Film and Media Studies Commons^™

2nd Place Contest Entry: "Destablizing U.S.-Japan Relations: Nikkatsu Film Noir As Postwar Social Critique", Thomas Graham Buchanan

Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Library Research Prize

This is Thomas Buchanan's submission for the 2026 Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Research Prize, which won second place. It contains their essay on using library resources, a summary of their research project on how a generation of Japanese filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s borrowed the formal strategies of Hollywood film noir to mount a critique of U.S. Cold War policy, and their bibliography.

Thomas is a student in the Master of Arts in Film & Media Studies program at Chapman University. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Emily Carman.

Thomas' thesis is the scholarship that emerged from the research discussed …

Southern Miss: The Legacy Of Resilience, Ashley Lewis

Honors Theses

Southern Miss: The Legacy of Resilience is a creative work composed of two components: a short expository styled documentary and a written component primarily focused on the methods and techniques used to film the documentary. On February 10th, 2013, an EF-4 tornado significantly impacted the University of Southern Mississippi’s campus in Hattiesburg. The campus obtained significant damages to eight buildings located near Hardy Street on the southeastern portion of campus. The impact of the tornado left the university with over $20 million worth of damages. At the time, the university was temporarily closed for Mardi Gras break. However, a recovery …

Beyond The Mic: A Documentary Of Kaor’S Voices & History, Sydney M. Kolln

Honors Thesis

The University of South Dakota’s Media & Journalism Department celebrated the 40th anniversary of KAOR, the university’s student-run radio station, on Oct. 2, 2025. The celebration recognized generations of students whose creativity, leadership, and dedication contributed to the station’s growth and continued legacy on campus. This thesis explores the history and growth of KAOR through research, historical documents, and personal accounts from former and current KAOR students. By examining the station across multiple decades, the project highlights how student radio has adapted to changing technology and campus culture. This written thesis accompanies a 30-minute documentary focused on key eras in …

Embodied Horror: Women And Medical Authority In Video Games, Jocilynn Denise Colombo

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Through a critical analysis of interactive horror, this paper argues that video games can function as ethical diagnostic narratives that uniquely expose systemic failures surrounding women’s bodies and medical authority. Focusing on Silent Hill 3 (2003) and Alice: Madness Returns (2011), I examine how these games render harm legible through player participation. By requiring players to move characters through hostile environments and make decisions within systems that simultaneously grant and restrict control, these games foster identification and complicity by positioning players directly within the structures they critique.

While feminist horror scholarship—notably from Julia Kristeva and Barbara Creed—has explored societal anxieties …

Stakhanov Lives Forever: How Art And Culture Outlasted Politics In The Communist World, Samuel Shewmake

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The Stakhanovite movement and its long term consequences has been heavily debated in the field of Soviet history for several decades. The dominant scholarly narrative is that the Stakhanovite movement and Stakhanovism were largely extinguished during the period following the buildup to the Second World War. Previous works have relied heavily on solely political analysis of the movement, presuming that its character was primarily state-driven with little social component. This paper analyzes the social and artistic legacy of the Stakhanovite movement through novel analysis of film, music, and art of the Stakhanovite period and following decades. Contrary to what has …

Dark Wave - Comics And Transgender Studies In Practice, Mieke Vanderveen

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This is a thesis in two parts. Its goal is to provoke the intersection of superhero comics and transgender studies in order to interrogate the parallels between those two identities and explore ways in which pairing them together can strengthen each other narratively and academically. Rather than seeking an answer to a question, the project as a whole serves as a way of communicating trans internalities from a transfeminine perspective in a format that brings the issues to the forefront of the narrative in an in-depth and entertaining way. The result is hopefully a coherent artistic work that achieves those …

Shadowrunning The Human: Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun Series And Transhumanism, Alexander P. Orelup

