Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Art As Display, Frank M. Boardman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art is essentially a type of display. As an activity, art is what we do when we display objects with certain intentions. As a set of objects, art is all of those things that are displayed for those purposes. The artworld is the social atmosphere that surrounds this particular activity of display. And a history of art is an evolving narrative of change in the practice of this sort of display.

Specifically, to focus for convenience on art as a set of objects, this is what we can call the “displayed-object thesis”:

x is a work of art iff: (a) …

Archiving The '80s: Feminism, Queer Theory, & Visual Culture, Margaret A. Galvan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Archiving the '80s: Feminism, Queer Theory, & Visual Culture locates a shared genealogy of feminism and queer theory in the visual culture of 1980s American feminism. Gathering primary sources from grant-funded research in a dozen archives, I analyze an array of image-text media of women, ranging from well known creators like Gloria Anzaldúa, Alison Bechdel, and Nan Goldin, to little known ones like Roberta Gregory and Lee Marrs. In each chapter, I examine how each woman develops movement politics in her visual production, and I study the reception of their works in their communities of influence. Through studying hybrid visual …

Youtube As A Net"Work": A Media Analysis Of The Youtube Beauty Community, Barbara Casabianca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper looks at the YouTube beauty community and how this presentation of beauty gurus and subscribers expresses ideas about femininity and work family balance. Through a media analysis of YouTube videos and commentary, the content of this online community space is discussed to further explore the representations of women in various working roles as YouTubers. The ways select women including Anna Saccone, Michelle Phan, Jewel Sha’ree, and Dani Meza-Hung portray their lives through YouTube videos and speak about their YouTube experience is analyzed to express potential meaning within this unique media presentation. Following the content analysis of these specific …

Both Into And Out Of The Cage: New Media, Transgression, And The Remaking Of American Literary Connection, 1975-1999, Casey Henry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation addresses an absent history of late twentieth-century postmodern literature. Namely, I trace the shifts between 1980s postmodernism, described by Fredric Jameson as encapsulating a “wan[ed]”“affect,” and the emergence of 1990s post-postmodernism, marked by an exaggeration of affect. My dissertation posits that this reinvention of feeling was due to shifts in communication technologies and new media art during the 1970s and 1980s competing with, and eventually rendering obsolete, avant-garde literary techniques for “connection.” These latter strategies were encapsulated in the postmodern “encyclopedic” novel, a form miming the logic of new media, yet incapable of fully addressing new programmatic shifts, …

Straddling Feminisms: Post-Wave Pop Politics And Experimental Performance, Jessica Del Vecchio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Straddling Feminisms,” is the first academic study of a new movement in feminist theatre. Examining experimental performances from 2008 to today, I argue that this resurgence of explicitly feminist work in New York City represents the rise of what I call “post-wave pop feminism”—an intergenerational politics that engages French feminist philosophy, 1980s U.S. feminist ideologies, queer and trans theory, and Third Wave feminist thought. Unlike performances of previous decades, in which feminist politics arose from a conscious presentation of “gender as a construction,” today’s work embodies a kind of woman-centricity that expands upon the definition of woman—to include queer cohorts …

Windows On The World: The Aesthetics Of Difference In Neoliberal New York, Nicholas Gamso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to refine critical methods for interpreting global cities and their cultures, charting an aesthetic history of neoliberal New York — from the 1929 regional plan to the present. Surveying a range of literature, art criticism, and planning discourse, I argue that the global has served as the dominant motif of spatial production and political power during this watershed era. I trace this argument through analyses of midcentury planning’s global spatial imaginings, gentrification and imperial metaphor, transnational encounter in World literature, and the city’s contemporary waste and recourse imaginaries. While I follow the Marxist account of the New …

Wsq: Survival Editor's Note, Cynthia Chris, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This Editor's Note introduces the WSQ issue "Survival," co-edited by Taylor Black, Elena Glasberg, and Frances Bartkowski, which explores affirmative acts of survival in the face of illness, occupation, violence, and environmental crises.

Shadows And Light. Ernie Gehr Exhibitions At The Museum Of Modern Art, Sean M. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines exhibitions and media installations of Ernie Gehr’s work at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), beginning with the pivotal 1970 show Information, which presented four films by Gehr. Wait (1968), Transparency (1969), Reverberation (1969), and History (1970) were screened alongside work by other avant-garde filmmakers and video artists in a circular viewing booth in the gallery space, in a show featuring works now considered masterpieces of conceptual art. It also considers the two site-specific video works, MoMA on Wheels (2002) and Navigation (2002), which Gehr created for the lobby space at MoMA QNS, …

