Film and Media Studies | Open Access Articles

Oca, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Oca (2025), directed by Karla Badillo.

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Blue Moon, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Blue Moon (2025), directed by Richard Linklater.

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Nouvelle Vague, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Nouvelle Vague (2025), directed by Richard Linklater.

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Quasi-Feminism And Identity Exploration In The Film Laapata Ladies, Dr. Bharat Dhiman, Nausheen Khan

Journal of Religion & Film

The film Laapata Ladies (2024), directed by Kiran Rao, is a social commentary revolving around misogyny and the socio-cultural barriers faced by women in rural India, serving as a brilliant ode to womanhood and conveying its message effectively without any melodrama, thereby reflecting social realities at a ground level. The film explores the protagonists’ inner dilemmas, constraints, struggles, and hardships, advocating the cause for inclusivity from a quasi-feminist perspective, poignantly urging us to re-examine our perspectives and stirring conversations around the need for women to establish their own identities, away from the standard kaleidoscope of the male gaze.

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28 Years Later, Dennis Etzel Jr

Journal of Religion & Film

In 28 Years Later, Alex Garland creates another screenplay of mythological elements based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and archetypal characters. The family unit of son, mother, and father are examined alongside the two Hero's Journeys the son Spike takes--a false one and a true one. Ultimately, the positive trickster of the scientist-priest sage represents the example using rituals of being human in a chaotic world.

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Sinners, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Sinners (2025), directed by Ryan Coogler.

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Iranian Culture In Bahram Beyzaie’S Cinema And Theatre: Paradigms Of Being And Belonging (1959-79), Hessam Abedini

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Saeed Talajooy, Iranian Culture in Bahram Beyzaie’s Cinema and Theatre: Paradigms of Being and Belonging (1959-79) (London: I.B. Tauris, 2023)

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Subjectivity And Decolonisation In The Post-Independence Novel And Film, Heather Bigley

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Sarah Jilani, Subjectivity and Decolonisation in the Post-Independence Novel and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

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Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy Through Buddhism, Teng-Kuan Ng

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Victor Fan, Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022)

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Transnational Horror: Folklore, Genre, And Cultural Politics, Damon T. Berry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Cüneyt Çakırlar, ed. Transnational Horror: Folklore, Genre, and Cultural Politics (Liverpool, 2025)

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Mapping Muslimness In Hindi Cinema, Syed Haider

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay reviews two books: Nadira Khatun, Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity: Production, Representation, and Reception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), and Mohammed Asim Siddiqui, Muslim Identity in Hindi Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2025).

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Lived Islam In Films: Faith-Based Resilient Responses Of Syrian Refugees, Jumana S. Al-Ahmad

Journal of Religion & Film

This article provides educators in fields such as Middle Eastern studies, refugee studies, cultural and Islamic studies with a framework from documentaries to challenge stereotypes about Muslim refugees and migrants. Using the framework of lived Islam, the article explores how Syrian Muslim migrants, as seen in documentaries, draw on their faith to build resilience that enables them to continue striving for better lives. Resilience is defined as the ability to overcome challenges and catastrophes, envision solutions, and lead a purposeful life. This article conceptualizes resilience not only as a personal trait but also as a collective tool for survival and …

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Monstrous Girls And Celestial Lovers: Fantasy, Fear, And Female Adolescence In The Malayalam Films Ennu Swantham Janakikutty And Njan Gandharvan, Helena Reddington

Journal of Religion & Film

The Malayalam films Ennu Swantham Janakikutty and Njan Gandharvan reimagine figures from Kerala folklore, namely the Yakṣi and the Gandharva, within coming-of-age narratives. Both films position the characters of the Yakṣi and the Gandharva as fantastical figures who usher the young female protagonist into maturity. Rather than offering a pan-Hindu survey, this study focuses specifically on Kerala’s unique reimaginings of these celestial beings, where these figures carry distinct cultural meanings. This interpretive analysis is situated at the intersection of film studies, religious studies, as well as gender and sexuality studies, drawing particularly on feminist theory and critical approaches to vernacular …

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Women’S Bonds And Chance Encounters: An Analogical Reading Of The Book Of Ruth And Joshua Marston’S Film Maria Full Of Grace, Luigi De Angelis Soriano

