Film and Media Studies Commons^™

A Comparative History Of Resurrection Plants, John Charles Ryan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Comparative Literary History of Resurrection Plants" John Charles Ryan assembles a comparative history of resurrection plants through textual analysis of early botanical commentaries, herbal references, prose, poetry, and other sources. Resurrection plants include a diverse range of botanical species, typically of arid regions, that appear to come back to life after complete desiccation. Historical and contemporary observers—from sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerard to contemporary Australian poet John Kinsella—have expressed an abiding fascination for resurrection plants' capacity to survive harsh environmental conditions. The plants court their own deaths by paring down—then restoring—physiological processes in relation to shifting ecological …

Urhobo Folklore And Udje Aesthetics In Tanure Ojaide's In The House Of Words And Songs Of Myself, Mathias I. Orhero

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Urhobo Folklore and Udje Aesthetics in Ojaide's In the House of Words and Songs of Myself" Mathias Orhero argues that Ojaide's poetry incorporates Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje style. Using African New Criticism as its theoretical anchor, this paper reveals that Ojaide amply deploys Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje aesthetics in both the form and contents of his poetry and thus, he continues as a modern Urhobo Udje maestro of the hybrid tradition. This paper also brings Ojaide's recent collections to critical lenses, especially as masterpieces of his Urhobo folkloric and Udje adaptations. Orhero concludes by …

The Representation Of Instinctive Homosexuality And Immoral Narcissism In Gide’S The Immoralist (1902) And Mann’S Death In Venice (1912), Louise Willis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Representation of Instinctive Homosexuality and Immoral Narcissism in Gide’s The Immoralist (1902) and Mann’s Death in Venice (1912)" Louise Willis examines two early literary representations of homosexuality in André Gide's The Immoralist (1902) and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912). She reads them with fin-de-siècle sexological theory, mainly Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Willis argues that the texts reflect the reconception of homosexuality as a latent instinct with pathological expression, rather than a sinful act of free will. The article explains that visual imagery conveys homoerotic desire, by incorporating Nietzsche's concept of …

The Indian Empire And Its Colonial Practices In South Asia, Yubraj Aryal

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The India, Empire and its Colonial Practices in South Asia" Yubraj Aryal claims that Bharatiya discourse supports colonization in South Asia. This discourse justifies oppression of institutions, practices, of the non-Bharatiya colonized. The article examines Indian Empire's colonialism toward the weaker, smaller nations along its border and the Bharatiya ideology at the heart of the repressive empire, which is taken to represent the South Asian subcontinent. The article looks at the way in which Bharatiya is perhaps a more oppressive ideology than Orientalism and gives a glimpse into how society, culture, history, and textuality work around power …

Your Abjection Is In Another Castle: Julia Kristeva, Gamer Theory, And Identities-In-Différance, Ricardo R. Ramirez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Typified rhetorical situations are often a result of normalized ideologies within cultures; however, they also have the capability to produce new ideology. Within these discursive sites, identities are constructed among these normalized social acts. More importantly, these identities are constructed across many layers, not limited to one social act, but many that overlap and influence each other. In this paper, I focus on the identities that are constructed in marginalized spaces within sites of interacting discourse. Focusing on the rhetoric of abjection posited by Julia Kristeva, along with McKenzie Wark’s exploration of gamespace, a liminal theoretical space that encompasses the …

Adoption, Cynical Detachment, And New Age Beliefs In Juno And Kung Fu Panda, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Adoption, Cynical Detachment, and New Age Beliefs in Juno and Kung Fu Panda" Fu-Jen Chen situates his study within today's prevailing climate of global consumption to argue that the 2007 film Juno—featuring an unconventional portrayal of the adoption triad and a cynical detachment from public values—not only trivializes and depoliticizes the practice of adoption but also serves as an ideological supplement to today's global capitalism. Furthermore, Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2 (2008; 2011) provide two ideological messages of contemporary New Age spirituality—"the belief in nothing" in part I, and "the attitude of inner peace" …

Memory And Identity-Focused Narratives In Tănase's 'Lived Book', Nicoleta D. Ifrim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Memory and identity-focused narratives in Tănase's 'lived book'" Nicoleta Ifrim analyses România mea (My Romania), Virgil Tănase's first book published after the fall of Ceausescu's regime, a collection of interviews in which personal history is fictionalized according to the narrative rules of a "spoken book." The text is representative for the Eastern intellectual travelling to the West, carrying out his own personal post-totalitarian traumas now mirrored in a self-oriented narrative.

