Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Readings Of (Non-)Consumption In Jan-Ole Gerster's Oh Boy (2012), Christopher Etheredge

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis consists of a series of close readings of consumptive acts in Jan-Ole Gerster’s debut film, Oh Boy (2012). I argue that the analysis of consumptive acts enables the viewer to develop a more nuanced understanding of the characters and their relationships to one another. Furthermore, these consumptive acts shift our understanding of other themes present within the film, such as the characters’ confrontations with their past and with feelings of guilt. Confrontations with the past have played a large role in many scholars’ and interpreters’ understanding of the film, as it encourages in some ways reading Oh Boy …

Understanding Spaces Of Abandonment Through Virtual Frameworks In Landscape Architecture, Aus Perez

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

In recent years, design professionals have implemented many contemporary landscape architecture projects across the United States. With a primary goal of returning nature to urban environments, contemporary landscape architects and other transdisciplinary partners work diligently to sculpt physical spaces that reflect the human-living experience. However, a leap into the world of video game design could allow landscape architects and urban planners to more freely create virtual social environments to address rising issues of abandonment in today’s urban and rural spaces. Video game mechanics and methodologies can be used extensively in the disciplines of design that value participatory processes, like landscape …

The Art Of The Game: Issues In Adapting Video Games, Sydney K. Baty

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

On the face of things, movies and video games are similar mediums. Both engage extensively in visuals and audio, both can indulge in speculative fiction, and there is a healthy amount of sharing of inspiration and content. However, this does not guarantee successful adaptations from one form to another. Movies adapted from video games are notorious for being simply terrible, but little academic attention has been paid as to why these adaptations in particular seem so unsuccessful in every way, from audience reception, critical response, and monetary returns. This issue is based on fundamental differences in the medium. Games are, …

Terre Brûlée : Une Éco-Poétique Du Vide, Pierre Taminiaux

20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium

Au XXIe siècle, les sociétés occidentales sont confrontées à de nouvelles formes de chaos. Celui-ci comporte plusieurs dimensions, à la fois sociales, culturelles et écologiques. L’art doit dès lors prendre en considération cette situation d’une manière ou d’une autre. C’est ce qui m’autorise à parler ici de mes images photographiques rassemblées sous le titre de Terre brûlée.

Celles-ci ont été prises à l’automne 2017, au Portugal, près de la ville de Leiria, dans une forêt de bord de mer (une pinède, plus exactement) qui fut longtemps considérée dans l’histoire de ce pays comme un domaine royal. Cette saison fut …

El Manso Y El Guapo De Cara: Masculinidades Alternativas Y Marginalizadas Y Sexualidades Masculinas En La Buena Estrella, De Ricardo Franco, Iker Gonzalez-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

Este artículo analiza la representación de las masculinidades en la película española La buena estrella (1997), dirigida por Ricardo Franco, para proponer que aboga por una masculinidad alternativa a la hegemónica, no centrada en la penetración sexual y basada en el cuidado y la paternidad activa. Asimismo, la obra muestra las consecuencias dañinas para los hombres y su entorno de la masculinidad marginalizada que sigue los parámetros de la hegemónica, rechazando la vulnerabilidad y realizando actos violentos para probar su virilidad. Por medio del entendimiento y acercamiento entre los dos personajes masculinos, la película también ofrece una homosocialidad positiva y …

Review Of Early Women Filmmakers 1911–1940, Wheeler Winston Dixon

Department of English: Faculty Publications

After more than a half century of neglect, pioneering women filmmakers are finally getting some of the attention they deserve. Foremost among these women is the figure of Alice Guy Blaché—also known simply as Alice Guy, before she married Herbert Blaché in 1907—who was responsible for numerous “firsts” in cinema history: the first film with narrative La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Patch Fairy; 1896), as well as early experiments with color dye processes, synchronized sound recording, multi-reel films, and other cinematic advances. Gaumont put out a set of her French films for that company—she was the …

Bridging The Divide Through Graphic Novels: Teaching Non-Jews’ Holocaust Narratives To Jewish Students, Matt Reingold

