Film and Media Studies Commons^™

“Don’T You Have Anything Better To Do?” : A Care-Focused Feminist Analysis Of Undertale, Evan Marzahn

Women's and Gender Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This paper explores the feminist ethic of care in Undertale's "meta" narrative and gameplay from the perspective of an avid gamer. Using Nel Noddings' ethical framework to analyze the actions and attitudes of the characters (including the player) and their consequences, I argue that Undertale provides distinctively feminist ethical gameplay that not only criticizes the frequent violence in role-playing games, but also encourages the player to always approach any interaction with a character (or a real person) as an encounter between individuals whose unique circumstances and needs must be considered.

Sight And Song Augmented, Robert P. Fletcher

Sight and Song Augmented: Painting and Poetry in Mixed Reality

This file is an Android application built in the Unity 3D game engine with the Vuforia Augmented Reality extension. It remediates Sight and Song (1892) by Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper), a collection of ekphrastic poetry about paintings by the Old Masters.

Performer And Writer Biographies, University Of Dayton

Season 1: The Crossroads

Names and descriptions of the performers and writers involved with this podcast series.

Anime And War, Carol Sun

Honors Papers and Posters

This poster examines the growth and development of anime in Japan in post-World War II Japan, particularly its ability to make audiences question the trajectory of humanity and society and to "critique the society that relies on technology...as a means to prevent or discourage war and conflict".

All Hail Helix: The Internet’S Role In The Creation Of Culture And Narrative, Margaret Furtner 17

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

"You Want It All To Happen Now!": The Jinx, The Imposter, And Re-Enacting The Digital Thriller In True Crime Documentaries, Brett Michael Phillips

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I outline the changing shape of the reenactment in the contemporary true crime documentary to illustrate a burgeoning crisis of epistemology and anxieties about the authority of evidence in the Digital Age. I examine two works—The Jinx and The Imposter—that deal with evidence in formally similar but ideologically opposite ways.

Logic in the Digital Age prioritizes an ever-widening collection of increasingly more precise artifacts and details, which supposedly paint a more complete picture but end up highlighting what is unknown more often. Key to this examination is the adoption of classic Hollywood thriller techniques (e.g., non-traditional narrative …

Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches

Communication Studies

This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.

The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Dramatization of Cultural Hybridity and the "In-Between" Turkey in Fazıl's Künye" Önder Çakırtaş addresses Turkey's historical context and exposes how political, social and cultural changes were expressed in Turkey's public sphere. Using Niyazi Berkes's theory of secularism as proceeding of modernism Çakırtaş discusses different examples of stylistic strategies of cultural hybridity in the playwright's historical-based play, Künye. He investigates how political changes in pre-Turkey times signify Turkey's national striving, and how the Ottoman-conservative past metamorphoses into Turkic-secular. The study juxtaposes the perceptions of 'introduction to Westernization' and 'departure from Islamic past' in a period …

Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire T. Solomon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (1929-2016)" Claire Solomon analyzes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope as an apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand). More precisely, her article models how such tropes imply modes of reading anachronistically and metafictionally that decontextualize gestures of resistance and conflate female writers, performers, and characters across time and place. Solomon offers a situated formalist reading of Argentine playwright Salvadora Medina Onrubia's 1929 drama, Las descentradas, revealing an avant-garde counterpoint of melodrama and metafiction as an ambiguous alternative to capture.

Approaching The Value And The Future Of The Novel: A Book Review Article On Boxall's Scholarship, Yili Tang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

“The Robocop We Deserve”: Post-Human Transformations And Social Critique In Paul Verhoeven’S And Jose Padilha’S Robocop, Mynt Marsellus

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Papa’S Got A Brand New Kino German Wartime Memory In Edgar Reitz’S Heimat: A Chronicle Of Germany, Nathan Maclean

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Merchandise, Promotion, And Accessibility: Keith Haring’S Pop Shop, Amy L. Raffel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the peak of his career in New York, Keith Haring took his highly recognizable artistic style and distributed it in the form of merchandise in his Pop Shop, established in 1986. Stemming from his early work displayed on the New York streets, directly within public space, and his explorations into mass media strategies, he learned he could make his work accessible to new audiences outside contemporary art institutions and art circles. He translated his work across several surfaces: from subways or canvases, to everyday functional merchandise, such as buttons, t-shirts, and bags sold in his shop. Responding to a …

