategies in their work to inspire activism, and convey intense emotions –– predominantly frustration, grief, and anxiety –– associated with HIV/AIDS. In the U.S., the inaction of the Reagan administration was largely due to widespread homophobia kindled by …

Alex Trebek, Tiffany Yecke Brooks

Tenor of Our Times

The author remembers Alex Trebek.

Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Where similarities in class struggle have historically operated as a unifying force globally, the American crafted mythos isolates the individual and dehumanizes those that do not fall within the parameters of the cowboy archetype. The national protagonist is turned into a class traitor and an extension of government power.

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 …

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 …

"The Most Insistent Subject Of Popular Music": An Exploration Of Romeo And Juliet Music Adaptations And Their Expressions Of Modern Cultural Issues, Gabrielle Sheets

Honors Projects

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) has been persistently popular throughout history, especially in the modern production of popular music releases. People are often widely familiar with Romeo and Juliet’s usage throughout music. However, the reasoning behind the adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is relatively undiscussed. Romeo and Juliet is a leading symbol of tragic romance, an ever-present topic in popular music. Romeo and Juliet’s canonical qualities lead music artists to adapt the original play since it permits access to an audience that is familiar with the contexts of Shakespeare’s tragedy. This essay also provides a clear definition of “adaptation,” requiring …

Look At Her: The Subversive Spectacle Of Grande Dame Guignol Cinema, Michelle Smith

English Theses

While the Grande Dame Guignol films of the early 1960s served in their time to capitalize on the reputations of aging female stars and the growing popularity of the horror genre, an updated reading of this subgenre proves that it is rich with social critique regarding the feminine experience, social performance, and the tendencies of classical Hollywood cinema that promote a dominant, patriarchal social narrative. While many popular and critical responses diminish them as “psycho-biddy” or “hagsploitation” films, the Grande Dame Guignol tradition’s transformation of its actresses from glamorous icons to unrecognizable villains rejects such limiting appraisals by focusing on …

American Virtual Institute: The Covid Practicum, Mitchell Stotler

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The American Virtual Institute: The COVID Practicum is a practicum experience focused on presenting to Hungarians and other international attendees about American wellness, leadership, and lifestyle. This practicum experience was completed entirely online via Zoom, Google Meets, and Facebook Live over the 2020-2021 academic year.

The Hunger Games Trilogy And Young Adult Dystopian Literature: Guiding Adolescents In Addressing The Issues Of Media, Power, And Violence, Brooke Sandlin

Merge

No abstract provided.

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 2

Human-Machine Communication

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 2.

"When I Wore A Younger Man's Clothes": The Nostalgia Topic In The Music Of Billy Joel, Kendall Waters

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

My father and I often listened to Billy Joel together as I grew up, and I eventually formed nostalgic connections to Joel’s music. While music is well known as a conductor of nostalgia, this paper explores the idea that the nostalgia I feel while listening to specific songs in Joel’s catalog is not simply a result of the indexical connections I have built with these tracks. Rather, it is a result of a “nostalgia topic” in Joel’s work. This paper compares the soundtrack and select works from Joel’s catalog to reveal that there is no one gesture, melody, or harmonic …

The Expression Of The Hijab In American Sports Culture, Nicholas Duca

Sacred Heart University Scholar

Many sports in the West, specifically in American culture, permit religious symbols and practices. Yet Muslim women have been subject to discrimination, bigotry, and disrespect for wearing or wanting to wear a hijab. This study uses philosophical theory, data, and cultural information to explore the stigma behind Muslim women in America and their participation in the sporting activities that are held here. This piece explains how the hijab’s true meaning is dismantled through American culture and the religious meaning behind it, argues why it should be allowed in sporting events, and suggests ways to prevent discrimination against Muslim women who …

Ethnography Of Reading Comic Books, Azadeh Najafian

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis explores why adults read comic books. This research used the ethnographic method and interviewing eleven people, four women, seven male, as its primary source. Based on information and common themes gathered from interviews, I built this thesis into one introduction, three body chapters, and a conclusion.

