Film and Media Studies Commons^™

"Revealing Reality": Four Asian Filmmakers Visualize The Transnational Imaginary, Stephen Edward Spence

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation posits that four Asian filmmakers engage in “revealing reality” in unique but interconnected ways that employ innovative narrative and cinematic/visual techniques, including a direct address to the senses and an augmenting of their vision with fantasy or surrealism. My study argues that Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan), Jia Zhangke (China), Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) mobilize this visual and narrative strategy to participate in debates about globalization and to comment on the state of their respective nations, the concept of the nation, and the transnational. The films of each artist are examined in detail; I investigate their stylistic …

Widerstandsidentitäten: Identitäts- Und Heimatsuche Der Nachfolgegenerationen Türkischer Migranten In Fatih Akins Gegen Die Wand, Feo Aladağs Die Fremde Und Feridun Zaimoğlus Kanak Sprak, Anja Ruxanda Barr

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how Fatih Akin’s film Head-On/Gegen die Wand (2004), Feo Aladağ’s film When We Leave/Die Fremde (2010), and Feridun Zaimoğlu’s text Kanak Spraak construct a new Turkish-German identity that is established through resistance to a homogenously imagined culture. With the current influx of immigrants to Germany, the debate about integration, hybridity, and divergence has become more important than ever. The emergence of hybrid migrant identities that are being problematized in Turkish-German movies and texts has shown that issues of belonging and identity caused by multipositionality have become an integral part of Turkish-German narratives. Over time, representations …

Mass Media In Society, Sarah Mathis, Camila Garcia, Douglas Laman, Amanda Crotzer, Veronica Nicole Lang

Collin College Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Student Research Conference

Panel Chair: Lisa Vazzi

Student Presenters: Sarah Mathis, Camila Garcia, Douglas Laman, Amanda Crotzer, and Veronica Nicole Liang

• Sarah Mathis “The Effects of Media on Women’s Body Image”
• Camila Garcia “Positive Advantages of Mass Communication”
• Douglas Laman “Autism, Actually: A Look at Representation of Autism in Pop Culture”
• Amanda Crotzer “Thruth in Advertising: Targeting Children in and Age of Privatized Media Consumption”

Potter, Hugh Oliver, 1905-1986 (Mss 602), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 602. Correspondence, research notes, book manuscripts, promotional material, and editorials related to Hugh O. Potter’s career as a radio broadcaster and his interests in Kentucky history, specifically Owensboro and Daviess County, and Abraham Lincoln. Includes one box of original legal documents (1783-1953) related to the Massie family of Daviess County.

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.

The Double Work Of The Female Spectator, Emily Greitzer

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

This essay evaluates and analyses the tropes and conventions of classical narrative cinema, particularly its tropes and conventions concerning women and the female character. I incorporate film studies spectatorship and apparatus theories in order to assess the impact of these tropes and conventions on the female spectator, and use Gone Girl as a base point for working through these ideological effects, as well as deconstructing how they work inside the structure of narrative film itself. I was inspired by the way that film moves me to investigate spectatorship for my final paper, and feminist film theory drove me to seek …

An Analysis Of Psychological Manipulation In Military Culture, Kevin V. Chu

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

While strict discipline is substantiated as necessary by the armed forces, this creates an environment where individual decision-making is oppressed in favor of mob mentality. Much like how individuals adhere to the culture of common society, the military presents its own social structures for its soldiers. The film A Few Good Men (1992) explores these military institutions where its hierarchal structure emphasizes motifs of obedience, ideology, conformity, and labels, which are central to how it deals with unpredictable problems. Although necessary, these shape the underlying vulnerable psychology of soldiers who learn to view themselves as instruments for superiors, to coincide …

To Kill A Mockingbird, The Help, And The Regendering Of The White Savior, Brett Seekford

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Filmmakers continue to use the “White Savior “ archetype to construct racialized messages in the post-Civil Rights era. These protagonists, who resolutely defend the rights of African Americans, ultimately focalize whiteness and marginalize black characters and voices. Though a white savior features prominently in both To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The Help (2011), The Help’s regendering of the archetype invites viewers to imagine a world in which a white savior is no longer necessary. The Help’s update on the white savior trope from Atticus Finch to Skeeter Phelan allows for deeper development of black characters and a …

Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay analyzes recent depictions of Jesse James in cinema, examining filmic portrayals of the figure between the years of 1972 and 2010. Working from the intersection of the anthropology of film and religious studies approaches to popular culture, the essay fills significant gaps in the study of James folklore. As no substantial examinations of the religious aspects of the James myths exist, I hone in on the legend’s religiosity as contested in filmic form. Films, including revisionist Westerns, are not unlike oral-history statements recorded and analyzed by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers. Jesse James movies, in other words, have much …

“To See My Home Before I Die”: The Trip To Bountiful, Memento Mori, And The Experience Of Death, Margaret Sullivan

Journal of Religion & Film

This article analyzes the portrayal of death in Peter Masterson’s 1985 film The Trip to Bountiful. My claim is that the experience of death, in the film, functions as a tool both for the elderly main character’s increased self-understanding and for her conscious, ethical action. I enter this discussion through an examination of late deconstruction’s ethical turn and the argument that aporetic unknowing, if experienced and endured, leads to the chance for real, authentic action. I then demonstrate how the film depicts such an aporetic encounter with death, and do so, in large part, by focusing on the film’s final …

Satanic Humans: Using Satanic Tropes To Guide And Misguide The Audience, Adam L. Porter

Journal of Religion & Film

One of the differences between Christ and Satan is that the former is clearly described in the Gospels, but the latter is not. Rather, a large number of different stories grew up around the character of Satan over the last 2000 years. Authors and artists can dip into the pool of Satan myths and find different versions of the character they can adapt for their own purposes. I am interested in identifying what satanic symbols have become popular in Hollywood films, so in 2013 I wrote an essay that analyzed several films featuring super-human characters and identified several traits beyond …

Gnosticism, Technology And The Soul In Cuarón's Gravity, Karli Brittz

Journal of Religion & Film

Situated within the Digital Age, where technology and science have made life in space possible, Alfonso Caurón's award-winning space-thriller, Gravity, explores critical notions of the relationship between technology and the soul. More specifically, Cuarón’s depiction of space voyage illustrates the dualistic approach to the soul in relation to technology, especially the gnostic mind/body split and its manifestation in the Digital Age. This intersection between technology and the soul is a notion of increasingly importance in contemporary society, however it is often evaded in literature. Accordingly, it is crucial to analyze and unpack films, such as Gravity, that confront audiences with …

Two-Spirit Mexica Youth And Transgender Mixtec/Muxe Media: La Mission (2009), Two Spirit: Injunuity (2013), And Libertad (2015), Gabriel S. Estrada

Journal of Religion & Film

Independent directors Peter Bratt, Adrian Baker, and Avila-Hanna create differing trans-border queer Indigenous media that resist Eurocentric cic-heteropatriarchy. While Bratt’s feature-length narrative film La Mission (2009) features a masculine Mexica gay teenager who survives fused homophobic and trans*-phobic violence, Baker’s short animation Two Spirit: Injunuity (2013) makes stronger trans* and two-spirit Mexica youth identity affirmations. Avila-Hanna’s short documentary Libertad (2015) offers the clearest transgender narrative of the three films as it focuses on a California transgender Mixtec immigrant activist who is coming of age as a woman with the aid of hormones and gender affirming surgery. This article’s trans*- and …

Superhero Films: A Fascist National Complex Or Exemplars Of Moral Virtue?, Chris Yogerst

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper deals with the "why" regarding our collective desire for superhero narratives. My goal is to build on the many definitions of a superhero and find a framework that we as scholars can use to evaluate how superhero films present inspirational moral virtue and not zealous nationalism of any kind. In the process I want to address the problems with some of the scholarly work done on the connection to superheroes and heroism both historically and immediately after 9/11, particularly those who have argued that American superheroism is a fascist myth, and show how the recent evolution of the …

Global Catastrophe In Motion Pictures As Meaning And Message: The Functions Of Apocalyptic Cinema In American Film, Wynn Gerald Hamonic