Negative Affects That Social Media Causes On Body Imaging, Katelyn J. Gaffney

Undergraduate Honors College Theses 2016-

The main purpose of this thesis is to present, discuss and criticize the effect of negative body imagining caused by social media. This will be achieved in part by explaining the history of women and the change of their appearances and Body Mass Index during different times in history. It will also discuss the historical differences of what was considered attractive during those times based on different forms of social media and how it changed from time period to period. Later on in the thesis I will discuss the strong negative influences caused by social media and in the fashion …

“Why (Not) Philosophy Of Stand-Up Comedy?”, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Contributions to Books

Stand-up comedy has been largely ignored by analytic philosophers of art, including those interested in comedy and humor. This is somewhat surprising, given the immense popularity of stand-up comedy and the rock star status enjoyed by some comedians today. I suspect that philosophers are just as likely to enjoy stand-up comedy as anyone else; in some cases (i.e. for some philosophers and some comedians), probably more likely. Here I offer some reasons philosophers of art should take the time to consider stand-up comedy and possible explanation for why philosophers of art have paid far less attention to stand-up comedy than …

Noise Thinks The Anthropocene: An Experiment In Noise Poetics, Aaron Zwintscher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a textual experiment in noise poetics. It is an experiment in that it results from indeterminate means, alternative grammar, and experimental thinking. The outcome was not predetermined. Noise poetics is the use of noise to explain, elucidate, and evoke (akin to other poetic forms) within the textual milieu in a manner that seeks to be less determinate and more improvisational than conventional writing. This text argues that noise poetics is a necessary form for addressing political inequality, coexistence with the (nonhuman) other, the ecological crisis, and sustainability because it approaches these issues as system of interconnected fragments …

Rhetorical Commonsense And Child Molester Panic--A Queer Intervention, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article considers how contemporary representations of child molesters in scholarly, political, and popular culture participate in projects that revolve around the recuperation of heteronormativity. I argue that these multimodal obsessions with child molestation displace the resilience of entrenched homophobic fears, prejudices, and dispositions, giving the lie to the commonplace that the political advance of same-sex marriage in the United States signals the apotheosis of gay rights. My analysis focuses on two representative popular and scholarly texts: the long-running television series Law and Order: SVU and a scholarly article about the Jerry Sandusky case published in jac. The former …

"Perhaps," She Said, "Looking Itself Could Be An Antidote.", Sarah Moore

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Double Abcx Model, Family Stress Theory, Risk, Protection, And Resilience In The Movie “Precious”, Cassandra Chaney Phd

Faculty Publications

The critically acclaimed movie Precious [1] highlights the multiple stressors and crises experienced by an abused Black teen female living in poverty. Given its introduction to the screen, scholars have yet to make critical connections between the family dynamics portrayed in this movie and a particular family theory. The purpose of this paper is to help scholars who teach family stress courses apply the experiences of this young woman and her family to McCubbin and Patterson’s [2] Double ABCX Model. Furthermore, this paper will examine the risk factors, the protective factors, and the resilience demonstrated by the movie’s protagonist, Claireece …

Indigenous Representation In The Media And The Importance Of Personal Narrative, Rehana E. Asmi

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Despite globalization, indigenous representation in the media continues to be unequal. Without personal narratives and self-representation in their stories, indigenous people continue to be negatively stereotyped in pop culture, film, television and news coverage.

Relevant Versus Extraneous Music In Multimedia Instruction: A Study Of The Coherence Principle, Jonathan Gunnell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the inclusion of nonessential music in an instructional multimedia presentation affected learners’ ability to recall information in retention, cued-retention, and transfer cognitive measures. This study tested the coherence principle of multimedia learning which holds that the addition of nonessential content that is not relevant to the instruction is detrimental to learning. This study tested this principle by analyzing differences across three groups; a control group which included no additional music, a group including bland music selected at random, and a group including music that has been intentionally designed to align with …

The Final Girl Grown Up: Representations Of Women In Horror Films From 1978-2016, Lauren Cupp

Scripps Senior Theses

Carol Clover defined a Final Girl as a stereotype of the pure, virginal sole survivor in 1980’s slasher films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween. But does this representation hold up in 2016 films? Because the horror genre is so broad today, it’s almost impossible to nail down a certain stereotype of the genre, if there even is one. Films like the 1996 slasher parody Scream historically subverted the slasher genre, and since then there has been little to no iconic Final Girls. I argue that this trope is one very much set inside the confines of the 1980’s …

