Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Isp Thesis, Joseph Michael David

Wayne State University Theses

Abstract

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

By: JOSEPH DAVID

December 2010

Advisor: Dr. Richard Raspa

Degree: Master of Interdisciplinary Studies

Many people in today's world often submit to broad assumptions, generalizations and faulty reasoning in determining what constitutes a competent leader. Qualities such as high energy, positive attitude and charisma are unfortunately the sole traits that elect leaders. While positive thinking does help to produce compelling visions to inspire people, high energy is necessary for leadership given the workload and charisma needed to win people over. These are components for election not successful leadership.

Such narrow sighted values for …

The Need For Foreign Correspondents: A Cost Benefit Analysis, Haley Petersen

Journalism

This paper includes an examination of the decline in foreign news coverage, the factors contributing to the decline, the implications of decreased coverage in a democratic society, the market for international news, and an explanation of various models of foreign correspondence in relation to the quality of work produced contrasted against the cost of production.

The Creative Content Programme And Audiovisual E-Platform: An Institutional Analysis Of Unesco's Influence On The Development Of Independent Documentary Content And Production Practice, Deborah Joanne James

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is an institutional analysis of two interrelated UNESCO (United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organization) activities. These include the Creative Content Programme, and the Audiovisual E-Platform, an online catalogue and social networking hub for independent filmmakers/media producers from the global South. Contained by these activities, the author focuses the multi-method approach on gender and access by (A) conducting an analysis of the composition of programs and practices of the Creative Content Programme and the E-Platform; (B) conducting textual analysis of documentary media and interviews with Diaspora women producers; and (C) participating in and observing community-based multimedia production …

Surrealism Is Not Dead: A Look At Surrealism In Contemporary Mass Communication Via Analysis Of Modern Popular Films, Joi Deanne Chadwick

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study examined three modern films - Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, and Iron Man 2 - to understand the place of Surrealism in contemporary communication. The thesis began with a review of literature regarding Surrealism's revolutionary propensities and its flow into the mainstream. The review's basis was postmodernist philosophy rooted in Roland Barthes's and Umberto Eco's semiotics and Stuart Hall's cultural studies. This underlying philosophy asserted the complexity and mutability of signs and styles, a media role in acceptance and mutation of signs/styles, and endurance of ideas through cultural shifts. Semiotic analysis was crucial methodology in this study …

Media Effects In Context, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

The media effects tradition occupies a hugely influential and dominant role within mainstream communications research. It is unquestionably the longest running tradition within the field of audience studies, spanning nearly its entire history, yet it continues to divide opinion, both methodologically and with regard to its fundamental approach towards the study of media audiences.  Its influence extends well beyond the academy, and the powerful influence exerted by its research agenda on public and political understanding of the impact of media is perhaps one of its most significant achievements.

The Hero Soldier: Portrayals Of Soldiers In War Films, Gavin Davie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The mythos of the hero has existed within the stories of humanity for as long as we can remember. Within the last hundred years film has become one of the dominant storytelling media of our culture and numerous films, especially war films, about heroes and their inspirational actions have been made. This study focuses on war films and the hero soldiers and their actions portrayed in those films. It uses a narrative analysis of five war films to accomplish this. The findings suggest that the hero soldier has become more human and fallible over time and that heroes are a …

Bam! Pow! Graphic Novels Fight Stereotypes In Academic Libraries: Supporting, Collecting, Promoting, Beth Jane Toren

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This study examines the launch of a graphic novel collection in an academic library and presents a study analyzing the increase of titles in Association of Research Libraries with the subject heading “Graphic Novels” between fall 2008 and fall 2009. Statistics show a 40% increase, averaging 62 additional titles, during a year of global financial crisis. Exploring the prejudice against comics lingering in more traditional corners of academia, this paper encourages librarians to counter stereotypes and therefore bring more people, including other librarians, to view graphic novels as literature. This study includes recommended practices for supporting, collecting, and promoting these …

Technik Und Machenschaft Bei Martin Heidegger Und Günther Anders. Mit Einigen Bemerkungen Zu Ray Kurzweils Urknall, Babette Babich

Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Film Noir: The Encyclopedia, Priscilla Finley

Library Faculty Research

This fourth edition of Film Noir extends what has been the greatest strength of this work: the detailed, readable essays that contextualize plot details with keen and insightful critical analysis.