English Theses & Dissertations

I argue that Harebrained Schemes’ video game series Shadowrun critiques transhumanism in three distinct yet related ways: in terms of religion, political control, and identity capitalism. In doing so, Shadowrun attempts to counter claims that video games are an inherently transhumanist medium and provides an opportunity for players to resist a potential transhuman future. This further elucidates the trends and perceptions of transhumanism within American culture around the time period. I utilize a variety of methodologies in my argument, ranging from cultural studies, narratology, ludology, and close reading in order to grasp all of the audio-visual and gameplay elements that …

The Ghosts Of Times Square: A Zine Exploring Representations Of Times Square Through Film, Kel R. Karpinski

Publications and Research

My zines are often an extension of my research—either a jumping off point or a way to create a more visual project (or both). They are in their own way a form of excess - they are often too scandalous, too smutty, too much — everything that is spilling out of the margins.

My zines and research focus on lesser known queer histories, trying to highlight them and bring them to a new audience and new generations.

Using zines as a creative form of research, I am able to reach a broader audience both inside and outside of academia. I …

Voice And Pain: Representations Of Disability In Adaptations Of “The Little Mermaid”, Ace Molloy

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 story, “The Little Mermaid,” is a popular fairy tale that has been adapted several times by writers, filmmakers, and game developers. It is one of the few fairy tales with explicit portrayals of disability; the mermaid in the tale is nonspeaking and experiences chronic pain, as well as being a mermaid—a nonnormative figure who is aligned with disability. This paper looks at the ways that the mermaid is portrayed in literary, film, and new media adaptations from a disability-justice perspective. Examining multiple representations of the character, I argue that while feminist adaptations erase her disability and …

The Paradox Of Appropriation: A History Of Media Technology And Propaganda In Rwanda, 1900–1964, Claudia Brown

Journal of Global Catholicism

Scholars of the 1994 Rwandan genocide agree that media technology and propaganda played a role in mobilizing ordinary Rwandans in 1994 to commit genocide. Underappreciated in these inquiries is the history of the introduction of media technology and propaganda in Rwandan society by missionaries, technologies Rwandans later appropriated and applied to a pursuit of self-determination, but also in support of perpetrating genocide. A close examination of the social and political context of Rwanda’s colonial era and Catholic evangelism reveals a variety of motives for adopting propaganda as a strategy for evangelizing and rallying support for decolonization. This article casts light …

The Migrant As A Pilgrim: Decolonising Identity And Belonging, Susan Nemec

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper responds to pilgrimage scholar George Greenia’s assertion that meaningful intersections exist between pilgrimage and various forms of displacement, such as migration or involuntary exile due to famine, war, or political unrest. Greenia proposes that vulnerable, displaced individuals might find shelter, both conceptually and emotionally, within the framing of pilgrimage. By extending concepts of pilgrimage, it can be understood as a deliberate and intentional journey, simultaneously emphasising the transformative potential inherent in migratory movement. By adopting a working definition of pilgrimage as ‘any form of travel that is intentional, purposeful, or transformative,’ the paper considers how migrancy, particularly within …

Generative Ai/Machine Learning In The Screen Production Classroom And The Implications For Tertiary Educators., James Thompson, Kereen Ely-Harper, Tom Young, Rachel Wilson, Nico Meissner

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This report explores how screen production educators in the ASPERA community are responding to the rapid integration of generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) in teaching and learning. Framed by Sean Cubitt’s (2020) notion of Common Intelligence, we investigate two guiding questions: How are students engaging with genAI tools in their productions, and what are the implications for educators? Methodologically, we engaged in qualitative professional dialogue with screen practice educators through three mechanisms during the 2024 ASPERA Conference: lightning provocations, an anonymous Mentimeter survey, and a facilitated roundtable discussion. These activities provided a collaborative forum for educators to share practice-based insights, reflect …

Adapting Identities: Multimodal Expressions Of African Women’S Agency In Francophone Film​, Alicia M. Hilaire

Department of French Studies Graduate Student Association Conference

No abstract provided.