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The following paper considers how integrating Holocaust graphic novels that prominently feature non-Jewish characters can be effective in introducing Jewish students to new perspectives on contemporary understandings of the Holocaust. Drawing on the results of recent studies about rising anti-Semitism and Jews' concerns for their safety, feelings of insularity are understandably becoming more pervasive within the Jewish community. The author argues that in order to combat the negative aspects of this entrenchment, Jewish students need to be introduced to thoughtful and complex narratives that relate to historical anti-Semitic incidents which also model ways of building relationships between the disparate communities …

Film On Paper, Graphics On Screen, Feminism In Story: An Exegesis Of A Feminist Graphic Novel Project, Jingwei Xu

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This research is the second stage of my entire graphic novel practice looking at a feminist topic – women’s awakening from marriage. In this phase, the study carries out the practical process of the creative work, involving a graphic novel (body), an opening title (hook) and a package of visual communication design (promotion), in order to convey my feminist claim that women’s real emancipation depends on whether they can rouse their subject awareness and break through the chain of marriage. Based on this practice-led research, my personal knowledge is generated, including the value of combining graphic novels and title sequences, …

Batman’S Animated Brain(S): Paper Presented To The Batman In Popular Culture Conference, Lisa Kort-Butler

Department of Sociology: Presentations

I was in the beginning stages of a project on the social story of the brain (and a neuroscience more broadly), when a Google image search brought me a purchasable phrenology of Batman, then a Batman-themed Heart and Brain cartoon of the Brain choosing the cape-and-cowl.1 A quick search of “Batman brain” yielded something interesting: various pieces on the psychology of Batman (e.g., Langley 2012), Zehr’s (2008) work on Bruce Wayne’s training plans and injuries, the science fictions of Batman comics in the post-World War II era (Barr 2008; e.g., Detective Comics, Vol. 1, No. 210, 1954), going back to …

Bat Meets Girl: Adapting The Dark Knight’S Love Life To The Big Screen, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It is no secret that Hollywood loves a good romance. What is perhaps sometimes overlooked however is how important romance and female characters are to male-dominated action films. Esma Kartal argues women and romance are deliberately placed into action films to create “romantic relief” and attract female viewers for greater crossover appeal.¹ In addition to romance, Yvonne Tasker observes how women in action films serve as a witness for “the hero’s suffering” and humanity in action films.² Finally, a classic use of women and romance in action films is that of the damsel-indistress, which continues to this day …

Teaching Visual Literacies: The Case Of The Great American Dust Bowl, Mary F. Rice, Ashley K. Dallacqua

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Teachers and students require a range of tools to engage with visual texts. Using The Great American Dust Bowlby Don Brown (2013) as an exemplar text, we outline four conceptions of visual literacy: rhetorical, instructional, industrial and visuo-spatial and discuss their use in our literacy education practice. In addition, we provide a brief model of a second text, The Arrival (Tan, 2013) and a list of suggested texts for students at different levels (elementary, middle, and high school). We argue that these tools have the potential to deepen conceptions of visual literacies and empower teachers and students to understand …

Review Of Chris Ware: Conversations, Carly Diab

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

No abstract provided.

Review Of Pioneering Cartoonists Of Color, Carly Diab

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

No abstract provided.

Sharing Identity: Indexing Cultural Perspectives Through Writing Responses To Graphic Novels, Alex Romagnoli

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Indexing identity through writing responses among ELL students in response to a graphic novel helps provide insight into how writing responses represent people and how graphic novels can aid in that process of self-discovery through their inherent multimodalities. This study takes looks at four students in an ELL class at an urban high school in southern Pennsylvania as they responded in writing to a portion of Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City (2006). All of the participants took events from the portion of the graphic novel provided to them and indexed their urban, cultural perspectives through their …

Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives On How The Use Of Toon Comic Books During Guided Reading Influenced Learning By Struggling Readers, Ewa Mcgrail, Alicja Rieger, Gina M. Doepker, Samantha Mcgeorge

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The study presented in this article examines the use of comic books, specifically the TOON comic books during guided reading instruction. The instruction was provided to struggling readers by the Literacy Center at a comprehensive university in southeastern United States. What most pre-service teachers in this study agreed upon was that comic books served as an effective tool for getting their students interested in reading. Reading comic books with tutors as partners in conversation with the struggling readers in this study was also a powerful medium for facilitating students’ literacy skills development, particularly in the areas of reading fluency and …

Bad Boys And Final Girls: Fleshing Out Gender In Slasher And Horror Media, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

When it comes to the slasher genre, typically only three types of people matter: the Slasher Villain, the Victims, and the Final Girl. Today I want to talk about how gender is often represented with these characters.