The New Reflexivity: Puzzle Films, Found Footage, And Cinematic Narration In The Digital Age, Jordan Lavender-Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The New Reflexivity” tracks two narrative styles of contemporary Hollywood production that have yet to be studied in tandem: the puzzle film and the found footage horror film. In early August 1999, near the end of what D.N. Rodowick refers to as “the summer of digital paranoia,” two films entered the wide-release U.S. theatrical marketplace and enjoyed surprisingly massive financial success, just as news of the “death of film” circulated widely. Though each might typically be classified as belonging to the horror genre, both the unreliable “puzzle film” The Sixth Sense and the fake-documentary “found footage film” The Blair Witch …

Developments In Television Viewership, Lucile E. Hecht

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years the ways in which we watch television has changed, and so has the television we watch. “Binge watching,” almost the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2013, has taken a firm hold on the American television audience who now watches television not according to the broadcast schedule but on its own terms. So, too, has the practice of engaging with other audience members, be they friends, family, or strangers, while watching a show by using a secondary device – a “second screen.” These practices have been developing for some time, and as technology adapts to …

The Moving Image In Public Art: U.S. And U.K., 1980–Present, Annie Dell'aria

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the work of artists who use moving images in contemporary public art. Specifically, these works are understood through their interactions with spectators and the practices of media consumption and public interaction these passersby negotiate when they encounter a work of moving image-based public art. To this end, I argue, through an analysis of public art, that screen spectatorship is an inherently situated experience.

The project of this dissertation is two-fold. First, I outline a typology of moving image-based public art by dividing significant practices into three categories—the enchanting spectacle, the ludic interface, and the illumination of place. …

The Outsider Within: Béla Tarr And Hungarian National Cinema, Lilla Tőke

Publications and Research

Béla Tarr is probably the most paradoxical figure in contemporary Hungarian cinema. His artistic trajectory shows a movement from documentary style realism (Family Nest, 1979) towards more modernist cinematic practices (Satan’s Tango, 1994, Werckmeister Harmonies, 2000, and The Man from London, 2007). A major celebrity in the global film culture that prides itself in being transnational, international, and in crossing linguistic and ethnic boundaries, Tarr has consistently found himself on the fringes of the Hungarian cultural and political establishment. In this study Tőke considers Tarr’s films and public persona as catalysts in the debates about what constitutes “Hungarian cinema” in …

Post-9/11 New York On Screen: Mourning, Surveillance And The Arab Other In Tom Mccarthy’S 'The Visitor', Elizabeth Toohey

Publications and Research

New York, as a capital of finance and culture, has been one of Hollywood’s favorite settings, often functioning as a glamorous character itself. Yet in the wake of 9/11, escalating government surveillance prompted filmmakers to call this image into question. Tom McCarthy’s 2007 film "The Visitor" marks a turning point. Set in the aftermath of the towers’ collapse, support-the-troops signs and flags haunt the city, saturating it with reminders of 9/11’s political repercussions. In this article, I explore McCarthy’s portrayal of New York and its Muslim immigrants, who overturn stereotypes of (male) terrorists or (female) victims. Their displacement instead creates …

The Reanimation Of The Zombie Genre, William Engel

Capstones

The following piece is an examination of the evolution of the zombie in popular media. It begins with a brief recap of the zombie’s history, beginning with its roots in 19th century Haitian folklore, followed by its usage in the format of film. The most notable and enduring entries in the zombie film genre served as scathing critiques of contemporary human issues, encapsulating all of the fears and insecurities of its audience. In recent years, however, due to the way the international film market has changed, the zombie film has lost its emotional power and edge. Contemporary zombie filmmakers are …

400 Meters, Luke Tress

Capstones

A short documentary on the closest Israeli village to the Gaza border, one year after the 2014 war.

Lau Kar Leung And The Shaw Bros. Studio In Hong Kong, Eric Pellerin

Events

Lau Kar Leung was a third generation disciple of the historical Wong Fei Hung, the most important real life kung fu expert from Southern China who became the basis for the first black and white kung fu films made in Hong Kong. Wong Fei Hung was an expert in Hung Gar kung fu (an adaptation of the Shaolin Tiger style). Wong Fei Hung taught many pupils, the most well-known was Lam Sai Wing, who then taught Lau’s father Lau Charn, who then taught Lau Kar Leung. Lau Kar Leung was a real life master of Hung Gar, and he is …

Becoming American: Constructing Mexican Immigrants In Local Newspapers, Zheng Zhu

Publications and Research

Media representation of Latino immigrants has been extensively studied by scholars across diverse academic disciplines. Particular to the U.S. context, preceding scholarships pertaining to the ways in which Latinos were represented centered on the media representation of Latino immigrants either as the exotic racial other or undesirable foreigners. In light of the important role that the Mexican immigrants played in understanding the current national debate on illegal immigration and the overall historical experiences of immigrants in Washington State (WA), this study critically investigated how news articles published in WA represented Mexican immigrants. As a crucial point of departure from prior …

Blood, Tits And The Modern Depiction Of Antiquity – Sparatcus: Blood And Sand And The Display Of A Historical Myth, Frank Jacob

Publications and Research

The article is dealing with the depiction of antiquity in the TV series Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Hollywood’S Image Of The Second World War - David Ayer’S Fury (2014) And The Depiction Of Violence In War, Frank Jacob

Publications and Research

The article describes the way in which violence is depicted in David Ayer’s World War II movie Fury (2014). It also deals with the general question how violence is visualized in current Hollywood movies.

