Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Add Women And Stir: Female Presidents In Pop Culture, 2012-2016, Angela Laflen, Michelle Smith, Kristin Bayer, Riana Ramirez, Jessica Recce, Molly Scott

The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal

In this article, we argue that there was a representational shift in popular culture representations of female presidents following Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary run, from earlier representations that were entirely preoccupied with gender to more recent depictions that tried to set aside “the gender question.” We explore three representations of female presidents produced since 2012 that can illuminate popular understandings of gender and the presidency between the 2008 and 2016 elections: Veep, State of Affairs, and Scandal. While all three texts attempt to normalize images of female presidents and break from earlier representations by treating a female …

Confronting Student Resistance To Ecofeminism: Three Perspectives, Jennifer Browdy De Hernandez, Holly Kent, Colleen Martell

The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal

Teaching ecofeminism is a dynamic, vital practice, demanding a great deal of both educators and students. At the heart of this essay is the question: how can we teach ecofeminism effectively? In this work, we reflect on our successes and failures teaching ecofeminism within various topics and in different settings. While each co-author of this piece brings ecofeminism into our classrooms, we do so in very different ways and have diverse approaches to making ecofeminist theories and ideas feel vital, necessary, and relevant for our students. In our essay, we aim to offer some productive and provocative suggestions and ideas …

An Analysis Of Lgbtq+ Representation In Television And Film, Katelyn Thomson

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

As LGBTQ+ representation in television and film increases, viewers must continue to question if this representation is accurate and enough to represent a whole spectrum of individuals. TV and film hold a powerful role in shaping societies perceptions, biases and stereotypes of a community and individuals. This essay analyzes TV and film representations to provide the reader with a better understanding of the power and impact that accurate representations of LGBTQ+ can have on the community and society as a whole. By looking at the issue through the lenses of queer theories, scripting theory, in addition to Stuart Hall and …

Post-Gender Performance In Billie's "Project Body Hair", Kelsey Dux

McNair Scholars Program

As the first shaving company to show women's body hair, Billie appears to be challenging traditional binary gender norms in advertising with a new mode called "post-gender advertising." Analyzing Billie’s 2018 ad "Project Body Hair," I argue that traditional/binary gender performances compete with post-gender/nonbinary performances, reinforcing essential femininity norms while appearing to resist them.

Mother Monsters And Monster Mothers From Dracula To Stranger Things, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

Netflix’s hit show Stranger Things is an homage to 1970s and 1980s sci-fi and horror, including Alien and Aliens, Carrie, the Star Wars trilogy, and Poltergeist, as well as buddy adventure films like Goonies and Stand by Me. But it is also, in its obsessive presentation of monsters as mothers and mothers as monsters, a show that takes its 1980s mothering cues straight out of Bram Stoker’s 1890s. Despite its 2016 production date, the Duffer Brother’s Stranger Things presents viewers with very old fashioned ideas of mothering, with Joyce Byers (Wynona Ryder) as the single, but exceedingly pro-active mom from …

A Static Code Analysis And Pattern Recognition Algorithm-Driven, Quantitative, Mathematical Model-Oriented Risk Assessment Framework Of Cloud-Based Health Information Applications, Dennis B. Park

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to a survey, the healthcare industry is one of the least cloud-adopting industries. The low adoption reflects the healthcare industry's ongoing concerns about the security of the cloud. Business applications, according to another survey, are among the most vulnerable components of business information systems. Many risk assessment frameworks available today, particularly for health information applications, require significant customization before they can be used. This study created a new framework to assess cloud risks specifically for their health information applications, utilizing data-driven risk assessment methodologies to avoid surveys, interviews, and meetings for data collection. For the feasibility study, the open-source …

Situating Hiv/Aids Humanitarian Film In The National Cinema Culture Of Mozambique: Historical, Contemporary And Feminist Perspectives, Sebastián Andrés Suárez Hode