Journal of Religion & Film

This article offers an analogical reading of the biblical book of Ruth and Joshua Marston’s 2004 film Maria Full of Grace, examining how both narratives portray migrant women who form strategic social bonds to navigate precariousness within limiting power structures. While Ruth and María inhabit vastly different cultural and historical contexts, their stories meet in their emphasis on female solidarity and human agency. Focusing on key verses from Ruth and pivotal scenes from Maria Full of Grace, this study highlights how emotional and ethical relationships among women—whether covenantal or born of desperation—become sources of strength in the absence …

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The Secular Eschatology Of Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood, Timothy Winterstein

Journal of Religion & Film

This article considers the ending of Quentin Tarantino's 2019 film Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood in light of Christian eschatology. I argue that Tarantino gives us an image of a temporal, partial eschatological moment, which relates to and interacts with a scriptural, Christian perspective on hope and the universal human longing for things to be other than what they are.

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Hermeneutical Priming And Linguistic Hijacking In The God’S Not Dead Series, Brant Entrekin

Journal of Religion & Film

In this paper, I analyze the evangelical Christian film series God's Not Dead. I argue that the film series functions as Christian Nationalist propaganda through its rhetoric and aesthetic choices. I then develop two forms of epistemic manipulation that the film uses to fulfill its propagandistic function: hermeneutical priming and linguistic hijacking. I suggest that the film series' use of these rhetorical strategies highlights some of the ways that evangelical Christian cinema is engaging with rising right-wing political movements and developing unique evangelical imaginations.

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100 Years Of Sergei Eisenstein: Iconographic Language And Revolution, Milja Radovic

Journal of Religion & Film

As we commemorate the 100th anniversary of Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece Броненосец Потёмкин / Battleship Potemkin (1925), it is essential to re-examine the film that has had enduring influence on film theory, history, and scholarship. Voted one of the greatest films of all time, Eisenstein’s cinematic genius has been crucial to understanding the power of film language. This paper focuses on the underexplored relationship between Eisenstein’s film language and iconography, examining the ways in which Orthodox Christian iconography shaped the story of revolution. The paper delves into the ways in which Eisenstein conveyed complex ideas, demonstrating the technical developments of film …

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Greta Gerwig And Pina Bausch: A Comparative Analysis Of Creative Processes, Ashley N. Reisert

Senior Theses

This paper examines the creative processes of film director Greta Gerwig and dance choreographer Pina Bausch. More specifically, it compares the techniques both artists employ to inspire movement and produce a successful end product. Greta Gerwig’s background in theater provides the impetus behind many of her directorial choices. This paper explores three of her values that have contributed to her success: realistic dialogue, actor connection, and capturing reality. Pina Bausch’s process stems from the performers themselves; she often provides them with prompts, such as questions to inspire movement. Through the analysis of these two influential artists, I have found that …

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The Call, Sophia S. Chesner

Student Publications

Creative writing screenplay

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From Altamont To Astroworld: An Analysis Of Management Issues In Large Scale Music Festivals, Jennifer Morriss

Honors College Theses

The most common problems in music festivals can largely be broken into two categories: risks to the individual and risks on a grand scale. It is the responsibility of event managers to consider how to best keep everyone safe and maintain proper organization. Risks to the individual are often things like substance use and abuse, harm reduction, and sexual assault or harassment. Meanwhile, broad risks tend to be issues of evacuation and emergency management, crowd safety, stampedes, and casualties or violence. It is crucial to reflect on prior common safety and security issues when setting out to produce a large …

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Decomposition And Excavation Of War Memories And Massacres In Na Hong-Jin’S The Wailing, Grace Jung

BCES: Faculty Publications

This chapter examines Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing (2016) as an allegory of South Korea’s unresolved colonial and Cold War traumas, arguing that the film’s deliberate ambiguity, cacophony, and generic instability reflect the difficulty of recovering histories of violence that have been suppressed, erased, or inadequately mourned. While scholarship on South Korean zombie cinema has frequently interpreted the zombie through neoliberal capitalism, economic crisis, contagion, and social alienation, this chapter locates the Korean zombie within a longer history of civil war, massacres, sexual violence, and authoritarian state repression. Drawing on Heonik Kwon’s concept of Cold War “decomposition,” the zombie …

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Pathos, Fall 2025, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione

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The Enforceability Of Adult Film Employment Contracts And Their Impact On The Predatory Nature Of And Unethical Practices Within The Adult Film Industry, Taylor Allen

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

No abstract provided.