In the first chapter, I argued that comics could function the same as myths and explained this function and related examples under the “mythic effect” name. In the second chapter, I discussed how my informants use reading comics as a means to escape their everyday lives and how sometimes this escapism carries …

Japanese Popular Culture Influences In Contemporary Black American Rap And Hip-Hop, Rodrianna Gaddy

Senior Theses

Since hip-hop’s emergence in New York during the early 1970s, there has been an increasing amount of Japanese popular cultural references in Black American rap and hip-hop. This increase is made possible through globalization and innovations in communication technology. Most previous research on the trend has focused primarily on the impact hip-hop has had on Japanese culture, and how Afro-Asian collaborations have shaped music produced in the East and West. However, this thesis focuses on the influence various forms of Japanese media and history have had on contemporary Black American rap and hip-hop. I evaluate how artists can display these …

“He Who Laughs Last!” Terrorists, Nihilists, And Jokers, William S. Chavez, Luke Mccracken

Journal of Religion & Film

Since his debut in 1940, the Joker, famed adversary of the Batman, continues to permeate the American cultural mediascape not merely as an object of consumption but as an ongoing production of popular imagination. Joker mythmakers post-1986 have reimagined the character not as superhuman but as “depressingly ordinary,” inspiring audiences both to empathize with his existential plight and to fear his terroristic violence as an increasingly compelling model of reactionary resistance to institutionality. This article examines the recent history of modern terrorism in conjunction with the “pathological nihilism” diagnosed by Nietzsche in order to elucidate the stakes and implications of …

Stanley Kubrick, Jewish Filmmaker: A Review Essay, Michael Gibson

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a review of two books: Nathan Abrams, Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), and David Mikics, Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).

Listen Like Thieves - Using Pop Music To Teach Literary Analysis, Foster Engagement, And Build Positive Relationships, William Visco

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

It has been said that teachers are some of the greatest thieves in the world, stealing ideas and altering them to fit their classes. A resource that is being "stolen from" and increasingly used in classrooms is that of pop culture. I have found that one of the most easily accessible forms of pop culture to use effectively and efficiently is that of popular music. Popular music spans generations and connects millions. I’ll discuss the benefits of connecting curriculum to pop music in order to enrich classroom lessons, enhance student's ability to do literary analysis, and actively engage students while …

“Telling The Trauma: Fiction Of Black Lives & Death”, Frank Dobson

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Black trauma and death, particularly by racially motivated violence, represents a significant contemporary crisis in America. Even prior to the Black Lives Matter movement of recent years, several Black writers chronicled historical incidents of such deaths. Philadelphia Fire (2005), by John Edgar Wideman, is a novel inspired by the 1985 police bombing of the Move compound and the resultant deaths of eleven Black people and the destruction by fire of a Black neighborhood. Those Bones Are Not My Child (1999), by Toni Cade Bambara examines the serial killings during the early 1980’s known as the Atlanta Child Murders. Rendered Invisible: …

Happily Ever After: An Analysis Of Romance Novels, William Kirtley

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

A current plaintive cry of, "I need a book!" is not unusual, yet fulfilling that need in the deadly 2020 coronavirus pandemic is often a godsend. For most, the new normal is unfamiliar territory. However, human beings are adaptable, and often amazingly creative in satisfying a need for escape and distraction. For many (17%) in this difficult time, that is the romance novel. This least respected, most popular genre, written by women for women, represents a cornerstone of popular culture. It is part of what is left after the literati decree what books belong to the canon and what books …

How Pop Cultures Makes For Better Teachers, Jason Olsen

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In this talk, I will discuss the benefits of pop culture for educators in two distinct but obviously connected ways: (1) how implementing pop culture in classroom curriculum (in both specific and general ways) can engage our students and improve their overall experience and performance and (2) how academic pop culture research and writing paves a path toward teaching excellence (even when the research is not pedagogically driven). As an Associate Professor of English at Utah State University, I can use examples from my own teaching and research (and how I have managed to merge them together), including how I …