University Honors Theses

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Mozambique has enabled a new wave of humanitarian cinema to develop as it seeks to educate and empower a population that has been adversely affected by the epidemic. Colonial-era patriarchal systems that persist have resulted in Mozambican women being disproportionately impacted by the virus, and humanitarian projects in turn use film as a vehicle for the exploration of Mozambican women’s subjectivities. Thus, these films have made for an especially feminist reconditioning of Mozambican national cinema culture. This essay will explore HIV/AIDS humanitarian cinema’s place within the larger discourse of Mozambican national cinema and will demonstrate how …

"The Caucasian Persuasion Here In The 'Dale": Othering, White Normality, And Post-Racialism In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Isaiah Lee

University Honors Theses

This thesis engages the construction of race within the television landscape of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to investigate how well-meaning, progressive media either reinvents or repudiates racial stereotype. This paper also examines the figure of the Other, as it is evoked in horror, and utilizes Hazel Carby's conception of the fantasized black subject to analyze the setting and characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with an eye towards the inherent assumptions the show makes about race. Ultimately, I argue that Buffy's representation of race assumes a white normality, flattening its non-white characters under the guise of inherent difference, even …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Sartorial Semiotics: Constructs Of Gender And Female Sexuality In Post Wwii American And European Cinema, Patricia Cabral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cinematic costume design functions as a system of visually-perceived, material and indexical signifiers, an effective and compelling language further informed by styling and embodiment. Sartorial semiotics support and inflect role characterization, while equally underpinning or subverting tropes generated by ideological paradigms. The following methodological approaches were adopted in scrutinizing this topic: Roland Barthes’ application of semiotic theories to the domain of fashion in The Language of Fashion, and Laura Marks’ discussion of the dialectics of optical and haptic visualities in apprehending film images in The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses.

By examining the costume …

Gay For English: Postcolonial In(Queer)Ies Into Contemporary Hindi Cinema, Hardik R. Yadav

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I study four recent Hindi-language Indian films for what I see as their queering of the English language, and, in turn, putting the Indian entity at a distance from both language and sexual orientation. The nation-making project of the Hindu political right in India today seeks an identity in distance from the English language: closer to the age-old conception of India as Hindustan (place of the Hindus). In Part I, I explore how such a resistance to English allows for the “Indian” within male protagonists of Rajat Kapoor’s Ankhon Dekhi (2013) and Aanand L. Rai’s Raanjhanaa (2013) …

Tale As Old As...Feminism? The (Re)Making Of Beauty And The Beast, Cara Doreen Hardman

Theses - ALL

In this thesis, I investigate Disney's positioning of the live-action Beauty and the Beast as feminist. Up to this point, Disney's animated Beauty and the Beast has both been hailed as presenting audiences with an empowered princess and criticized for the Beast's aggressive behavior and the positioning of Belle as a woman meant to propel the Beast's story forward. I provide an assessment of the gender politics depicted in Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast, and I problematize the tendency to classify texts as either entirely feminist or utterly antifeminist. As a whole, this thesis provides an in-depth analysis of …

Fractured Selves, Gearoid Dolan

Theses and Dissertations

Fractured Selves is a self-portrait that examines the histories and points of conflation and diversion of my four public personas. In the style of a Zoom meeting, they chat with a host against animated backgrounds. Interactivity creates non-linear consuming of the content and user directed navigation through four timelines

Time Decay: Assets, Authoritarianism, And Anxiety About The Future, Jack Davies

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article identifies a basic formula in the Freudo-Marxist take on twentieth-century authoritarianism. This is the incommensurability of inherited past development with the pace and demands of industrial social life, damming up a tremendous excess that seeks reactionary outlet. Authoritarianism, here, breeds in the contradiction between the symptoms of the Oedipal drama and the commodity form. The implicit “repressive hypothesis” for sexuality and developmentalist teleology make this theorization of authoritarian formations untenable today. This article, however, identifies moments of promise in this literature, and turns to materials available to these thinkers—specifically interwar psychoanalytic theory on anxiety and economic theory on …

