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Theses/Dissertations

2023

Film and Media Studies

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

The Impact Of Emma: Destroying Stereotypes Through Nuanced Characters In Text And Film, Julia Mccool Dec 2023

The Impact Of Emma: Destroying Stereotypes Through Nuanced Characters In Text And Film, Julia Mccool

English MA Theses

This paper explores Jane Austen’s Emma as a response to stereotypes in 18th century novels and moral tales, and Autumn De Wildes’s Emma. from a feminist lens. Examining both of these works reveals that Emma was originally, and still is over 200 years later, transforming stereotypes in literature and film adaptations. The novel seems to be responding to a common stereotypical female villain found in many 18th century novels. In viewing Emma as a subversion of this stereotype, it is clear that Austen was responding to the sexist notions behind the character type, and writing a heroine more in line …


Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim Jun 2023

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …


Exploring Friendships In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Novels And Adaptations: A Study In Social Media, Fandoms, And Variations, Ashley D. Anderson Jun 2023

Exploring Friendships In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Novels And Adaptations: A Study In Social Media, Fandoms, And Variations, Ashley D. Anderson

Student Theses

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy and their adaptations all reveal the importance of friendship and fandom. Utilizing theorists Walter Benjamin and Henry Jenkins the friendship theme is seen in the various stylistic elements in the films and novels; additionally, a look into the fandom presence on social media, their knowledge, and merchandise reveals why the stories have continued to interest audiences over many generations.


Muscling Through: Athletic Women In Victorian Popular Representation, 1864–1915, Julia G. Fuller Jun 2023

Muscling Through: Athletic Women In Victorian Popular Representation, 1864–1915, Julia G. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Muscling Through” reconstructs an overlooked history of strong female bodies in the nineteenth century. It argues that popular representations of athletic women introduced a new category of identity that was distinct from women’s traditional relational and social roles. The project’s central figure is the hyper-able “Sportswoman,” who bridges the gap between two familiar versions of the Victorian woman’s body: the mid-century ideal of docile, domesticated femininity and the sturdy, capable women who enter universities, professions, and public spaces en masse just before the turn of the century. Representationally, the Sportswoman figures a range of attitudes, from anxious to aspirational, toward …


Digitizing The American West: Analyzing Rhetoric In Red Dead Redemption 2, Amalia Mcevoy May 2023

Digitizing The American West: Analyzing Rhetoric In Red Dead Redemption 2, Amalia Mcevoy

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

High-budget, long-form storytelling games offer dozens of hours of content for audiences to explore and learn from. Although far different from sitting and reading a book, there is a distinct connection to be made between how literature is experienced and how audiences can experience a narrative-heavy video game. Based on this connection, there are bridges to be built between video games and literature, understanding how one field can benefit from the other as well as how one field can be informed by the other. An analysis of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 using reader response theory can illustrate …


Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez May 2023

Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez

English Language and Literature ETDs

There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …


The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski May 2023

The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

From the inception of the genre, Gothic horror has been fixated on the domestic space in distress. This essay explores domestic archetypes and roles of the Gothic novel, serving as a “tour of the house”, analyzing the iconography of the dark castle, and how it externalizes and exacerbates the fears and behaviors of its inhabitants. The power dynamic of the household is starkly divided by the expectations and authority of masculine and feminine figures. In turn the “house” becomes a vehicle for the anxieties of the inhabitants—both experienced and inflicted—regarding gender, sexuality, isolation, and abuse. Exploration of the visual and …


‘Enough Is A Myth:’ An Exploration Of The Politics Of Consent Within The Hellraiser Franchise, Ivy Kiernan May 2023

‘Enough Is A Myth:’ An Exploration Of The Politics Of Consent Within The Hellraiser Franchise, Ivy Kiernan

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.


Final Master's Portfolio, Oluwatobi Idowu Apr 2023

Final Master's Portfolio, Oluwatobi Idowu

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Oluwatobi Idowu engages with texts and cultural artifacts that explore the concept of power, identity, oppression, and imperialism as they relate to Africa, African American and Indigenous cultures in North America. He also explores late capitalism in relation to Mark Fisher's central ideas about capitalist realism, and its effect on young people in the 21st century.


Menetekel: Ishmael's Black Whale And The Semiotics Of Doom, Todd Tyner Cronkhite Apr 2023

Menetekel: Ishmael's Black Whale And The Semiotics Of Doom, Todd Tyner Cronkhite

English Language and Literature ETDs

This study employs the narrator of Moby Dick, Ishmael, as a focal critic to interpret several potential examples of ominous writing on the wall, or menetekel. It concludes that the message of such writing, owing primarily to its irrevocably deictic relationship with the surface it is written on, is fundamentally apocalyptic in nature, regardless of its explicit content. The physical walls of the “kingdom” are incorporated into the grammar of the menetekel as object, so that its elemental message, “I was here,” becomes not only an admission of criminal trespass, but also a direct threat to the current order and …


Desire In Bridgerton: Defining The Female Gaze, Hailey C. Coles Apr 2023

Desire In Bridgerton: Defining The Female Gaze, Hailey C. Coles

Honors College Theses

Feminist literature is rife with multiple, sometimes conflicting, sometimes partial, definitions of the female gaze. A definitive understanding of the female gaze incorporates the literature but includes other modes of thought and analysis appropriate for a number of different media. Bridgerton articulates this understanding as it privileges female sexuality not just through dialogue, but through its focus on multiple characters’ bodily awareness. Non-verbal elements like blocking, the physical articulation of bodies, changes in camera angles and foci that privilege subtle and nuanced movements, and even the pervasive use of music all contribute to the form and characterization of the female …


