Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Exploiting Non-Western Women In Media Representations, Gabrielle Miller

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

Media representations and advertisements serve as visual mediums through which cultural values are projected and reinforced. Western capitalism relies on Eurocentric media representations that exploit perceived differences of non-white and non-western cultures to sell western products. This paper analyzes recent advertisements from Kellogg’s and Suit Supply as examples of media representations that employ Eurocentric perspectives of non-western cultures to uphold white masculinist and colonial power structures. Therefore, I suggest that the non- western cultures in the Kellogg’s and Suit Supply advertisements exist within a western capitalist vacuum. This way of consuming and representing serves to reinforce western ways of knowing …

A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Nigerian Popular Music Genres: A Culture And Heritage Approach To Nation Branding, Cecilia Ashibel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the potential of Nigerian popular music as an approach to nation branding. The study employs qualitative content analysis to analyze select Nigerian music genres to examine how Nigeria is portrayed to international audiences and the economic benefits that can be derived from this form of branding. The analysis focuses on narrative themes of “the value of hard work,” “ethnic pride,” “lavish lifestyle,” and the impact of differences which were derived from the data. Findings indicate that Nigeria is globally reckoned for its musical prowess and rich cultural heritage. In highlighting the role of music in Nigeria’s political …

Storytelling In Motion: Rhetorical Approaches To Autoethnography, Critical Pedagogy, And African Filmmaking, Sethunya Mokoko

All Dissertations

This dissertation exposes the marginalization in the education systems of my country Lesotho, South Africa, an injustice that still survives long after the plague of Apartheid. Drawing on the values in African epistemologies of storytelling, I describe and illustrate their principles, then show how storytelling can transform composition pedagogy and thus help eradicate the residue of colonization. The methodology draws from auto-ethnography, narrative, spoken word, traditional oral wisdom, and African filmmaking as counter-story and resistance to the ideologies plaguing the minds of colonized South Africans. The goal is to celebrate oral traditions while improving reading comprehension and writing. With an …

Military Women In World Cinema: A 20th Century History And Filmography, Introduction, Deborah A. Deacon, Stacy Fowler

Faculty Articles

From British soldier Flora Sandes to the fame World War II Night Witches of the Soviet Air Force, women across the globe stepped up to defend their countries during every major and minor conflict of the twentieth century, and filmmakers have long attempted to capture their stories.

This book analyzes real and fictional military women's portrayals in world cinema, including movies from Israel, the United Kingdom, Italy, China, France, the Soviet Union, and others. It includes theatrical releases, direct-to-video productions, and made-for-television films.

Chapters, organized by decade, address topics including the women's sexuality, maternal and marital status, leadership skills, actual …

Creatività Diasporiche Dialoghi Transnazionali Tra Teoria E Arti, Simone Brioni Dr., Loredana Polezzi Dr., Franca Sinopoli

Department of English Faculty Publications

Creatività diasporiche è un volume bilingue costituito da tredici conversazioni tra studiosi/studiose di materie umanistiche e artisti/artiste il cui lavoro si concentra sul tema della migrazione e dell’identità. I contributi nella raccolta abbracciano forme di produzione che vanno dalla letteratura alle arti visive, dal cinema alla performance teatrale, dai podcast alla musica rap, mentre tra le tematiche ricorrenti emergono dibattiti su identità, lingua, migrazione, memoria e cittadinanza. Questo volume è anche un invito a ripensare il lavoro creativo e quello accademico, in area umanistica, come intrinsecamente legati al dialogo e alla collaborazione. Ciascuna conversazione si concentra sull’Italia intesa come un …

The Allegory Of United States Settlers V. Native Americans In Wes Craven's The Hills Haves Eyes (1977), Blue Van Alst

University Honors Theses

The year 1977 saw the release of Wes Craven’s second major production, The Hills Have Eyes. A film that sits within a filmic library of Craven that works to use the horror genre to reflect on and critique the American society that he lived in. The Hills Have Eyes employs the stereotypes that the films of John Ford helped to solidify in U.S. society. He does this in order to explore the tense historical relationships between Indigenous and United States settlers during the time of westward expansion. Using the white middle class Carter family to serve as settlers, and …