Man Ray: Prophet Of The Avant-Garde, Thomas A. Ipri

Library Faculty Research

Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde originally aired as an episode of PBS’ American Masters in 1997 and provides a succinct overview of the life of the talented Man Ray, a painter, photographer, sculptor, and film maker, who is perhaps best known for his photographic portraits of famous artists, such as Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso. The film, engagingly narrated by Stockard Channing, surveys Ray’s life while being attuned to the need to frame his life and work in a cultural and historical context. The often underappreciated Ray is given flattering treatment as director Mel Stuart …

The Robert Giard Fellowship, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

For several years we at CLAGS had wanted to work with the Robert Giard Foundation on a project for LGBT artists, but couldn't come up with the right vehicle. Eventually we hit on a perfect project: a fellowship for photographers and video artists working on queer and trans themes that would honor Robert Giard's legacy while directly supporting emerging and mid-career artists.

The Robert Giard Foundation Fellows Enlighten Our World, Carl Sylvestre

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This spring, the Robert Giard Foundation's partnership with CLAGS completed the first of what is anticipated to be an annual event in both organizations' calendars.

"I Am", Sonali Gulati

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It was the summer of 1999 in Toronto at my very first public screening of my film titled "sum total" that someone asked me what my next film project was. And I had barely formalized my ideas in my head but I spoke from my heart and spoke of this film about parents of gay and lesbian youth living in India. It had only been a year and a half since my mother had passed away and that feeling of regret of not having come out to her before she died was on my mind.

Sexuality, Exoticism, And Iconoclasm In The Media Age: The Strange Case Of The Buddha Bikini, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Audience Research, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

ECREA roundtable The future of audience research IAMCR conference @ BRAGA July 21 14:30-16:00 Convenor: Nico Carpentier Institutional and critical perspectives on audience representation This contribution focuses on institutional and critical perspectives on audience representation, i.e., how audience experience is formally accounted for through institutional processes of research (media literacy indices for instance) or through representative bodies such as Audience Councils. In other words, an area of overlap between audience studies and public policy debates, advocating that researchers should try to make their findings more widely available and understood in professional media environments.

The Suzuki Diaries: Sustainability In Action, Thomas A. Ipri

Library Faculty Research

Given the number of gloom and doom environmental films flooding the market, the more optimistic approach of The Suzuki Diaries: Sustainability in Action is refreshing. David Suzuki, geneticist, environmentalist, author and broadcaster, takes his daughter, Sarika, around Europe to investigate some of the more proactive approaches various countries have take that lessen their impact on the environment. Suzuki is quick to note that many of these projects were not done to help the environment, per se, but done for practical, economic and quality of life reasons.

Jack Kerouac: Le Sel De La Semaine, Thomas A. Ipri

Library Faculty Research

In 1967, Jack Kerouac appeared on the French service of the Canadian Broadcasting Service on the program Le Sel de la a Semaine. This Icarus Films release takes a fascinating look at Kerouac’s connection to Quebec where his parents are from. This interview by Fernand Seguin took place just 2 years before Kerouac’s death, making the program all the more poignant.

Exploring The Political Dimensions Of Information Literacy Through Popular Film., Robert Detmering

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Certain popular films contextualize the access, use, and interpretation of information within a political and social framework. As a result, these films function as alternative pedagogical sites for analysis and critique, facilitating critical thinking about information beyond the library and the classroom, and leading students to a deeper understanding of the fundamental need for information literacy. A conceptual basis for the consideration of film in politically engaged information literacy instruction is provided, supported by a discussion of three relevant films: Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking (2006), Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn after Reading (2008), and Oliver Stone’s W. …

Parel-Sewell, Amethel (Fa 280), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 280. Paper: "Genres of Children's Folklore Found in Advertisements of Three Popular Magazines..." written by Amethel Parel-Sewell for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

The World’S Most Perfectly Developed Man: Charles Atlas, Physical Culture, And The Inscription Of American Masculinity, Jacqueline Reich

CMS Faculty Publications

The major wave of Italian immigration between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries coincided with the growth of the physical culture movement in the United States. A principal participant in both phenomena was the Italian male, with a particularly fascinating case being that of the bodybuilder and fitness guru Charles Atlas. Born Angelo Siciliano in Calabria, Italy, Atlas provides an interesting window into how the Southern immigrant became American and how that Americanization was written on the muscled, male body. This article examines how Siciliano/Atlas transformed himself into the world’s most perfect white man at a time when Italians’ whiteness was …

(Re)Imagining Taiwan: Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism In Film And Literature, 1970-1990s, Keith Goodwin

History

The study of Taiwan's history is permeated by questions of identity. Since 1600, the island has been, among other things, a Dutch colonial outpost, a refuge for Ming loyalists, a provincial frontier of the Qing Dynasty, a Japanese colony, and, since the end of World War II, the home of the Republic of China (ROC). However, sixty years after Taiwan's "retrocession" to the government of Chiang Kai-shek, questions of Taiwan's cultural and national identity persist.