Why The Film Was Banned And Its Significance During The Colonial Era And Aftermath, Sawel Awuni

Department of French Studies Graduate Student Association Conference

This paper examines the usefulness of film according to the figure widely known as the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembène. In 2008, Annett Busch and Max Annas published an edited volume of Sembène’s interviews titled Ousmane Sembène: Interviews, which compiles a wide range of conversations conducted with him during his lifetime. This compilation offers insights into his films and the stories surrounding each production. Drawing on this collection, this presentation aims to highlight the significance of film during the twentieth century, the reasons why certain films were banned, and what Sembène believed should be the purpose of filmmaking.

This …

Des Arbres Comme Des Lignes De Vie – Pascale Cassagnau Et Suhaib Gasmelbari En Conversation, Pascale Cassagnau, Suhaib Gasmelbari

Regards

As part of a study day organized in September 2025 at the University of Grenoble Alpes in partnership with the Centre National des Arts Plastiques entitled “The Loss of Images: Research and Creative Narratives,” Pascale Cassagnau and Suhaib Gasmelbari discussed his film Talking about Trees (2019), focusing on the film’s sources and structure, the history of Sudanese cinema that it reveals within the film itself, and the metaphors of trees and plants as lifelines and living archives at a time when images have disappeared.

Résumé
Dans le cadre d’une journée d’études organisée en septembre 2025 à l’Université Grenoble Alpes en …

Introduction – Carnets Filmiques, Carnets Sonores : Des Essais Intimes Et Collectifs, Robert Bonamy, Aude Fourel, Eve Le Fessant Coussonneau

Regards

Le sens à attribuer à la notion de carnet filmique ou de carnet sonore suscite quelque indécision, en raison du caractère composite et mouvant des cas envisagés. L’enjeu principal ne paraît ainsi pas ici celui d’une définition serrée d’un objet, mais plutôt une attention accordée à des tentatives de réalisation. De surcroît, si la forme-carnet permet à peu près tout, elle n’interdit donc véritablement rien : l’esquisse, le brouillon, l’approximation, voire l’échec et l’interruption.
[...]

Du Journal De Deuil À L’Œuvre De Sépulture : « Lo » (Thanassis Vassiliou, 2021-2025), Marie Martin

Regards

After his mother’s death in 2017, Thanassis Vassiliou returned to Greece and began filming. The instinctive act of recording aimed both to come to terms with the now definitive absence in places still filled with memories, and to document his own reactions, attempting to preserve them even if he could not fully understand them. These filmic notes could perhaps, later on, allow another perspective, according to the dynamic that Antoine Compagnon aptly analyzed as paradoxical in relation to Barthes’s Mourning Diary: “mourning and narrative are antinomic, but [...] only narrative [...] is capable of expressing the experience of mourning, …

« From Ground Zero » Et « Letters » : Carnets Polyphoniques En Quête D’Intersubjectivité, Eve Le Fessant Coussonneau

Regards

The two polyphonic films From Ground Zero (2025, produced by Rashid Masharawi) and Letters (2025, produced by Josef Khallouf) bring together, in response to the war in Gaza, unique short films, letters and chronicles that address collective questions. How do these films take charge of the urgent need to problematize, aesthetically and politically, the relationship between subjectivity and the collective? From the Palestinian enclave or neighboring Lebanon, they seek irreducible singularities and intersubjective connections in the face of the horror of genocide. Caught in a complex combination of places and times, their address to our spectatorial gaze thus reveals the …

Le Vent Du Sud, « La Nuit Et L’Enfant » – Récit D’Une Vidéo-Correspondance Avec Zoheir Mefti, David Yon

Regards

Entre 2011 et 2012, Zoheir Mefti et David Yon ont entretenu une correspondance autour de la réalisation filmique. A travers leurs échanges, ils questionnent la nécessité de l’image. Zoheir Mefti travaille un geste filmique de l’urgence, tandis que David Yon prépare un film en Algérie dans un temps plus long. Après les mots, ils partagent des images et des sons, tels des carnets filmiques, dans lesquels ils donnent leurs positions et interrogent les liens entre la vie et le cinéma.