In sum, the slasher genre tends to cast more effeminate villains (as well as a few female villains driven by more stereotypical feminine concerns like family, love, and fame), punish overly sexual and feminine women, and typically spare less feminine, less sexual women. Arguably, these categories are based in part on our society's attitudes on gender and how it relates to (1) What …

A Reason To Daydream, Corinne Schipull

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Sexism in American culture comes as no surprise. In 2017, the film industry saw an increasing number of powerful men within its ranks exposed and exiled for allegations of sexually predatory behavior. Many see this purging as a sign of changing times, but this view is optimistic: the tides of change ebb in and out, and this problem far exceeds the movie industry. Well before the onslaught of articles on the likes of Harvey Weinstein, my classmates and I resolved to craft our senior thesis film with a crew made up entirely of women: we simply saw the pool of …

Why Sociology Needs Science Fiction, Daniel Hirschman, Philip Schwadel, Rick Searle, Erica Deadman, Ijlal Naqvi

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Grokking Modernity by Philip Schwadel

Resistance and the Art of Words by Rick Searle

A Planet Without Gender by Erica Deadman

Beware of Geeks with Good Intentions by Ijlal Naqvi

In this issue, our contributors take up these concerns in four short essays. Philip Schwadel applies theories of communicative functions to look at sci-fi ’s potential to shape our social understandings. Ijlal Naqvi returns to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation to argue that dreams of perfect social prediction will remain elusive and perhaps undesirable. Erica Deadman showcases how well LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness illustrates ideas from the sociology of gender. And …

Images, Speech Balloons, And Artful Representation: Comics As Visual Narratives Of Early Career Teachers, Julian Lawrence, Ching-Chiu Lin, Rita Irwin

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The ways in which teachers adjust to challenges in the process of becoming professionals are complicated. Teacher mentorship, however, is an important step to creating and sustaining a strong professional career. This article discusses new understandings from a Canadian research project: Pedagogical Assemblage: Building and Sustaining Teacher Capacity through Mentoring Programs in British Columbia. Through our use of an a/r/tography informed methodology in teacher mentorship, we have come to understand how the use of comics permits an unfolding of visual narratives as a unique way of contextualizing the complex stories of teaching and learning. Our motivation in employing comics as …

Teaching Critical Looking: Pedagogical Approaches To Using Comics As Queer Theory, Ashley Manchester

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Given the challenging depth of queer theoretical concepts, this article argues that one of the most effective ways to teach the complexities of queer theory is by utilizing comics in the classroom. I focus on how college-level instructors can use the content, form, and history of comics to teach students how to enact and do queer theory. By reading and making comics, students learn concrete and theoretical tools for combatting oppressive discourses and modes of meaning making. Teaching comics as queer theory promotes both innovative critical thinking and critical looking skills by centralizing both the rich history of queer comics …

Using Superheroes To Visually And Critically Analyze Comics, Stereotypes, And Society, Mike P. Cook, Ryle Frey

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The purpose of this article is to provide teachers and students useful methods for utilizing the power of comic books as literacy sponsors in ELA classrooms. Given the continued boom in the popularity of comics in popular culture, this provides a relevant way to introduce students to visual and critical analysis. Engaging in meaningful analysis of comic superheroes can help students develop the skills required to critically analyze the stereotypes and social issues both within comics and within the world that surrounds them. Through the study of traditional and contemporary comic book heroes, students can critique society and begin to …

Review Of Captain Marvel And The Art Of Nostalgia, By Brian Cremins, Sean Kleefeld

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

No abstract provided.

