Creative Writing Commons^™

The “Science” Of Story Structure, Diana Witt

Virginias Collegiate Honors Council Conference

Stories are immensely human. They help us learn and understand cultural and social contexts. The stories that we tell, see, and read have profound effects on our ideas and emotions, causing us to have visceral reactions. Stories are truly at the crux of how people relate to each other. In this talk, I will explore the necessary elements of stories and why they are effective. Storytellers across all mediums build plot and characters to make an audience care and draw them in. Authors and screenwriters have theorized about the main structures into which all stories fall. In modern media, story …

Old Man Young Man Snake, Bradley Hathaway

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A young man in rural and frigid North Dakota is on the run for committing a crime. He finds refuge at a secluded bible camp from a mysterious old man that may or may not have his best interests in mind, and the young man must decide if the old man’s protection is worth the cost. Exploring ideas of free will, God, nature, and visions, Old Man Young Man Snake, a screenplay, quietly tells their story.

Pathos, Spring 2020, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Claire Miller

Entertainment Media Perceptions Of Minorities In Young Adult Adaptations, Kynnadie Bennett

Honors College Theses

This is an exploration of stereotypical and racist portrayals of minorities, specifically African-American, Latinx, and Native American communities, in film and television in the past and how that has affected representation in film adaptations of young adult literature. Young adult literature is one of the highest-selling genres in literature, purchased by both young adults and actual adults. In recent years, young adult literature has been adapted into film and television series and while representation has improved since the early years of entertainment history, there are still problems in the industry: many of the stereotypes remain, some minorities lack representation, and …

Gérer La Distance : Réflexivité Et Éthique Des Corps Meurtris Dans Les Documentaires Syriens D’Après 2011, Nicolas Appelt

Regards

Taking into account the post-2011 Syrian documentary, we realize that the question of the representation of “bruised bodies” occupies a major place which goes beyond crimes’ documentation committed during the conflict. In fact, in a large number of them there is a respect, an ethics towards “bruised bodies”. The question of their representation raised deep debates concerning both the fact of showing bodies and how to do it. By focusing more on how to represent bodies, we will be interested in the reflexive and ethical dimension that these representations involve. In this perspective, it will therefore be a question of …

Du Corps Écran À La Ville Corps, Noha Maroun

Regards

The human body always attracts and fascinates Arab filmmakers, that is why it is considered as an agglomerate of signs, which usually reveals the social and political instability of a nation. In the Lebanese cinema, the body representations are controversial and related to war themes. The men’s body becomes the screen and the receptacle of the violence when it exhibits its wounds and scars, while the moving women’s body holds within itself the early signs of safeguards. The moving women’s body is also correlated to the space that determines its trajectory. Beirut city emerges then as a huge body in …

Subversion, Subjectivité Et Critique : Le Corps Dans La Performance Artistique Aux Émirats Arabes Unis, Océane Sailly

Regards

Between 1982 and 1984, London-trained, Dubai-based artist Hassan Sharif produced and documented a body of performance work that is often seen to inaugurate the practice of contemporary performance art in the United Arab Emirates. In his wake, artists Mohammed Kazem and Ebstisam Abdulaziz have further developed this artistic genre and profoundly altered the relationship between art and corporeality. Subversive, critical and political, these three artists have made their bodies a tool for challenging established standards while claiming their artistic subjectivity. Based on a selection of performances and taking into account the socio-cultural context of their realization, this article proposes to …

Introduction – Les Régimes Esthétiques Du Corps Dans Le Monde Arabe, Gilles Suzanne

Regards

Que l’art, dans le monde arabe (qui nous servira de périmètre), voire, dans l’aire d’influence culturelle de l’Islam qui ne saurait s’y réduire, entretienne un rapport au corps, n’a rien d’une découverte...

Le Pouvoir Du Sang Féminin Dans L’Art Contemporain Arabe, Jana Mrad

Regards

After the 1970’s performances, and at the time the feminist collectives, whose artistic approaches often recall menstruation, emerged, feminine blood also found its place in the contemporary Arab art scene. Driven by a desire of emancipation and freedom, some Middle Eastern artists seized the feminine blood and made it into a paradigm in order to shed light on the female body and the way the latter is lived, perceived and controlled. By taking on this taboo, they found a way to elude censorship, waive the rules, cross the limits... in order to free women’s wounded bodies.