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 …

“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson

Criticism

Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed’s work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new …

Towards An Experimental Bibliography Of Hemispheric Reconstruction Newspapers, Joshua Ortiz Baco, Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, Jim Casey, Sarah H. Salter

Criticism

Digital collections of newspapers have drawn broader attention to the fragmented and scattered print histories of minoritized communities. Attempts to survey these histories through bibliography, however, quickly meet with a fundamental problem: the practice of bibliographic description calls for creating a static record of social affiliations. Given the overwhelming scholarly consensus that categories such as race, ethnicity, and language are socially constructed, this article introduces an experimental bibliographic method for mapping the vast landscape of historical newspapers. This method extends the machine learning affordances of a recent project called Newspaper Navigator to enumerate the newspapers in Chronicling America according to …

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 …

Haramed And Dangerous: A Thematic Examination Of Muslim Women’S Representation In We Are Lady Parts, Reham Bohamad

Dissertations

Since the early days of Western media, Muslim women have been portrayed in a negative way. From belly dancers to oil-rich horny sheikhs to voiceless passive wives of terrorists. This image has led the Western spectator to associate Islam and the Muslim women’s headscarf (Hijab) with backwardness, extremism, and oppression. In recent years, there has been a positive shift towards a more inclusive and authentic representation of Muslim women. This shift is the result of the post-network era which provides on-demand media outlets that challenge the dominant hegemonic production system and provide diverse and inclusive images that cater to niche …

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

Nnuba 0h47min/Couleur. Réalisatrice : Sonia At Qasi-Kessi, Farida Aït Ferroukh

Journal of Amazigh Studies

N/A

Afrofuturisms : Ecology, Humanity, And Francophone Cultural Expressions, Isaac Vincent Joslin

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

An exploration of Francophone African literary imaginations and expressions through the lens of Afrofuturism

Generally attributed to the Western imagination, science fiction is a literary genre that has expressed projected technological progress since the Industrial Revolution. However, certain fantastical elements in African literary expressions lend themselves to science fiction interpretations, both utopian and dystopian. When the concept of science is divorced from its Western, rationalist, materialist, positivist underpinnings, science fiction represents a broad imaginative space that supersedes the limits of this world. Whether it be on the moon, under the sea, or elsewhere within the imaginative universe, Afrofuturist readings of …

Cause Branding Lizzo And The Body Positivity Movement, Natalie Pesqueira

Whittier Scholars Program

Known for her songs about self love and acceptance, Lizzo has become a body positive icon and a role model for so many people with larger bodies since her rise to fame. This paper is an analysis of Lizzo’s place in the current body positive moment as a fat, Black woman and the ways in which she has been forced to participate in fat activism and fat resistance due to her identity. This paper will also analyze the ways in which Lizzo’s shapewear brand Yitty is branded– is it positive inclusion or is it a case of cause branding?

Into The Spider-Verse: Cultural Identity In Spider-Man Media, Anika Gonzalez

Whittier Scholars Program

Superheroes have become a popular genre that is becoming more successful at creating box office records. As the superhero genre becomes more popular, more superheroes have been created as symbols that reflect the increase of cultural identity representation in contemporary media. Spider-Man is a superhero that also reflects these cultural identities by offering more diverse and relatable variants of the Spider-Man character that allow him to normalize and address their presence in media. This paper aims to analyze the different cultural identities that Spider-Man media can connect to and how this connection can lead to a greater understanding of cultural …

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …

Mixed Speak: Towards A Re-Poetics Of Race And Self, Celina Mizuki Ohga Samuelson

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

This paper tells the stories of mixed-race Japanese people. I engage in a re-poetics, positing storytelling as an essential tool into complicating our understandings of race and self. I examine the relationship between language and race, exploring how subjects existing within a space of mixedness navigate identity-formation and racial belonging. Operating under a socio-constructivist lens, I begin with a brief re-telling of the history of race in Japan, re-framing mythologies of race throughout literature, legislation, and into national and colonial projects. While popular discourse alleges Japan was and is a country of racial homogeneity, I argue that this falsifies colonial …

“Yellow Fever” + Pornhub Statistics: A Sociological Sickness, Patricia Plachno

Audre Lorde Prize

This essay was written to explore the complexities behind "Yellow Fever," or the fetishization of Asian women. In further understanding the origins of "Yellow Fever", shining a light on historical stereotypes and microaggressions assist in problematizing this phenomenon. Pornhub's yearly statistics provide a tangible outline of the sheer volume of participants in racial fetishization.