"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin Apr 2023

"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin

Honors Projects

The art of adaptation is a difficult process, and is often hard to please general audiences that have a connection to the source material. As a student who studies both English Literature and Film Production, the question asked through this study is what does it take to write a “successful” adaptation? What qualifies as “successful”? How does an adaptation balance the themes, characterization, and plot of a piece of literature with the continuous momentum and visual complexity that the medium of film requires, all in 120 pages or less? This study engages with these questions by actively practicing adaptation, adapting …


A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush Apr 2023

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …


Princes, Princesses, And Socialites: Feminism And Class Transgression In Hollywood Romantic Comedies, Justina Marie Clayburn Jan 2023

Princes, Princesses, And Socialites: Feminism And Class Transgression In Hollywood Romantic Comedies, Justina Marie Clayburn

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explored how characters in romantic comedies negotiate and transgress class boundaries as the films conform to and challenge genre and social expectations, focusing primarily through a feminist lens. Specifically, it addresses the different ways the films negotiate ideas about American identity and economic systems, simultaneously trying to acknowledge problematic elements while upholding social and nationalistic ideals. Feminism has a complicated relationship with Hollywood romantic comedies. While the genre often focuses on issues of interest to women and forefronts female characters and their professional and personal experiences, the denouement generally reinforces heteronormative monogamous relationships above others and the traditional …


Conceive And Control: Cultural-Legal Narratives Of American Privacy And Reproductive Politics, Emily Naser-Hall Jan 2023

Conceive And Control: Cultural-Legal Narratives Of American Privacy And Reproductive Politics, Emily Naser-Hall

Theses and Dissertations--English

Law and literature share a foundation in narrative. The literary turn in legal scholarship recognizes that the law itself is a form of narrative, one that simultaneously reflects socio-cultural norms and creates social and political regulations with a complex matrix of power. Cultural narratives from the 1950s to the mid-1970s pertaining to reproductive politics, domesticity, and national identity both produce and are productive of legal rulings that govern and restrict private acts of sexuality and speech. The Supreme Court used cases concerning sex and reproduction to enumerate, explicate, and complicate the right to privacy, which appears nowhere in the U.S. …


The Reflexitve Fritz Lang: Meta-Cinematic And Genre Critiques In His American Films, Justin J. Roberts Jan 2023

The Reflexitve Fritz Lang: Meta-Cinematic And Genre Critiques In His American Films, Justin J. Roberts

Theses and Dissertations--English

Director Fritz Lang is best remembered and most celebrated for the films he made in Germany, including Metropolis (1927) and M (1931), between 1919 and 1933. But he spent over half of his career working in Hollywood. This dissertation is a reconsideration of his American films, focused on how Lang used various Hollywood genres to question and critique the way Hollywood films and genres functioned, as well as trends within those genres. This dissertation is a roughly chronological reading of twelve of Lang’s American films, sorted by genre. We can see how his thinking about the function of film and …


Looking Inward, Looking Back: John Le Carré And The Spy Narrative After The Cold War, Rachel Lynn Hoag Jan 2023

Looking Inward, Looking Back: John Le Carré And The Spy Narrative After The Cold War, Rachel Lynn Hoag

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The genre of spy fiction confronts a paradigm-shifting event in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War. Despite critical speculation that the genre had outlived its usefulness, spy fiction writers navigate this period of transition, and the genre remains broadly popular with the reading public. This study examines how the work of Britain’s foremost espionage writer, John le Carré, navigates the changing geopolitical landscape of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In mapping this terrain, one sees two distinct impulses emerge: a tendency to look inward and a tendency to look back. To look inward, the novels …


Blood And Oil: How Vampiric Literature Bolsters Big Oil’S Power, Sarah Marie Demond Jan 2023

Blood And Oil: How Vampiric Literature Bolsters Big Oil’S Power, Sarah Marie Demond

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the relationship between blood and oil, that is, the multitude of ways in which the petromodernity industries harvests and threatens vitality. The introduction of this thesis is concerned tracking how petromodernity is a byproduct, offspring, or extension of colonialism. In this way, petromodernity can be thought about as “petro-colonialism.” Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” informs the argument that the way thay petro-colonialism came to be and also maintains itself is by utilizing the “killer story.” This thesis also employs autorheoretical techniques informed by Lauren Fournier to show how petro-colonialism or “oiliness” sticks to its …


From Art To Propaganda: The Shift In The Concept Of The “Most Dead” In True Crime Literature, Hannah Mcconkey Jan 2023

From Art To Propaganda: The Shift In The Concept Of The “Most Dead” In True Crime Literature, Hannah Mcconkey

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This thesis studies the shift of the true crime genre from art to inescapable propaganda. This change is due, in part, to the politization of the genre by modern society. This includes the concept of the “most dead” seen within the true crime genre over the past several decades. The idea of the most dead is the belief that some victims of crimes are more or less dead depending on how marketable their demographic is. For instance, a blonde, Caucasian child would be considered the most dead while a woman of color in the sex work industry would be the …