Résumé

Après les performances …

Le Corps Anamorphosé Dans Le Théâtre Marocain : Cas De Capharnaüm De Latefa Ahrrare, Imad Belghit

Regards

Given the territorial and cultural differences, some Moroccan plays produce a particular corporeality around which the scene is articulated. We then witness a questioning of ethos, a morality that incorporates postures and dispositions of the body. The show entitled Capernaum Auto-Sirate by Latefa Ahrrare is part of this scenic dynamic peculiar to the construction of corporalities in the context of contemporary Moroccan theater. The performance of this actress raises existential questions through her presence on stage and via a body subjected to the process of unveiling.

Résumé

Compte tenu des différences territoriales et culturelles, certaines pièces de théâtre marocaines produisent …

What Can A Body Do? Answers From Arab Cinema, Laura U. Marks

Regards

Baruch Spinoza’s statement “We do not know what a body can do” argues that bodies learn their powers not from divinely imposed laws but through experience in the world. Thought must pass through the body, in a way that menaces both existing thoughts and the body as it is at present. Great works of contemporary independent cinema in Arabic-speaking countries express the body’s forces of becoming in numerous ways, some of which this essay tracks: from not yet living to cultivating molecular forces, enfolding powers, expressing volatile passions, coming to life, and attaining adequate ideas. Some of these dynamics are …

Pays Rêvé (2011) De Jihane Chouaib, Joseph Korkmaz

Regards

The scenarist and director Jihane Chouaib returns, after a long absence, to her native country that she left during the war. She visits South Lebanon where she was born and wanders with her sister, who’s a dancer, in the places that marked her childhood. Her peregrinations are nostalgic and her memories are bitter-sweet. Her path crosses the path of the Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Moawad, of the director and journalist-photographer Katia Jarjoura, and of the French-Lebanese director Patric Chiha. To all these immigrants, Lebanon is the dreamed country that Jihane Chouhaib recalls through her view and her poetic comments.

Résumé

La …

Le Pouvoir En Images : Les Affiches Politiques Au Liban Entre 2005 Et 2010, Elie Yazbek

Regards

During the turbulent period following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon, political posters were an important medium used by rival political parties to impose specific imagery on the public, contributing to set up a partisan discourse linked to the political position of each one. A war of images and slogans then took place, based on an audacious revaluation of the notion of image, reconsidered as both a symbol and an icon. The classical figurative representation system inherited from the Renaissance was confronted with ideological considerations that created a rupture and proposed original models of images.

Résumé

Durant …

Café Central, Joséphine Van Glabeke

Regards

Écriture blanche imprimée sur une tente en toile rouge vif, avec l’indication « Beirut » en exergue, pour rappeler où l’on se trouve…

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

Hear Me Roar, Abigail R. Seethoff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hear Me Roar, a compilation of personal essays interspersed with short forms, grapples with the nuances of compliance versus autonomy in the context of the male gaze, beauty standards, and pop culture. The collection also explores what it means to treasure something—another person, an object—and how to express and deepen that affection.

Pathos, Winter 2020, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

The Missing Archive Of Loss, Zeina G. Halabi

Regards

The article examines the power of visual archives and the implication of their absence on the work of mourning. It explores the photographic work of the Iranian artist Azadeh Akhlaghui, who retroactively assigned visual identities to the unrecorded death of prominent Iranian figures. The scenes of death, reconstructed in highly staged photographs, operate as the guardians of collective memory insofar as they enable the work of mourning – a process of reckoning with loss that ultimately frees the collectivity from enduring melancholia.

Résumé

L'article examine le pouvoir de l’archive visuelle et les implications de son absence sur le travail de …

Introduction, La Rédaction De « Regards »

Regards

Dans ce deuxième numéro de la nouvelle formule, Regards se penche sur la question du portrait et de l’autoportrait, qui occupent une place prépondérante dans l’histoire de l’art. La peinture et la littérature, tout autant que le théâtre, le cinéma et les arts visuels, ont tous été tentés de saisir, avec leurs caractéristiques respectives, les traits d’une personne, connue ou anonyme, tandis qu’écrivains et artistes se sont, à un moment ou à un autre, focalisés sur la représentation de soi.