Situating Urban Moving Images: Illuminating Place, Annie Dell'aria

Graduate Student Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Aviation Cinema, Kevin L. Ferguson

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Virtue: A Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jessica Mcgivney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a screenplay for an imagined "biopic" of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft has already been the subject of many biographies, each presenting their authors' own understanding of her life. Here, I present my view, guided -- to varying and sometimes conflicting degrees -- by my understanding of her own fictionalized autobiographical efforts; by my understanding of Godwin's attempted work in his Memoir of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman; by the idea that her beliefs about virtue and freedom drove her forward through her own life; by the needs of narrative structure and the challenges …

Manifestation Of Humanity And Humanism In Czechoslovak Cinema 1949-1953, Selma Rockova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The period 1949-1953 was one of the most inhuman times in Czechoslovak history. Almost immediately after the Communists violently took over the country in 1948, the Communist party started a campaign of terror in order to spread fear. It made the society weak and obedient. The terror never disappeared completely but it lost its enormous intensity after Stalin's death in 1953. The end of 1940s and beginning of 1950s was a time of political trials with the party insiders. The false accusations and executions of the innocent people were used to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the power and loyalty …

Unhappy Together: Chinese Diaspora In Film, Jo Hsin Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The lives of people who move from one culture to another are similar in the range of experiences they encounter and different in how they interact with their particular circumstances. Cinematic representations of diaspora, accurately enough, also show general similarities and specific differences. In light of the concept of "accented cinema," we can compare and contrast film descriptions of Chinese immigrants in New York City. We view day to day events as they are interpreted by the host culture and we also understand that immigrants define their own experiences in terms of their home culture.

Two directors who are veterans …

Actuality Or Mystifying Spectacle? War In Cinema And Electronic Gaming, Christopher Robert Workoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay, using as a jump-off point François Truffaut's view that it is impossible to make a true anti-war film, examines the degree to which certain Hollywood films about war treat the subject as a spectacle for the audience. With the aid of critical articles discussing the war film's presentation from the standpoint of narrative and aesthetic, three films are examined for their ability (or lack thereof) to curtail the tendency of war as entertainment. Furthermore, with the increasing prominence of the videogame as a narrative medium, as well as the prevalence of game narratives dealing with war, the question …

Developing Media Literacy: Managing Fear And Moving Beyond, Katherine Fry

Publications and Research

One way to view the development of the media literacy movement is through the various different ways in which strains of media literacy education have been called on to allay fears that accompanying new media technologies. This article focuses on how one media literacy organization, The LAMP, deals with two very different arenas —the internet safety arena and the news literacy arena-where fear of digital media has created narrow pockets of concern seeking narrow solutions. As media literacy grows and develops the hope is that these fears subside, a perception of separateness dissolves, and a broader media literacy vision advances.

Digital Aids Documentary: Webs, Rooms, Viruses And Quilts, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Downtown's Queer Asides, Lucas Hilderbrand, Alexandra Juhasz, Debra Levine, Ricardo Montez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

A Game Changer: Frederick Wiseman’S The Titicut Follies, William Blick

Publications and Research

It has become evident that film has the ability to invoke changes in a society. The social issue of the treatment of the mentally ill has always been the subject of films, although many films of past appear exploitative, sensationalist, crude, and ignorant of the realities of the issues being represented. In 1967, Frederick Wiseman’s film, The Titicut Follies, despite winning numerous awards, created such controversy that it became the only film to be banned in the United States for reasons other than obscenity and national security until 1991. The film revealed gross mistreatment of the mentally ill …

I, Stereotype: Detained In The Uncanny Valley, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In "I, Stereotype," Seo-Young Chu applies Mori's theory of the uncanny valley not to robots but to a different species of humanoid artifact: stereotypes of the "yellow peril." Through analyses of stories by Sax Rohmer, World War Two propaganda, and films from the Bond franchise, Chu investigates ways in which the logic of the uncanny valley has interacted with and shaped Orientalist and techno-Orientalist stereotypes (as well as the stereotype-as-a-perceived-type-of-person more generally). In the process, Chu explores what it means to find one's ethnic group detained in the uncanny valley, what it means to use stereotyping as a time-saving technology …