The Hidden Figures Of Cognitive Dissonance, Jennifer Berkebile

Senior Honors Theses

In utilizing cognitive dissonance theory (CDT) as postulated by Festinger (1957), this research sought to identify how European American (EA) superiors Paul Stafford and Vivian Mitchell were influenced by EA coworkers while interacting with African American (AA) subordinates Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, respectively, within the film Hidden Figures. Based upon a thorough review of the literature on CDT and its relationships with racism and sexism, this research examined specific scenes in which the pair interacted individually and around coworkers before determining the impact of external interpersonal relationships upon the central biracial relationships. Conclusions demonstrated the key principle of …

Art Cinema And India’S Forgotten Futures: Film And History In The Postcolony, Vijay Mishra

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Rochona Majumdar, Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony (Columbia University Press, 2021).

Utopian Promises, Dystopic Realities: Teaching Bell Hooks “No Love In The Wild”, Naimah H. Ford

Feminist Pedagogy

This original teaching activity discusses bell hooks’ film review of Beasts of The Southern Wild and explains how it can be used to encourage students to recognize how popular culture reproduces and reinforces disturbing paradigms. This original teaching activity, based on hooks’ review “No Love in The Wild,” encourages students to be informed while navigating visual images in popular culture. This activity also explains how hooks’ film review and the film can be used to empower students with strategies to analyze film and other visual images that are seemingly progressive but support the strictures and structures that reinforce patriarchy, racism, …

Mami Wata, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Mami Wata (2023), directed by C.J. "Fiery" Obasi.

Sorcery, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Sorcery (2023), directed by Christopher Murray.

The Persian Version, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Persian Version (2023), directed by Maryam Keshavarz.

Sitting Here With You In The Future: Reimagining The Human Through Digital Art, Jared Z. Sloan

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This paper presents a novel construction of the Human that arises from digital art. Taking an interdisciplinary approach incorporating perspectives from queer theory, afropessimism, science and technology studies, and more, I analyze the works of three digital artists: Lucas LaRochelle, Arafa Hamadi, and Natalie Paneng. I chart the ways in which these artists negotiate borders between the physical and digital, human and non-human, and real and fantastical to challenge hegemonic Western ideas about humanity and the individual. I claim that by restricting the information available to the user in various ways, the picture of the Human that emerges from each …

Metamorphis, Luca Lee Sobarzo Faust

Theses and Dissertations

Web3D interactive experience that explores time, communication, and transformation, from a personal storytelling perspective. Hosted on a web platform, the experience displays three environments: Metamorphis, Cuir AI, and Hain. These spaces propose a fragmented narrative that seeks to interrogate both the characters and the viewer’s perception on the linearity of time

Director's Statement, Andrea Leland

Jamesie: King of Scratch

No abstract provided.

Pachuquismo E Identidad Nacional Imaginada En Los Estados Unidos Y México En La Década De 1940, Isabel Saavedra-Weis

Hispanic Studies Honors Projects

Pachuquismo was a counterculture born in the barrios of East L.A. in the 1940s. Mexican-American youth created their own social group defined by specific clothing (zoot suits), music fusions (mambo and swing), and linguistic dialects (caló). However, on both sides of the U.S. and Mexican border, pachucos had a poor reputation. In the U.S., mainstream media portrayed pachucos as juvenile delinquents and domestic threats. In Mexico, pachucos were mimicked and heavily criticized for their Americanization. In this essay, I identify how U.S. and Mexican mainstream media reacted to pachucos, and what those portrayals can tell us about the imagined national …

Uno Sguardo Oltre I Bordi Della Fotografia Coloniale, Simone Brioni Dr.

Department of English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.