This paper takes the 1970s to be an important turning point in Taiwan's identity discourse. Beginning with a discussion of the various political and diplomatic …

A Systemic Functional Multimodal Analysis Of Business Brochures., Fauziah Taib

Student Works (2010-2019)

The study is a multimodal analysis of Malaysian business-to-business brochures (b2b) that advertise training programmes for human resource development in local and multinational companies. The multimodal analysis is within the framework of systemic functional theory as the theory has resources to analyse verbal as well as visual elements in texts. The aims of the study are to identify the verbal and visual components that make up the genre, ascertain how the functions of the business brochures are realized in the components and establish how these various semiotic components cohere such that the brochures are seen as a unified whole.  The …

Digital Video Communication And Preservation For Educational Purposes, Chelsea Lyon

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the benefits of digital video to communicate and preserve scholarly work. This study asks the question: How can digital video benefit communication and scholarly work? Combining both visuals and audio, digital video has become a unique educational tool between scholars and students alike to communicate, teach, and learn. As technology advances, the creation, preservation, and viewing of digital video continues to increase; however, so do the challenges that arise as a result. Digital video currently faces challenges in defining and effectively managing metadata standards for media files, bridging a gap between traditional …

Selling True Stories: A Cultural Analysis Of Manufactured Realism In The Docudrama Crime Film, Jamie Schleser

College of Communication Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the cultural function of docudrama crime films. The docudrama is a hybrid of the conventional Hollywood fiction film and the documentary. Blurring fact and fiction, these films manufacture an illusion of realism around the framework of the standard feature film using visual and narrative appeals to real life and real events. By asserting that they are "based on a true story," these films are able to shape and enhance a desired reading of the text in order to convey a particular social message to audiences. To understand the initial development of the docudrama crime form and how …

A History Of The American Film Institute, Deborah Jae Alexander

Dissertations

The American Film Institute (AFI) is a highly politicized, powerful organization. To date, most historical documentation and recording of AFI events and activities has been disseminated to the mass media from within the organization through its own publications or in other historical documentation as incidental history in relation to another topic. This dissertation, written as an overview, is the first comprehensive, independent historical examination of the AFI. The examination begins with an exploration of the development, activities and decline of the American Council on Education‟s original AFI and other film organizations that existed prior to the present day AFI. It …

Screening Culture: Is Western Media To Blame For “Tainting” Traditional Third World Values?, Angelina M. Campbell

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This thesis questions the idea that, through globalization, American media infiltrates Third World countries and subsequently changes or "taints" traditional culture.

The Evolution Of Revolution: The Dilemma Of Censorship And Fifth Generation Filmmakers, Elizabeth C. Urban

Honors College Theses

China’s Fifth Generation Filmmakers brought forth a burst of transformative cinema, but it could not be done without the strong historical antecedents of cultural turmoil and official censorship steered by the singular political course of the Chinese Communist Party. This group of filmmakers, particularly Chen Kaige (b. 1952), Tian Zhuangzhuang (b. 1952), and Zhang Yimou (b. 1951), produced a national cinema that was defined by censorship. It became their dilemma to define a course within the confines of censorship that not only absorbed the duality of censorship, which serves to both condemn and to promote, but also defied and altered …

New England Patriots Vs The Carolina Panthers At The Super Boob?: A Deeper Look At The Media Surrounding Janet Jackson And Justin Timberlake's Wardrobe Malfunction At The 2004 Super Bowl, Philip Michael Ortez

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Battle For The Arctic/The Tipping Point, Thomas A. Ipri

Library Faculty Research

Although The Tipping Point: Global Warming at the Arctic Circle and The Battle for the Arctic come from different filmmakers and different distributors, they work well together as companion films. Both films are under 50 minutes each, making them a good fit for many classroom settings.

The Last Days Of Shismaref, Thomas A. Ipri

Library Faculty Research

The Last Days of Shishmaref chronicles the lives of several families who live in the eponymous village in northwest Alaska as the effects of global warming begin to decimate their surroundings. This beautifully filmed and meditative documentary focuses on the lives of the Inupiaq Eskimo villagers and does not overtly politicize the often volatile issue of the causes of global warming. The film is more concerned with the effects of climate change rather than the causes.