Foucault Fantasy Vi: A Role-Playground For Postcolonial Thought, Greg Jones

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

This paper adopts the player-focused approach of studying video games to articulate how Final Fantasy VI (FFVI) can be involved in turning the adherents and objectors of Foucault’s discursive approach toward one another in conversation. It advances the thesis that FFVI’s video game experiences – 1) building friendships between members and victims of the Empire, 2) exploring a world ruined by a maniacal striving for power, and 3) confronting radically destructive despair with a shared sense of life-preserving human connectivity – are avenues for authentic and constructive conversations about the strengths and weaknesses of postcolonial thought that …

Ode To A Gym Teacher: The Music Of The Women's Music Movement, Jessica Freyermuth

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In the wake of the social and political movements that defined the 1960s, the women’s music movement emerged as a means to cultivate an outlet for young, lesbian musicians who saw themselves as equal to their straight, male counterparts, but were unwilling to compromise their musical integrity in order to perform on major labels. Within this cultural movement were musicians Margie Adam, Meg Christian, Alix Dobkin, Kay Gardner, Holly Near, Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins, and Cris Williamson. Together they created a soundtrack for lesbians throughout the 1970s. There was no unifying genre to the music produced during this movement. Some …

Over The Edge: Suburban Planned Communities, The Second Frontier, And The Rise Of 80s High School Films, Daniel Mcclure

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

While many 1980s youth-oriented films often sold various images of consumption, Over the Edge was one of the early prototypes of the genre, offering a more sober—a more 70s—outlook on youth attempting to find meaning and identity in a corporate-driven, materialistic space called American suburbia. Both a setting for paradise as well as an existential hell for the youth growing up amidst it, the film mobilizes the West and its frontier-like majesty haunting the characters’ space in the planned development of New Granada—a place where families are safe and entrepreneurs can thrive. Specters of the West haunt the film—from the …

Selections From Divinatio Diver, Sculptural Antipathia In Atonement Transcendo, And Mechanika Momento: Creatio Forecaster, Antonie Frankie Aquino

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

It is fated inspiration which penetrates the heart, satisfies the collective soul, and offers its spirit to the vastness of ceremonial vision. Vision becomes sound and sound forms a poetic voice displaced— this displacement radiates a mythologized poetic voice serving as a lyrical object, theogonic lyre, and the genealogical muse. Selected poems from Divinatio Diver, Sculptural Antipathia: In Atonement Transcendo and Mechanika Momento: Creatio Forerunner, the collected poems orchestrate a tryptic voice that dismantles the outward magnitude of the self by subverting the antithetical self through spiritual and organic sensualness.This mythopoeic tripartism simultaneously interconnects with religion, theology, and metaphysics which …

“Something There Is That Doesn’T Love A Wall”: The Wall As Catalyst For Resistance In Frost’S “Mending Wall”, James Altman

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Literature, Resistance, Ecology, Conflict

A Glass Of Fresh, Clean Water From Lake Baikal, Raluca D. Comanelea

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

"A Glass of Fresh, Clean Water from Lake Baikal" is the short story that I will read and discuss as part of the creative writing panel for FWPCA 2021.

The Rhetoric Of Spirituality, Gender, And The Environment In The Wicker Man (1973) And Midsommar (2019), Emma Frances Bloomfield

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019) are horror films that address dominant ideologies including the patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and Christianity. Both films have a nature-connected cult that sacrifices for the community and performs rituals informed by pagan eco-spirituality. I perform an ecofeminist rhetorical criticism to analyze how, despite these shared themes, spiritual, gender, and environmental messages differ between the two films. In The Wicker Man, the audience is invited to sympathize with Neil’s character, his Christianity, and his individualistic masculinity as he is sacrificed in the cult’s harvest ritual. Alternatively, the main character in Midsommar, Dani, gets revenge …

She Lives: Bringing The Bride Of Frankenstein To Life In The Comics, Michael Torregrossa

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein recently celebrated its two-hundredth anniversary, and its story remains vibrant in popular culture, especially in the comics medium. I’ve done a number of conference papers in the past devoted to representations of the Creature and his creator, Victor Frankenstein, in comics and comic art, but I’ve only recently begun to look at how the character of the Bride of Frankenstein has been depicted. I’d like to use this opportunity to further that work and look more closely at continuations and recastings of her story. The Bride has no chance at life in Shelley’s novel, as she is …