Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Storytelling In Interior Design: A Hospitality Case Study Based On Avatar: The Last Airbender, Katelyn Isaacson Bauer

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Storytelling can function as a crucial element in interior design, offering a powerful means to captivate and engage individuals within a space. The allure of storytelling lies in its ability to evoke emotions, convey messages, and create memorable experiences. Humans are naturally drawn to narratives that transport them to different worlds, evoke nostalgia, or inspire. This fascination with storytelling has led to a notable increase in themed spaces across various industries, from amusement parks and hotels to restaurants and retail spaces. The integration of storytelling into interior design not only enhances the aesthetic appeal of a space but also serves …

Paradoks Determinisme Dalam Film Tenet (2020) Sebagai Refleksi Kesadaran Manusia Akan Waktu, Farobi Fatkhurridho, Suma Riella Rusdiarti

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Time is a complicated object of study because understanding time is closely related to periodization, history, and memory. Film is a medium for presenting manifestations of motion and time in visual products that can be captured by human senses. Tenet (2020) is a film that displays temporal dimensions in terms of both creative ideas and packaging through its cinematography and narrative structure. Tenet presents the idea of overlapping time consciousness of the past, present, and future. A revolving door machine in the film is used to signify the paradox of determinism or the condition of characters suffocated in a time …

Tarot Fabula: Radical Digital Cards, Shuffled Narrative Structures, And Playing The Future In An Era Of Algorithms, Rachel M.L. Dixon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since their earliest recorded use in the 1400s, tarot cards figure as objects for game play, artistic creativity, spiritual divination, and self-discovery. Tarot Fabula (https://tarot-fabula.com) introduces a ludic, interactive website interface that challenges 20th century tarot reading practices as linear narratives. Statistically random reshufflings of tarot decks from archival collections prompt the reader to become a narrative co-creator, drawing them into conversation with traditional reading and interpretive practices as they remix narrative elements portrayed on the cards. Tarot Fabula’s shuffling and reshuffling of cards as historical objects merges contemporary computational methods for generating random results with an interrogation of …

Big Screen Heroes With Paper Voices: A Superhero Adaptation Research Essay, Zachary Green

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Superheroes may have taken over your phone, tablet, and television screens through the endless adaptations that pelt us from upon high mouse-shaped ears, but their rich history goes back much further than that; they have gripped the public imagination since their creation in comic strips published in newspapers almost one-hundred years ago. But, why exactly has their effect on popular culture, and their subsequent adaptations in various forms of media been so pervasive in the last twenty-five years? What makes these stories and comic book characters, and particularly Marvel comic book characters, so interesting to modern audiences? This essay demonstrates …

Becoming George Lucas: From Avant-Garde, Auteur, Independent Artist To Studio Executive, Ryan Thompson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Because of the unprecedented popularity of Star Wars, George Lucas, the creator of the multi-media franchise, is one of the most well-known filmmakers in history. What makes Lucas’s relationship with Star Wars unique is that because the franchise has continually been exploited rather than left as a single unchanging, static text, its artistic value, along with Lucas’s legacy, is in constant flux and is often misunderstood. In other words, depending on Star Wars’s position in the public zeitgeist at a given time, Lucas is either revered, detested, or considered incompetent as a filmmaker. While there is no denying …

The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

From the inception of the genre, Gothic horror has been fixated on the domestic space in distress. This essay explores domestic archetypes and roles of the Gothic novel, serving as a “tour of the house”, analyzing the iconography of the dark castle, and how it externalizes and exacerbates the fears and behaviors of its inhabitants. The power dynamic of the household is starkly divided by the expectations and authority of masculine and feminine figures. In turn the “house” becomes a vehicle for the anxieties of the inhabitants—both experienced and inflicted—regarding gender, sexuality, isolation, and abuse. Exploration of the visual and …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

Kung Fu Panda - A Good Story Well Done, James E. Bruner

Classical Conversations

Storytelling is incredibly important in the everyday lives of humans. Over the course of history, the methods of storytelling have advanced much in the same way society has advanced. However, the constant components of a good story and classic literature have never changed: enticing plots, courageous heroes, and narrative beauty. One of the most popular, modern methods for storytelling for both young and old alike is the animated motion picture. The Kung Fu Panda movies are a series of animated children’s movies created by Dreamworks Animation studios that have witnessed great success in box offices worldwide. However, the journey of …

Me, Myself, And My Muppets, Sara Jones

Emerging Writers

In this personal narrative, the author explores her relationship and upbringing in relation to Jim Henson’s Muppets. She illustrates her experience at puppet camps, on long Muppet-filled road trips, and the special connection her mother and her share with the Muppets. Find out how the Muppets have shaped the author’s life, morals, and aspirations, as well as how Jim Henson’s creations have influenced and brought joy to past generations and future generations to come.