Defending “Western” Values: Reactionary Neoliberalism In The Americas, Gabriela Segura-Ballar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Right-wing populism and authoritarianism are on the rise globally after the financial crisis of 2008. This reactionary trend has widely channeled anxieties created by neoliberal insecurities into cultural and nationalistic backlash against the ostensible enemies of “Western” values (e.g., immigrants, racial and sexual minorities, feminists, and leftists). President Jair Bolsonaro’s “Brazil above everything, God above everyone” and President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” are the most conspicuous examples of the resurgence of a populist reactionary right in the Americas. This continental trend promotes ultra-nationalism and more coercive neoliberalization processes combined with a reactionary authoritarianism that celebrates essentialized “Western” values, …

Incipient Fascism: Black Radical Perspectives, Alberto Toscano

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The sordid twilight of the Trump presidency raised the stakes of the debate on fascism. While much of the discussion has been magnetised by the legitimacy of analogies with the 1930s, this article argues that a rich and complex tradition of Black radical critique of right-wing authoritarianism provides a vital resource for thinking through the problem of US fascism beyond analogy – beginning with the DuBoisian insight that a racial fascism forged by chattel slavery and settler-colonialism anticipated the ascendancy of European fascisms. The article homes in on Black radical theories of fascism developed in the wake of the movements …

Neo-Authoritarianism And The Contestation Of White Identification In The Us, Justin Gilmore

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Justin Gilmore’s article "Neo-Authoritarianism and the Contestation of White Identification in the US" examines how the political forces around Donald Trump are often interpreted as an external attack on American democracy, and how the dynamism of these attacks is thought to emanate from various sites of white chauvinism. This article argues that such an interpretation is partial. The upsurge associated with “Trumpism” represents a distinctive contestation of an alternative type of white identity, one that has been elemental for a progressive form of neoliberalism. Although the neoliberal construction of white identification is distinctive, and indeed kinder, its material basis rests …

Neo-Authoritarianism Without Authority, Massimiliano Tomba

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article examines two aspects of neo-authoritarianism. The first is mainly diagnostic and concerns the nature of authoritarianism as a phenomenon of transition. The article investigates tensions and conflicts between temporalities. It pays attention to the asynchronous nature of change which, alongside the social structural level of changes, also the psycho-social level, intervene politically in different forms. There are social strata that are strangers in their own country and do not share the same present with others. For them, looking to the past is the only way to imagine a different future. If they are looking for values and authority, …

A Trumpian Mechanism, Emmett Peixoto

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In 2016, a liar made a hypocrite appear worse and thereby won the US presidency. How did a liar, which is traditionally deemed something worse than a hypocrite, manage to do this? This article offers an answer. It does so by uncovering a peculiar mechanism, a Trumpian mechanism, at the heart of Trump’s relations with his critics. The mechanism explains how Trump benefited from wrong-footing his critics and is thus essential for understanding Trump’s success. The article offers a few key examples of this mechanism working against Trump’s political opponents, e.g., Trump’s (first) impeachment. It then shows how the mechanism …

Authoritarianism And Ideology, Asad Haider

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Authoritarianism and Ideology,” Asad Haider approaches the problem of authoritarianism by considering the classical question of tyranny, as framed by Spinoza, and how this can be traced to the Marxist theory of ideology. A fundamental axis of the debate over ideology in twentieth century Marxism was the phenomenon of fascism, theorized in highly influential but also markedly different ways by figures like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno. A close reading of two major texts—Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism and Adorno's contributions to The Authoritarian Personality—provides a basis for conceptually elaborating different directions that can be taken in the study …

Introduction: New Faces Of Authoritarianism, Asad Haider, Massimiliano Tomba

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

A Gap In The Narrative: Exploring The Experiences Of Trans Dancers Today, Erica Best