A Recipe For Black Girl Magic: A Critical Study Of The Mise-En-Scene In Beyoncé’S Visual Album Lemonade As A Radical Representation Of Black Women, Tatiyana Jenkins

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Lemonade, a visual album released by pop icon Beyoncé Knowles Carter in 2016, crafts a mise-en-scene that redefines the way that black women are allowed to feel and exist in media culture. Contrary to the negative stereotypes and misrepresentations perpetuated in media, Lemonade is a radical attempt to provide audiences with an alternative representation of the experiences of black women. For this honors project, I address the controversy surrounding the visual album’s radical representations of black womanhood. To inform my understanding of the visual album I examine the various creative contributions such as the film Daughters of the Dust directed …

Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) By Mark J.P. Wolf And Revisiting Imaginary World (2016) Edited By Mark J.P. Wolf, Andrew Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review of Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) by Mark J.P. Wolf and Revisiting Imaginary Worlds (2016), edited by Mark J.P. Wolf, reviewed by Andrew Higgins

Is Being Wicked The Same As Having Wickedness? A Dialogue On Human Nature Between Wicked, Frankenstein, And Rousseau’S Second Discourse, Emily R. Bezold

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis revolves around the characters of Elphaba, from the musical Wicked, and the Monster, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the comparison of these two verdant characters I seek to analyze their psychological development, starting from their conceptions, to their final moments in their respective stories. I will focus on the parallels between their relations with their fathers, other social connects they may or may not make, and their interaction within the wider social-political world of their stories. In this I seek to explain how Elphaba and the Monster come to represent two different types of man, according …

Selected Readings On Augmented Reality, Ekphrasis, And Michael Field, Robert P. Fletcher

Sight and Song Augmented: Painting and Poetry in Mixed Reality

No abstract provided.

The Blue That Blew Bloo, Daniel Ray Martinez

Art Theses and Dissertations

My work is a combination of videos, objects, and performances with a multidisciplinary practice that engages with the formal language of sculpture, photography, video/cinema, and drawing while being in dialogue with concepts and concerns about the image, the surface, and the space of representation. I am interested in the poetics and phenomenology of life; and the way one interacts in an environment; and the way digital/virtual media has shifted our experiences in life. Rethinking the way one finds boredom to get away from virtual capitalist spaces is a concern for me. I find inspiration in the wandering through spaces. I …

Spiritual Media Experiences, Trait Transcendence, And Enjoyment Of Popular Films, Sophie Janicke, Srividya Ramasubramanian

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Recent scholarship on media psychology acknowledges that media entertainment offers not only purely hedonistic enjoyment but also meaningful experiences. This study expands our understanding of media enjoyment by exploring the role of media entertainment in evoking spiritual emotions and beliefs, such as those related to connectedness, blessedness, and transcendence. Results from an online survey (N=220) indicate that media entertainment elicits meaningful as well as spiritual emotions and increases the saliency of spiritual beliefs as related to self-actualization and spiritual experiences in everyday life. Furthermore, trait transcendence and eudaimonic media motivations add to the explanation of audiences’ mediated spiritual experiences. Open-ended …

Into The Green, Mary M. Casteel

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The contents of this paper will detail the making of my film Into the Green, a University of New Orleans thesis film. I will examine the processes used to create my film in five parts. Part One will cover the various inspirations and influences that I pulled from to create the story. Part Two will cover the entirety of pre-production and will begin to detail the various collaborators who worked along with me. In Part Three I will discuss the shooting process in Arkansas and in Part Four I will cover the film’s journey through post-production. Finally, in Part Five, …

Navigating The Moral Pitfalls Of The Service Industry "The Book Of Snake", Paul S. Punzo

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper examines how I turned real life experiences and observations into a fictionalized screenplay that explores the potential for vice inherent in tip-based service industry jobs. After that, I move on to the preproduction process and touch on casting, location scouting, visualization, production design, budgeting and crewing. Next I discuss how the preproduction and on-set efforts of individuals were all critical to our production. Then I chronicle the ups and downs of postproduction. Finally, I conclude with an admittedly subjective analysis of the effectiveness of the movie itself.

Flesh And Blood, Clayton Petras

Graduate School of Art Theses

In my work, I look for ways to visualize and document the degenerative mental disease of Parkinson’s and transform it into portrayals of the disease itself, its effects, and those it afflicts. Being a physical breakdown of the body, both popular culture and my own corporal understanding influence my interpretation and representation. This document outlines those influences and their buildup towards a shared understanding of the interests behind the work, as well as implies what the work does through these contexts.

How do we give identity to a disease that is difficult to diagnose or view on medical technology, currently …

One Epic Φf Stardusts, Y∞N Irene Hong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A long time ago in a far away galaxy,

there was a star shining alone in the deep darkness.

The beautiful star aged and exploded into a supernova,

where her golden light scattered into the tiniest sparkles of dust,

pouring down to Earth.

Made of Stardust,

humans naturally have responded to the divine light that they carry inside their souls,

through diverse acts of enlightenment such as art, religion, and science.