..., Claire Alfonso

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I …

The Unfamiliar Familiar | An Exploration Into The Architectural Uncanny, Jessica P. Peters

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

The Waning Days Of Projection In The Mountain West, Samuel Gwinn Dunnington

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Waning Days of Projection in the Mountain West is a novel featuring a young narrator named Argus, who worked for years as an apprentice and assistant to a documentary filmmaker named Max Morgen. The novel begins years after Argus and Max have gone their separate ways. Max has recently died, and his final wish was that his son send Argus all the footage they’d acquired over their years together in order to edit and complete the film Max originally set out to make. Argus must decide how to proceed.

Seaglass: An Animated Rejection Of Narrative Permanence, Alejandra Louise Blackmore

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how popular narrative structures imply that our reality should be stagnant, thereby leaving us as viewers unprepared for the notion of change. I introduce the term “narrative permanence” as a story structure that assumes the foundations of a narrative are absolute. These stories therefore consider structural change as a threat or abnormal. I analyzed examples such as The Simpsons and news coverage of the BP oil spill to demonstrate how popular media frames change as an unnatural occurrence that must be neutralized. My thesis then culminated in an animated short about a person living in a seaside …

The Mvohc Project, Brooke Day

All Theses

ABSTRACT

A Mvohc is a Morphic Vessel of Human Consciousness. The Mvohc Project traverses' theories of spatial identity in tandem with creative world-building as a method for examining the intricacies of the human condition and reimagining reality. My creations are designed to promote autonomy over the contemporary world's ever-evolving societal complexities to empower individuals, foster imagination and communication, and create space for positive change. This body of work incorporates fleshy biomorphic sculptures inspired by science fiction, deep-sea marine life, and the human body. The abject creatures are partnered with constructed audio-scapes that encompass the frenzy of an overarching internal monologue, …

"Knowing It's Real Means You Gotta Make A Decision": Depictions Of Post-Traumatic Disorders And Coping Mechanisms In The Punisher And Jessica Jones, Megan M. Rutter

English Department Masters Theses

Post-traumatic disorders have been included in some of the most popular narratives in mainstream culture. Though the early decades of movies included 1948’s The Best Days of Our Lives is an award-winning movie that follows three veterans home from World War II and depicts their struggles with reacclimating to society it became more popular after Vietnam veterans and their allies fought and protested for an appropriate diagnosis for PTSD after decades of it not being seen as a legitimate psychological disorder. Since then, post-traumatic disorders have been included in media as popular as the series finale of M*A*S*H in 1983, …

Entertainment Media Perceptions Of Minorities In Young Adult Adaptations, Kynnadie Bennett

Scholars Week

This is an exploration of stereotypical and racist portrayals of minorities, specifically African-American, Latinx, and Native American communities, in film and television in the past and how that has affected representation in film adaptations of young adult literature. Young adult literature is one of the highest-selling genres in literature, purchased by both young adults and actual adults. In recent years, young adult literature has been adapted into film and television series and while representation has improved since the early years of entertainment history, there are still problems in the industry: many of the stereotypes remain, some minorities lack representation, and …

Plastic Goes Concrete: "Plasticnic" And "Plasticpoems", Two Animated Poetry Videos About Plastic Pollution, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Nhat Truong, Tisha Deb Pillai

The Goose

The author describes the creation of two short animated video poems about plastic pollution that originated in concrete/visual poems. "Plasticnic" is a humorous and colourful narrated video based on a shaped poem depicting how we enjoy nature while simultaneously harming it through plastic consumption. "Plasticpoems" is a text-based, unnarrated animated video poem about plastic pollution based on two shaped/visual/concrete poems.