Journal of Religion & Film

The steady rise in production of American apocalyptic films and the genre's enduring popularity over the last seven decades can be explained by the functions the film genre serves. Through an analysis of a broad range of apocalyptic films along with the application of several theoretical and critical approaches to the study of film, the author describes seven functions commonly found in American apocalyptic cinema expressed both in terms of its meaning (the underlying purpose of the film) and its message (the ideas the filmmakers want to convey to the audience). Apocalyptic cinema helps the viewer make sense of the …

"I Do Feel The Fire!": The Transformations Of Prison-Based Black Male Converts To Islam In South Central, Malcolm X, And Oz, Kameron J. Copeland

Journal of Religion & Film

Historically, imprisoned Black male converts to Islam have been known for their narratives of redemption and struggles for religious freedom behind bars. While Islam possesses a strong visible presence throughout predominately Black areas of inner cities, it has become a natural feature of Black popular culture in mediums such as hip-hop, film, and literature. By the 1990s, the portrayal of Islamic conversions yielding Malcolm X-style transformations among young Black men, who formerly embodied self-destructiveness, were visible in films featuring Black male protagonists. The prison-based transformations typically involved highly influential Black Muslim leaders improving the social conditions of the inmate, the …

How To Attain Liberation From A False World? The Gnostic Myth Of Sophia In Dark City (1998), Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

Journal of Religion & Film

In the second half of the 20th century, a fascinating revival of ancient Gnostic ideas in American popular culture could be observed. One of the major streams through which Gnostic ideas are transmitted is Hollywood cinema. Many works that emerged at the end of 1990s can be viewed through the ideas of ancient Gnostic systems: The Truman Show (1998), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), The Others (2001), Vanilla Sky (2001) or The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003).

In this article, the author analyses Dark City (1998) and demonstrates that the story depicted in the film is heavily indebted to the Gnostic myth of …

Problem-Based Learning And Two Studies Of The Journal Of Religion And Film: Self-Sacrifice And Music, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This article offers a case study for using problem-based learning (PBL) in a religion and film course. PBL is an open-ended, experiential approach to teaching, which requires students to engage with a real world problem in groups. While many university classes are based on a lecture format and variations of that format, PBL asks students to take greater ownership of their learning. The problem drives what students will learn, how they will learn it, and what they produce to assess that learning. Students in a fourth-year PBL class at the University of Toronto Mississauga were given the following problem: analyze …

Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, And The Nation, Kathryn C. Hardy

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of William Elison, Christian Lee Novetzke, and Andy Rotman, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

Coen: Framing Religion In Amoral Order, Richard Goodwin

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Elijah Siegler, ed., Coen: Framing Religion in Amoral Order. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2016.

The Innocents (Les Innocentes), Joshua Canzona

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Innocents (Les Innocentes) (2016), directed by Anne Fontaine.

Silence, Caesar A. Montevecchio

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Silence (2016), directed by Martin Scorsese.

Hidden Figures, Carol Miles

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Hidden Figures (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi.

“Don’T You Have Anything Better To Do?” : A Care-Focused Feminist Analysis Of Undertale, Evan Marzahn

Women's and Gender Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This paper explores the feminist ethic of care in Undertale's "meta" narrative and gameplay from the perspective of an avid gamer. Using Nel Noddings' ethical framework to analyze the actions and attitudes of the characters (including the player) and their consequences, I argue that Undertale provides distinctively feminist ethical gameplay that not only criticizes the frequent violence in role-playing games, but also encourages the player to always approach any interaction with a character (or a real person) as an encounter between individuals whose unique circumstances and needs must be considered.

Converging Horror: Analyzing The Importance Of Convergence Culture On A Digital Audience Through An Examination Of The Conventions And Politics Of The Horror Genre, Kelsey M. Fox

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

This thesis draws attention to the genre of horror in new media through a close examination of various digital texts, arguing that these new texts, while built on traditional horror narratives used in cinema, are also examples of Convergence Culture, a mobile, multiplatform, participatory medium that engages professionals and amateur content creators. The thesis begins with a review of scholarly work about horror as a genre, continues with a close analysis of several digital horror texts and their online communities, and ends with the argument that these new texts are good examples of how horror has accommodated Convergence culture, morphing …

Student Film Festival Winners One Sheet, Providence College

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

Student Film Festival winners one sheet

The Providence College Student Film Festival 2017 Entry Form, Providence College

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

The Providence College Student Film Festival 2017 entry form