.

.

.

As a Stardust, an artist, a Korean, and a woman,

I keep walking in between opposing forces and varying perspectives

until I transcend their boundaries and …

Light On, Baby. No Future, Shane Dollinger

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This project is a realistic depiction of the circularity of experience. As Images of ourselves and our experiences become increasingly inescapable, the repetitive and nonlinear nature of those experiences is amplified. This issue is explored in looking at contemporary artists/filmmakers whose handling of inundation in representation and narrative distinctly embraces multiplicity. Queering structures of representation, the work holds a mirror to the way that we experience living, encountering images, narrative structures and memories.

Creatures Of Play, Melissa Shelton

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis explores my practice as an artist and my work’s cultural, theoretical and social contexts, such carnival theory, feminist studies and film studies, as well as references to mythology and my own biography. I discuss forms of representation of gendered identities through my work in drawing, performance, animation, video and installation.

The masks we wear become as real as our bare face. Through the act of doubling the representation, my thesis work BECOMING/a fine line situates the mask as the mediator between reflections, mirroring the identity and the notion of performativity. Embracing a certain incompleteness and embodying the theoretical …

My Giants, Teodora Altomare

Theses and Dissertations

My Giants is a thirty minute documentary about two journeys. During the first, in 2015, the filmmaker documented the story of Xylella fastidiosa, a bacteria responsible for the loss of many thousand-year-old olive trees in the Italian region of Puglia. During the second visit, in 2016, she witnessed the illness of her father.

By weaving together the two stories, My Giants is a snapshot of a transitional moment in the filmmaker’s life, a moment when illness became an opportunity to reconnect with her roots.

Time Travel, Labour History, And The Null Curriculum: New Design Knowledge For Mobile Augmented Reality History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the 'null curriculum'. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to …

Mom's Photoshoot, Eric G. Hollerbach

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This is a semi-autobiographical script about the author, Eric Hollerbach. It analyzes how problems with his mother manifest into problems with his romantic relationships.

Who Benefits From Blackness? The White Compulsion For Capital, Akira Milligan

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project will examine the change in representations of blackness and black character in commercially successful hip hop music through music videos directed by Hype Williams from 1995 to 2005. This research will use a womanist approach to address the significant historical influence of storytelling in the black narrative and how the emerging concepts of hypermasculinity and the degradation of the black body have seemingly become the new normal. These concepts largely contribute to the negative stereotypical perceptions of black identity that keeps black bodies marginalized because there is little diversity in the public representations of blackness while there exists …

Yellow Tokens: From Racist Depictions To Token Minorities, Debra Kates

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The project argues that the misrepresentation of Asians in film is a direct result of white supremacy. It researches the presentation of East Asian Americans in films as a result of the hegemonic ideology of whiteness, focusing on the standard of movie star perfection as a form of white supremacy, and includes films that have white men and women cast in lead roles, even when the story is uniquely Asian. Using the theoretical lens of whiteness studies the project analyzes examples from the American film industry from the past fifteen years.

She Would Not Be Silenced: Mae West's Struggle Against Censorship, Charlotte N. Toledo

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Mae West, an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age, used her fame on stage, in films, and on the radio to offer social commentary on relationships between men and women in society. Her irreverent style of addressing issues of female sexuality and power certainly caught peoples attention and made them think about these issues in new ways. At the same time, her racy delivery made her a target of stage, film, and radio censorship. She refused to be silenced and continually pushed against restrictions to deliver he message of empowerment in her trademark provocative manner.

Smadmag, Rachel Petty

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

A magazine showcasing the work done in James Madison University's School of Media Arts & Design.

Creative Advertising Portfolio, Hayley E. Sunderman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Since I was a young child, all I wanted was to draw and write. I would compose entire binders of my artwork, as well as Microsoft Word documents of the beginnings of mystery novels. As I grew older, I let my self-doubt take over and I convinced myself that I was not talented enough to pursue any type of creative career path. I came into college as a Marketing major knowing that my future career options would be fairly vast. During my junior year, I realized my strong desire to work in creative advertising. Graphic design, copywriting, photography, videography, and …

Sonoran, Brandon Valencia

LMU Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Everyone Dies When They Come To My House, David Techman

LMU Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Nips Of Clairvoyance, Samantha Valdez

Graduate Theses

My thesis statement describes the fundamental elements of inspiration, along with the artistic references for my thesis body of work. It revisits memories, and explores the symbolic significance of bodily action, form, material and composition, as a means to expose the relationship between object and memory. The thesis exhibition, Nips of Clairvoyance, consists of an installation of a triptych of videos of performances that depict the complexity and pain of an abusive relationship. Adjacent to the videos are three sculptures that consist, of glass cylinders filled with personal objects embedded inside and placed on top of slabs of soap. While …