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Public Housing Film Series, The Lender Center For Social Justice, Cornell University

The Lender Center for Social Justice

A poster for the three-part Public Housing Film Series

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Machine Credibility: How News Readers Evaluate Ai-Generated Content, Alexander Wasdahl

Human-Machine Communication

The advent of AI-generated news as a novel form of content demands renewed attention toward modes of understanding reader perceptions. This research sought to answer: What are the evaluative criteria used by readers in their perception of automated news content generated via natural language processing? A series of exploratory factor analyses (EFA) was conducted on results of a survey using items obtained in an initial survey phase to uncover underlying factors contributing to differences in reader article rankings. When compared with the results of factor analyses for human-generated news content, the findings offer new constellations of terms that reflect the …

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From Silence To Evidence: Strengthening Media Reporting Protocols To Codify Ecocide In War Zones, Rodina Alaa

COP30

Ecocide, or the intentional destruction of environmental annihilation during wars, attacks important ecosystems, like forests, rivers, and agricultural lands, and has long-term negative impacts on both nature and human life. Although the media could be an agent on the frontlines of preventing and exposing such crimes, fragmented reporting standards, suppression of journalists, and absence of coordinating mechanisms weaken its effectiveness. Based on two case studies, Ukraine, where citizen-driven platforms such as EcoZagroza have allowed real-time evidence to be documented, and Gaza, where journalists are the targeted victims in an attempt to erase any evidence about the environment, this paper demonstrates …

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Security And Reliability Considerations In Modern Bluetooth Audio Implementations, John Trevino

Theatre Faculty Publications

This paper provides a practical overview of security and reliability considerations relevant to modern Bluetooth audio implementations. Drawing from platform documentation and observed behavior in consumer devices, the report focuses on profile-level characteristics, common architectural constraints, and real-world reliability factors that affect both communication and media playback scenarios. The goal is to offer a clear, outcomes-oriented summary suitable for practitioners, educators, and technical evaluators. No proprietary techniques or implementation-specific methods are discussed.

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Cultural Representation In Global Film Discourse: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Dominant Themes And Western Hegemony, Nur Fajri Hijriyani, Hanun Dzikra Arienda, Firmansyah Firmansyah, Nur Wijaya Hariadi, Alem Febri Sonni

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

This study investigates the dominant themes and discursive structures within global film scholarship through a bibliometric analysis of 404 Scopus-indexed articles published between 2019 and 2024. Using VOSviewer to map keyword co-occurrence, citation networks, and authorship patterns, the research identifies five major thematic clusters: Hollywood, feminism, representation, Bollywood, and popular culture. The findings reveal a persistent dominance of Western narratives positioning them at the centre of global film studies. In contrast, themes related to non-Western cinema, such as Bollywood, appear less central and more fragmented within the academic discourse. These results highlight how bibliometric patterns reflect broader ideological structures, reinforcing …

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Exploring Identity Through Six-Panel Memoirs With Collegiate And Secondary Students, Ewa Mcgrail, Lisa York

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Memoir writing helps to provide mirrors and windows (Bishop, 1990) into the larger human experience by conveying narratives that center on actual life experiences. While memoirs are a well-established genre in literature and literary criticism (Aronowicz, 2024; Kleinbauer, 2007), only recently have graphic novels, including graphic novel memoirs, gained popularity and respect not only among teens, librarians and educators but also among the public (Williams, 2022). In this article, we describe a six-panel memoir assignment completed by collegiate and secondary students and analyze a sampling of memoir creations by both groups of students. Specifically, we are interested in the expressions …

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"Elements Don’T Mix!": Unearthing Racial Scripts And A Rhetorical Economy Of Whiteness In Disney And Pixar's Elemental, Linsay M. Cramer, Gabriel A. Cruz