Carnets De Bord. Tables D’Orientation « Tariq Teguia », Pascale Cassagnau, Tariq Teguia

Regards

This interview by Pascale Cassagnau with Tariq Teguia puts into perspective the Algerian filmmaker’s work notebooks, which are both autonomous objects and working documents, linked to the film itself. A medium for thought, the notebook is a space for language, a score and a cartographic space that gives shape to the writing of the film in a graphic way. A discursive space parallel to the space of scriptwriting, the notebook accompanies the development of the film from its inception, collecting the writing of thought in no particular chronological order.

Résumé
Cet entretien de Pascale Cassagnau avec Tariq Teguia met en …

« Voi(E)X De L’Exil, Formes De La Pensée » : Le Cinéma-Essai De Borhane Alaouié », Elie Yazbek, Farah Alhashem

Regards

This article offers a comprehensive study of Borhane Alaouié’s work, a central figure in modern Lebanese cinema, situating it within the tradition of the essay film. Through an analysis of Lettre d’un temps d’exil, À toi où que tu sois and Khallas, it examines how exile, wounded memory, and fragmentary thought shape the filmmaker’s aesthetic and ethical approach. Exile is explored not only as a geopolitical condition but as an interior state, a persistent uncertainty that structures voices, narratives and images. The study highlights the importance of voice-over, fragmentation, memory-driven editing and epistolary address, while positioning Alaouié’s work …

The Personal Is Collective: Egyptian First-Person – Documentary Cinema As Post-Revolution Diary, Eman Elharmeel

Regards

The 2011 Egyptian revolution marked a watershed moment in the reconfiguration of individuality, autonomy and self-expression within Egyptian society. Challenging long-standing collectivist frameworks, the revolutionary moment opened new spaces for individual agency and subjective reflection. This paper examines how these shifts intersect with the rise of first-person documentary cinema as a powerful medium for articulating post-revolutionary subjectivity in Egypt.
Focusing on The Past Will Return (2015) by Dina Hamza, Happily Ever After (2016) by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir, and Little Eagles (2016) by Mohamed Rashad, the paper analyzes how filmmakers negotiate personal desires, familial pressures and collective belonging …

Triste Souvenir Et Sombre Avenir, « Lettre À Ma Sœur » (2006) De Habiba Djahnine, Boualem Khelifati

Regards

This article explores how Letter to My Sister (2006), a film by director and poet Habiba Djahnine dedicated to her sister Nabila, a democratic and feminist activist who was murdered by Islamist terrorists in Tizi Ouzou in 1995, revisits the fate of the direct and indirect victims of Algeria’s dark decade of the 1990s and the repressive religious and state policies towards women. It employs a narrative structure that combines several film genres – film-letter, film-journey, film-poem, and film-archive – showing situations in which memories and pain are shared, as well as the necessary perpetuation of a struggle that is …

Beyrouth 1978-1982 : Le Fonds Photographique De Monica Maurer – Une Collection Contre L’Oubli Et La Destruction, Aude Fourel

Regards

It was while searching for unused film footage on the Palestinian struggle for a documentary essay that I discovered the filmography of German director Monica Maurer and her work restoring and preserving Palestinian films. For the past four years, we have been working together to digitise and catalogue the photographs and documents she still keeps at home.
I reflect on the paths opened up by the writing of a film in the making, on the formatting of Monica Maurer’s photographic collection, and on the initial prospects for visual and historical studies of this material in the particular context of the …

Sonorisation De L’Anarchive Ou La Palestine Comme Projet Politique – À L’Écoute De « A Fidai Film » De Kamal Aljafari Et De « Partition » De Diana Allan, Judith Abensour