Course Syllabus (W17 Online) Coli 211m: "Superhero Film And Contemporary Culture", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

What might the current popularity and ubiquity of superhero film say about contemporary culture? This course will explore three possible implications of this question: (1) that the superhero genre reflects a moment in our species’ history of reconciling the human being-technology relation, which we shall view as a complex system constituted by our productive relations to material and ideological tools and their ensembles, the needs and aspirations that determine how we conceptualize and activate these relations, and the technically rationalized social reality that is their result, (2) that this ongoing process of reconciliation evinces, at once, the …

The Places That Became Home: A Collection Of Short Stories And Memories, Stephanie Ewing Mace

CMC Senior Theses

This is a collection of short stories and memories from the eight places that I have lived. Through these stories and memories, I reflect on themes of identity and community. I also consider the idea of home: what defines a home, how we make a place feel like a home, and what transforms a city or a town into a home. Each chapter also includes my own original designs and photographs.

The stories about Sharon and Westwood, small towns in Massachusetts, focus on childhood and familial relationships. The narratives about St. Louis, Missouri and Toluca Lake, California, consider the transition …

(The Work Of) Play In The Age Of Electronic Reproduction, Alexis Newton

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Electronic technologies have allowed for the mass (re)production of new media artifacts on a previously unachievable scale. While media across the board have been effected by the scope of such technology, videogames specifically provide an interesting and generative point of contact in the digital world. Videogames bridge gaps between the academic, political, and popular often unintentionally and unconsciously in ways that other new media artifacts and technologies cannot. But, while this is so, there seems to be a gap in discourse that brings together virtual and embodied experiences in order to create a more cohesive and holistic understanding of the …

From Weak Woman To New Woman And Back: The Long Struggle To Legitimize Women Athletes In The U.S., Rashaun Debord

Audre Lorde Prize

This paper details the complicated history of women in sport by looking at the changing popular image of women athletes from the late 19th century to today.

The Limits Of Transparency: Data Brokers And Commodification, Matthew Crain

Publications and Research

In the United States the prevailing public policy approach to mitigating the harms of internet surveillance is grounded in the liberal democratic value of transparency. While a laudable goal, transparency runs up against insurmountable structural constraints within the political economy of commercial surveillance. A case study of the data broker industry reveals the limits of transparency and shows that commodification of personal information is at the root of the power imbalances that transparency-based strategies of consumer empowerment seek to rectify. Despite significant challenges, privacy policy must be more centrally informed by a critical political economy of commercial surveillance.

Polarizing Narratives: Harmful Representations Of Mental Illness And Bipolar In Popular Media, Mary Jane Coppock

Scripps Senior Theses

Representations of mental illness in mainstream media have historically been infantilizing and dangerous. In the last century, dominant media has perpetuated inaccurate and damaging tropes about bipolar disorder in particular, perpetuating misunderstanding and stigma. Despite this fact, art can provide an outlet through which healthy images that promote understanding and sympathy can be dispersed. My project, Polarized, presents a more accurate representation of the disorder and its effects on individuals who struggle with it, as well as their loved ones. Bipolar disorders are a group of mental illnesses that cause dramatic shifts in an individual’s mood, energy, thinking ability, and …

A Choreographic Exploration Of Race And Gender Representation In Film And Dance, Sharon M. Keenan

Scripps Senior Theses

Through extensive research which culminates in a choreographic component, this thesis explores the lack of diverse representation within artistic and entertainment industries in regards to race and gender. In pursuit of a concise argument, most of the focus is on race and the conditioned view of gender as binary. Looking specifically at dance and film, it considers and analyzes why this absence persists, along with ways to ensure progress. The analysis and exploration unfolds in five central chapters: Research, Conception of the Dance, One and the Same, and Try It On Make It Fit. By detailing all that …

Technological Disruption In Entertainment: Navigating The Film Industry's Dynamic Relationship To The Consumer, Samantha Mea Simon

Scripps Senior Theses

The following thesis acts as a critical cultural progression report surrounding the current technological disruption in the entertainment industry and its impact on consumers. This begins with a study of the history starting in 1910 and covers the urbanization of America during the Industrial Revolution, the developing fan experience, a history of consumer demands in relation to oligopolistic principles and the blockbuster method, the invention and influence of the television, and the current effect of technological advancement in the entertainment industry. Following this historical overview, four chapters will study different methods of analysis covering the intricacies of the current technological …