Dance Independent Study Projects

The scarcity of trans dancers in dance history, dance spaces, and dance research suggests a need for greater understanding of this group and how their needs are and are not being met in dance. This qualitative study explores the experiences of transgender, nonbinary, and otherwise gender-nonconforming dancers in concert, commercial, and social dance forms. Interviews with 10 participants from the US and Australia emphasize dance as a valuable space for gender exploration, but also highlight a lack of media representation for this population and argue that what representation does exist is often objectifying and tokenizing. Participants also shed light on …

Final Master's Portfolio, Jonathan Correa

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Jonathan G. Correa's Master's Portfolio

The Mother Of All Mysteries: How Mothers Are Disavowed And Undermined In Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), Juli Lindenmayer

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

This thesis explores how Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) depicts inadequate and detrimental examples of mother-figures in cinema through the characters Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca. While Mrs. Danvers’ oppressive control over the Manderley manor and her hardened demeanor towards the second Mrs. De Winter mark her as a sadistic mother-figure, Rebecca’s promiscuity, narcissism, and lack of empathy reflect the traits of a self-indulgent mother-figure who puts her needs first. Both expressions of motherhood serve to perpetuate the disavowal of mothers in film. This negative characterization serves to exemplify the long-held tradition of mothering as a source of trouble, which is largely …

An Analysis Of Forty Years Of Gender Archetypes On The American Silver Screen, Xaviera I. Valencia

Senior Honors Projects

Hollywood has come under fire recently from producer Harvey Weinstein’s role in sparking the #MeToo movement to the predominantly white, male composition of the Academy Awards’ voting members. Yet the film industry also provides a platform to actors, directors, and other crew members -- through acceptance speeches and movies themselves -- to spread awareness about pressing societal issues, including climate change, sexual assault, racism, and homophobia.

Art, especially film, has a tremendous effect on society and can either perpetuate stereotypes or dispel myths. For instance, Philadelphia (1993) brought into the mainstream the story of a man who was HIV+ and …

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …

Netflix, Quarantine, And Chill: An Analysis Of Black Female Representation On 2020 Netflix Original Streaming Movies, Brier Evans

XULAneXUS

This study examines the frequency and nature of Black female representation in Netflix Original films and series released during the COVID-19 pandemic year of 2020. As cinema closures drove audiences to streaming platforms, Netflix emerged as the dominant media outlet, raising important questions about how the platform depicted Black women during a year defined by both pandemic isolation and heightened calls for racial justice following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Using content analysis, the researcher coded 112 Netflix Original films and 102 Netflix Original series for the racial identity of main cast members, the frequency of Black …

Media’S Portrayal Of Women And Its Impact On Body Image And Self-Esteem, Hannah Bareis

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project addresses the portrayal of women in media and its damaging effects on body image and self-esteem. It raises two critical questions: What negative impact is media creating on women? What can be done to combat these destructive effects?

According to a study done by Common Sense Media, "American teens use an average of 9 hours of media daily, not including for school and homework" (Common Sense Media, 2015). This data, along with many others, shows the severity of media exposure to teens. This has brought a valuable discussion to the table. How has this impacted female body image, …

Transgendering Viewers Of Television, Arianna S. Goodhand

Honors College Theses

In response to the growing number of transgender characters on television, I explored how witnessing transgender representation on television is associated with an increase in viewers’ knowledge about the trans community, their empathy and understanding for the trans community, and their likelihood to advocate for the trans community. I hypothesized that witnessing trans representation on television is associated with greater understanding and empathy for the trans community, knowledge about trans experiences, and motivation to advocate for the trans community. The trans community specifically is becoming more visible thanks to television shows like Fox’s Pose. Gender and gender identity frameworks …

The Effect Of Lgbt Film Exposure On Policy Preference, Grant Baldwin

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.