Regards

Kamal Aljafari’s A Fidai Film draws on Palestinian archives confiscated by Israel in Beirut in 1982. Diana Allan created Partition using archives from Mandatory Palestine held at the Imperial War Museum in London. The film notebook not only refers to a type of fragmentary editing, but also allows us to revisit the relationship between sound and image, thus offering an exercise in remembrance in the present. By adding sound to images, the two filmmakers question the contradictions inherent in archives, their erasure or their resistance to authoritative or propagandistic discourse. Thus, under the guise of sensory and sound anthropology for …

Videotracts For Palestine : Images Et Contre-Images, Lola Maupas

Regards

This article examines the political and aesthetic gesture of Videotracts for Palestine, a collective founded on Instagram in November 2023 in the context of the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Heirs to the ciné-tracts of 1968 and, more broadly, to international militant cinema, these very short anonymous films also mobilize contemporary digital tools and produce what might be called a counter-visuality of resistance. The study highlights how the collective situates itself within a tradition of images as weapons of struggle while inventing its own forms, shaped by the massive circulation enabled by the Internet and social media. The videotracts deconstruct …

Des Sons Pour L’Histoire. Correspondance Avec Mohammed Yaghi, Aude Fourel

Regards

Sounds for History. Correspondence with Mohammed Yaghi
Mohammed Yaghi was born in 1992 and trained in sound engineering in Gaza. He has worked for UNRWA television and collaborated with Palestinian and international documentary film production companies.
These sound recordings for films, educational programs and interviews were the first step in the sound diary that he has kept on building on a daily basis.
[...]


Résumé
Mohammed Yaghi est né en 1992 et s’est formé aux métiers du son à Gaza. Il a travaillé à la télévision de l’UNRWA et collaboré avec des maisons de productions palestiniennes et internationales de films …

Women’S Agency And Pleasure (Wap): Toward A Black Feminist Theory Of Sexuality, Jelisa S. Clark, Erica Campbell

Journal of Research Initiatives

Black feminist theory has identified sexuality as a site of oppression for Black women, however, there has been limited attention to Black women’s pleasure. We suggest that WAP by Cardi B and Meg the Stallion provides a conceptual lens through which Black women's sexuality can be more humanely envisioned. WAP, in the tradition established by Black women in the blues, represents Black feminist theorizing about sexuality. Themes of Cultivating Community and Developing Voice through Self-Definition are central to discussions of Black women's pleasure. In this work, we bridge academic theorizing and Black women's cultural productions to reinvigorate Black feminist theorizing …

Knights Of Guinevere, Knights Of Terrace, Abigail Hyacinthe Woelk

Gateway Reader- Individual Papers

• The Problem: The researcher addresses a gap in media criticism regarding Dana Terrace's animated series Knights of Guinevere, arguing that critics like Rosa Perez over-emphasize the show's jabs at Disney while neglecting its broader allegorical critiques of corporate pollution and capitalist labor practices.

• The Method: The study analyzes the pilot episode of Knights of Guinevere by evaluating its framing, character design, and setting alongside a comparative critique of Rosa Perez's 2025 article "This Animated Sci-Fi Series Fires a Shot at Disney".

• Quantitative Finding: The core text references specific timestamps from the 2025 pilot episode, including the introduction of narrative …

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Introduction: Rethinking Circulation In Italian Film And Media, Simone Brioni Dr., Rachel Johnson, Shelleen Greene

Department of English Faculty Publications

This introduction to the special issue ‘Rethinking Circulation in

Italian Film and Media’ reconsiders how Italian audiovisual culture

moves across borders – industrially, geographically, linguistically,

and digitally. By focusing on the complex dynamics of circulation,

the essays gathered here trace the evolving connections between

production and distribution, exploring how contemporary modes

of localization, translation, and platform curation shape the

visibility and cultural capital of Italian cinema in global contexts.

From streaming giants such as Netflix to curated services like

MUBI, and from film festival circuits to independent film-making

networks, the issue interrogates how transnational infrastructures

of distribution redefine what counts …