Glitch Reading: [Re]Mediation And The Protocols Of Reading, Jacob Reber

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

In this paper, I outline a methodology for reading poetic works that operate between media environments, noting the subtle shifts and failures that mark the material changes. The space between mediums and processes of remediation produce residue from the various material substrates and protocols of reading that adhere to works moving through networks. The attention to the residue can be understood as glitches, which proliferate the possibilities of reading and reveal the construction of imbricated reading environments. This is a practice I want to consider through the framework of glitch reading. Drawing on Rosa Menkman's theorization of glitches and Tan …

Twine And The Challenge To Reading, Stuart Moulthrop

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

The article considers the Twine story-game platform in relation to important critiques of earlier forms of electronic literature (specifically hypertext) from which it descends. Arguments for the significance of Twine are made based on aesthetic approaches (the fusion of literature and game culture) and the refinement of writing itself.

Play this paper in Twine

“Decolonize” E-Literature? On Weeding The E-Lit Garden (A Riposte To Anna Nacher's "Gardening E-Literature"), Kathi Berens

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

This essay, a RiPOSTe to Anna Nacher's forthcoming "Gardening E-Literature" in Electronic Book Review (5 July 2020), asks: Should the e-literature community include third-generation works in collections, syllabi, databases, prizes? A related question: do third-gen makers have a role in “decolonizing” e-literature? Who or what “colonizes” e-lit? E-literature began as a coterie and has become a scholarly field. Using the comparison of a field versus a walled garden, the essay examines critiques of e-literature and variations on field definitions. It ends with two ideas about how to "decolonize" e-literature; about how equity and inclusion work in tandem with decolonization; and …

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Explorations Of Liminality And Intersectionality In Tabletop Games, Alyna Kim

Honors Thesis

In fantasy role-playing games (RPGs), especially tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), participants are required to collaborate to create not only fantasy personas in the shape of characters, but also the world and space that makes up the game itself. Participants therefore create a sense of both time and space that exist outside of basic reality. The created space and time––referred to as a world or a story––exists as a liminal space that participants and characters use as a tool to both exist and explore. While the participants exist physically in the real world, the game space allows them to go beyond …

Ebony Films’ Spying The Spy Is Asking The Questions, Ben "Shirley" Anderson

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

n/a full permission

Entertainment Media Perceptions Of Minorities In Young Adult Adaptations, Kynnadie Bennett

Honors College Theses

This is an exploration of stereotypical and racist portrayals of minorities, specifically African-American, Latinx, and Native American communities, in film and television in the past and how that has affected representation in film adaptations of young adult literature. Young adult literature is one of the highest-selling genres in literature, purchased by both young adults and actual adults. In recent years, young adult literature has been adapted into film and television series and while representation has improved since the early years of entertainment history, there are still problems in the industry: many of the stereotypes remain, some minorities lack representation, and …

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

Hear Me Roar, Abigail R. Seethoff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hear Me Roar, a compilation of personal essays interspersed with short forms, grapples with the nuances of compliance versus autonomy in the context of the male gaze, beauty standards, and pop culture. The collection also explores what it means to treasure something—another person, an object—and how to express and deepen that affection.

Statement Of Creative Practice: Creative Making And Vr Literature, Mez Breeze

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Editor's Note
Mez Breeze authored her artist’s statement in virtual reality. You can view Mez’s artist’s statement even without a VR headset. Just click this link: https://bit.ly/2Kov372
You’ll need this password to access it: XR_PlayG

Abstract
Constructing creative writing in XR (aka Extended Reality: an umbrella term that covers Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and a fourth category called Synthetic Reality), and VR in particular, is an exciting and recent phenomenon in the Electronic Literature field. This proposed Statement of Creative Practice will examine the scope and reach of XR artforms while focusing in particular on the subset of …

Basho & Friends Literacy Game For Tablet, Joshua Korenblat

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Basho & Friends is an in-progress prototype for an interactive children’s book. Here, children ages 8-13 collaborate with young Basho, the legendary founder of haiku poetry, to become poets themselves. This project exemplifies a “convivial tool,” defined by philosopher Ivan Illich as a platform designed to promote creative expression. Here, we imagine new possibilities for reading, sensemaking, and creative writing based on past forms and ideas. Through poetry, Basho promotes meaningful principles of literacy and sustainability today. Children can engage with Basho’s story in an historical context and practice haiku to see themselves as authors of their life stories.