Communication, Media, and Culture

Using a narrative rhetorical approach, we map how Disney and Pixar’s 2023 film, Elemental, sustains a rhetorical economy of whiteness, as theorized by Asen and Kelly, which emphasizes the degree to which rhetorical constructions of racial difference are foundational to whiteness and economic systems. We identify and critique how Elemental discursively contributes to a system of exclusivity for those within the bounds of whiteness concerning economic mobility via racial scripts. Created and produced during Joe Biden’s United States (U.S.) presidential term (2021–2025), Elemental offers a metaphorical tale that engages the fractious, politically conservative anxieties concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) …

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Full-Text Articles in Film and Media Studies

Oca, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

Blue Moon, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

Nouvelle Vague, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

Quasi-Feminism And Identity Exploration In The Film Laapata Ladies, Dr. Bharat Dhiman, Nausheen Khan

Journal of Religion & Film

28 Years Later, Dennis Etzel Jr

Journal of Religion & Film

Sinners, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

Iranian Culture In Bahram Beyzaie’S Cinema And Theatre: Paradigms Of Being And Belonging (1959-79), Hessam Abedini

Journal of Religion & Film

Subjectivity And Decolonisation In The Post-Independence Novel And Film, Heather Bigley

Journal of Religion & Film

Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy Through Buddhism, Teng-Kuan Ng

Journal of Religion & Film

Transnational Horror: Folklore, Genre, And Cultural Politics, Damon T. Berry

Journal of Religion & Film

Mapping Muslimness In Hindi Cinema, Syed Haider

Journal of Religion & Film

Lived Islam In Films: Faith-Based Resilient Responses Of Syrian Refugees, Jumana S. Al-Ahmad

Journal of Religion & Film

Monstrous Girls And Celestial Lovers: Fantasy, Fear, And Female Adolescence In The Malayalam Films Ennu Swantham Janakikutty And Njan Gandharvan, Helena Reddington

Journal of Religion & Film

Women’S Bonds And Chance Encounters: An Analogical Reading Of The Book Of Ruth And Joshua Marston’S Film Maria Full Of Grace, Luigi De Angelis Soriano

Journal of Religion & Film

The Secular Eschatology Of Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood, Timothy Winterstein

Journal of Religion & Film

Hermeneutical Priming And Linguistic Hijacking In The God’S Not Dead Series, Brant Entrekin

Journal of Religion & Film

100 Years Of Sergei Eisenstein: Iconographic Language And Revolution, Milja Radovic

Journal of Religion & Film

Greta Gerwig And Pina Bausch: A Comparative Analysis Of Creative Processes, Ashley N. Reisert

Senior Theses

The Call, Sophia S. Chesner

Student Publications

From Altamont To Astroworld: An Analysis Of Management Issues In Large Scale Music Festivals, Jennifer Morriss

Honors College Theses

Decomposition And Excavation Of War Memories And Massacres In Na Hong-Jin’S The Wailing, Grace Jung

BCES: Faculty Publications

Pathos, Fall 2025, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

The Enforceability Of Adult Film Employment Contracts And Their Impact On The Predatory Nature Of And Unethical Practices Within The Adult Film Industry, Taylor Allen

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

Public Housing Film Series, The Lender Center For Social Justice, Cornell University

The Lender Center for Social Justice

Machine Credibility: How News Readers Evaluate Ai-Generated Content, Alexander Wasdahl

Human-Machine Communication

From Silence To Evidence: Strengthening Media Reporting Protocols To Codify Ecocide In War Zones, Rodina Alaa

COP30

Security And Reliability Considerations In Modern Bluetooth Audio Implementations, John Trevino

Theatre Faculty Publications

Cultural Representation In Global Film Discourse: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Dominant Themes And Western Hegemony, Nur Fajri Hijriyani, Hanun Dzikra Arienda, Firmansyah Firmansyah, Nur Wijaya Hariadi, Alem Febri Sonni

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

Exploring Identity Through Six-Panel Memoirs With Collegiate And Secondary Students, Ewa Mcgrail, Lisa York

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

"Elements Don’T Mix!": Unearthing Racial Scripts And A Rhetorical Economy Of Whiteness In Disney And Pixar's Elemental, Linsay M. Cramer, Gabriel A. Cruz

Communication, Media, and Culture