Melodrama, Masochism, And Biopolitical Encounters In The Fosters, Jaime Brunton

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Since the television drama The Fosters, which centers on the daily struggles of two lesbian moms (Stef Foster and Lena Adams) and their multi-ethnic family of foster and adoptive children, debuted on ABC Family in 2013, the show has garnered numerous awards and nominations. . . . The Fosters has struck a chord with American television audiences and critics. While part of the show’s appeal no doubt rests in its representations of LGBTQ people and people of color (as its awards suggest) and its dealing with topical issues such as gay marriage and racial profiling, it also worth noting …

When Children Are Water: Representation Of Central American Migrant Children In Public Discourse And Implications For Educators, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Since June, 2014 when the U.S. government began to document an increase in unaccompanied/separated children arriving in the United States from Central America, these children have become a frequent topic in media discourse. Because rhetoric about immigration issues have been shown to affect schooling of these children, the present paper aims to examine how these children are represented in the discourse of one community. Findings from this critical multimodal discourse analysis reveal multiple strategies of representation that result in the dominant metaphor of IMMIGRANT CHILDREN ARE DANGEROUS WATER and negative perceptions that have implications for the education of these students.

Reseña: El Aura De Fabián Bielinsky, Miguel A. Albújar Escuredo

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Bielinsky narra una historia amparada en dos esferas contrapuestas: el mundo mental y el entorno físico de Esteban. En el primero tal que una consagración platónica al ideal del pensamiento humano, todos los planes encajan, tienen su sentido y tempo correcto, llegando a una resolución armónica, sensata y racional; el segundo mundo es caótico, responde a las coordenadas ajenas de un entorno que Esteban no puede controlar.

Reseña: La Ciudad Sin Límites De Antonio Hernández, Miguel A. Albújar Escuredo

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

La película ofrece el retrato de una familia de clase alta disfuncional. Sin embargo, lo que en un principio se anticipaba como melodrama familiar con tintes cómicos, cambia sutilmente en una exploración dramática sobre el amor, la culpa y el rencor. Este triple ejercicio se fundamenta en una nefasta herencia tardo-franquista que hasta el final parece estar latente por invisible, pero que por último se revela esencial para entender la psique torturada del padre. El personaje de Leonardo Sbaraglia es el conductor a través de un entramado de mentiras presentes y pasadas, que permiten cubrir la fealdad de una familia …

Reseña: Que Se Mueran Los Feos De Nacho G. Velilla, Miguel A. Albújar Escuredo

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

La película recurre al recurso del locus amoenus, un lugar paradisíaco donde por su especial enclave metafórico el universo es cerrado y todos los personajes adquieren significado en el interior de la comunidad. El personaje protagonista, Eliseo, es una figura insatisfecha que se muestra inconforme con su posición social, soltero y desgraciado por ello. El hecho de que tenga muchos amigos y todos en el pueblo le tengan cariño y lo valoren, choca con la certeza de que nadie del mismo lo acepta debido a su aspecto físico.

“Uh Oh. Cue The [New] Mommy Wars”: The Ideology Of Combative Mothering In Popular U.S. Newspaper Articles About Attachment Parenting, Julia Moore, Jenna Abetz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Through critique of concordance, we argue that popular U.S. newspaper articles about attachment parenting perpetuate the ideology of combative mothering, where mothers are in continuous competition with one another over parenting choices. Specifically, article writers construct a new, singular metaphorical mommy war between pro-attachment parenting and anti-attachment parenting proponents by prepackaging attachment parenting and its debate, advocating for attachment parenting through instinct and science, and rejecting attachment parenting because of harm to children, relationships, and mothers. A minority of articles, however, avoided reifying this pro-/anti-attachment parenting mommy war by exploring the complexities of parenting beyond prepackaged philosophies. We explore the …

Gender In The Slasher Film Genre, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It slices, it dices, it has entertained and scared audiences for decades—it’s the slasher film. Despite being dismissed by critics, the slasher film refuses to go away. Even if you don’t go to these movies, they are hard to escape, as every Halloween at least a few trick or treaters will dress up as a character from these movies. Given the longevity and popularity of this genre, I want to spend today talking about how these films often represent gender.

Scholars have also studied slasher films, and have provided a more formal definition than the one that I just provided. …

Grids And Gestures: A Comics Making Exercise, Nick Sousanis

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Grids and Gestures is an exercise intended to offer participants insight into a comics maker’s decision-making process for composing the entire page through the hands-on activity of making an abstract comic. It requires no prior drawing experience and serves to help reexamine what it means to draw. In addition to a description of how to proceed with the exercise, this piece also includes conceptual grounding in the form of a brief theoretical discussion of the ways comics convey meaning as well as personal notes on the development of the exercise and how it has been used.