Changing Body And Society: A Speculative Examination Of Portraiture In Choucair’S Non-Representational Corpus, Kirsten Scheid

Regards

What ways do portraits relate people to aesthetic practices and social configurations when representational and individualizing assumptions that ensue from figurative art cannot be assumed? If social being is not given, an art act might be seen to affect primarily an artist’s relation to the possibility of subjectivity. The idea that the audience of an artwork includes the artist herself raises questions about her self-understanding and social being.
Building on my ethnographic research, I conduct a speculative examination of portraiture in relation to the career of Saloua Raouda Choucair towards founding a local art history. To conduct my review, I …

Portraits De Téléspectateurs Turcs : Enquêter Au Coeur Du Quotidien, Nese Öztemir

Regards

Dans le cas de la recherche en SIC, le portrait s’avère être une méthode adaptée pour pénétrer dans le contexte « naturel » de réception et ainsi rendre compte de ce qui se passe « autour de » la télévision. En ce sens, la pratique télévisuelle en Turquie constitue un levier intéressant pour étudier la façon dont l’organisation genrée du monde domestique travaille les rituels de réception. Comme le résume Pasquier (1999 : 233), regarder la télévision, c’est vivre une expérience organisée et socialement normée.
En s’appuyant sur les portraits individuels, travaillés dans le cadre d’entretiens semi-directifs menés dans deux …

Chouchou, Figure Gravée Dans La Mémoire Collective Du Théâtre Libanais, Rawan Kachmar

Regards

Chouchou is the nickname of Lebanese artist Hassan Alâ’ed-dine (1939-1975). Hassan founded the Lebanese National Theatre (1965-1975), the first daily theatre in Lebanon. This theatre produced, during a ten-year period, twenty-six comedic plays in which Chouchou played the main character. Who is Chouchou, though, and how did he turn into a star in the eyes of the Lebanese general public of theatre? Chouchou — with his strong Beiruti accent, a vortex of extravagant movements, a sensitive soul with a fragile heart, a conman with his distinct moustache — appropriated his own unique physical and speech mannerisms, which rendered him a …

جان شمعون وتاريخ لبنان المعلّق, Hady Zaccak

Regards

Jean Chamoun is one of the main Lebanese documentary filmmakers. After taking part in the Palestinian Political Cinema in the seventies, he documented, with his wife, the Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, the main events of the Lebanese War, the resistance in South Lebanon in the eighties until the liberation of the South from Israeli occupation in 2000, and the 2006 war. In his work, Chamoun focused on the human being in his daily life and continuous struggle for dignity under the strain of history. His social and political documentaries, as well as his sole fiction drama – extremely popular but …

العروض الفنية المعاصرة – التجهيز والأداء الفني تأثير التراث والمجتمع والسياسة, Hana Kaaki

Regards

A review of contemporary artistic practices in Lebanon in relation to tradition, the socio-cultural context of production, and politics.

Beyrouth Vagabond, Pascale Feghali

Regards

Starting from the filmed narrative of three characters — Abou Youssef, a homeless person found during the day at the Sanayeh public garden; a security person in charge of a crumbling building in the Grand Hotels’ sector; and Fatmeh, who squats in an abandoned property in the same sector — this article introduces us into the heartland of Beirut through the eyes of tramps and vagabonds. It is made up of narratives and counter-narratives built on elements of reality but that, in fact, speak of another dimension of reality where truth is no longer an issue. The stories are set …

La Naissance De L’Autofiction Silencieuse Dans Le Cinéma D’Elia Suleiman : « Hommage Par Assassinat » (1992), Sandra Fatté

Regards

This article questions the link between the aesthetics of silence shaped by Suleiman and his quest for identity. Through the analysis of the second short film by this Palestinian director, Homage by Assassination (1992), we underline this aesthetic and its stakes. In this film, Elia Suleiman incarnates ES, the silent character who appears for the first time on screen; he will be present in his three subsequent feature films. The story takes place one night during the Gulf War in a New York apartment where ES investigates the notion of identity. We introduce the notion of silent autofiction before analysing …

Providence College Department Of Theatre, Dance & Film 2019-2020 Season Program, Department Of Theatre, Dance & Film

Promotional Materials

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

2019-2020 Season

Providence College Department Of Theatre, Dance & Film 2019-2020 Season Poster, Department Of Theatre, Dance & Film

Promotional Materials

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

2019-2020 Season

Fake News Poetry Workshop As Radical Digital Media Literacy: It’S For The Thing We’Re Not Yet,, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

One of 17 saddle stitched pamphlets + custom designed box

What does pedagogy mean to your writing practice? How do your poetics intersect with your pedagogy and education commitments? We invited participants to join together to think about the inventive and urgent possibilities of intertwined poetic-pedagogical work. What might emerge differently when we bring them together?

Urgent Possibilities, Writings on Feminist Poetics & Emergent Pedagogies grew out of the Feminist Poetics, Emergent Pedagogies Symposium organized by Andrea Quaid and Margaret Rhee. The publication collects work by symposium participants with documents and elaborations, including poems, poetic tracts, essays, workshop plans, and …

Pathos, Fall 2019, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan