Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Negotiating Desire: Resisting, Reimagining And Reinscribing Normalized Sexuality And Gender In Fan Fiction, Charity A. Fowler

Theses and Dissertations

Fan studies has examined how fan fiction resists heteronormativity by challenging depictions of gender and sexuality, but to date, this inquiry has focused disproportionately on slash, to the exclusion of other genres of fan fiction. Additionally, scholars disagree about slash’s subversive effects by setting up a seemingly stable dichotomy—subversive vs. misogynistic—where one does not necessarily exist.

In this project, I examine multiple genres of fan fiction—namely, slash arising from bromances; femslash from female friendships; incestuous fan fiction from dysfunctional familial relationships; and polyamorous fics. I chose fics from four televisions shows—NBC’s Revolution, MTV’s Teen Wolf, the CW’s The …

Who Really Said What? Mobile Historical Situated Documentary As Liminal Learning Space, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article explores the complexities and affordances of historical representation that arose in the process of designing a mobile augmented reality video game for teaching history. The process suggests opportunities to push the historical documentary form in new ways. Specifically, the article addresses the shifting liminal space between historical fiction narrative, and historical interactive documentary narrative. What happens when primary sources, available for examination are placed inside of a historically inspired narrative, one that hews closely to the events, but creates drama through dialogues between player and historical figure? In this relatively new field of interactive historical situated documentary, how …

Media Literacy As Mindful Practice For Democratic Education. A Response To “Transaction Circles With Digital Texts As A Foundation For Democratic Practices”, Theresa Redmond

Democracy & Education

This essay is a response to Brown’s (2015) article describing her strategy of transaction circles as a student-centered, culturally responsive, and democratic literacy practice. In my response, I provide further evidence from the field of media literacy education (MLE) that serves to enhance Brown’s argument for using transaction circles in order to promote democratic discourse, specifically augmenting her ideas by connecting the purposes and processes of transaction circles with key implications of media literacy pedagogy. I invite Brown to consider how her concept of transaction circles may be extended in three ways: (a) through acknowledging the indispensable role of the …

Greatness From Small Beginnings: Amy Hennig And The Women Of The Uncharted Series, Rachel Wood

Posters-at-the-Capitol

“Greatness from Small Beginnings: Amy Hennig and the Women of the Uncharted series,” Rachel Wood, Faculty Mentor Andy Black, English & Philosophy Department

Amy Hennig, creative director and writer for the Uncharted video game series, has had a great impact on the world of interactive storytelling, namely with her portrayal of female characters in the action-adventure genre. During her time at Sony-owned developer Naughty Dog, Hennig encouraged gamers and developers alike to redefine the genre through in-depth storytelling and well-rounded characters. This paper explored how these female characters, while unique in their backgrounds and roles within the games’ plots, represent …

The Consequences Of Narrative, Kylie Mosbacher

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

Preservation First? Re-Viewing Film Digitization, Lauren Tilton

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This article addresses the politics of film digitization by arguing that we should reconsider archival and preservation "best practices" that require film restoration. Instead, it advocates for digitizing films "as is," which, in turn, captures the film's current materiality (i.e., fading, scratches, and other facets that reveal age, wear, and use). Using the work of Luis Vale, one of the youth filmmakers from New York City's Lower East Side's Young Filmmaker Foundation's Film Club, as a case study, the article points to the importance of archiving and saving these youth films as part of a growing movement to look beyond …

The Colonial Remix: Power And Language In Colonial And Digital Spaces, Susana Aho

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

This paper maps the similarities between colonial and digital media histories, as well as the repercussions these similarities might have on constructions of power and language in a digital age. The colonial encounter in sixteenth century led to the eventual displacement of indigenous pictographic forms by Western alphabetic ones. However, the first years of encounter are also marked by experimentation in which these two forms were combined in unique ways, creating hybrid reading and writing methods. Similarly, digital platforms are able to combine previously separate media (photography, film, 3D animation, print design, maps, etc) in the same files and environments, …

Digital Gaming And Tolkien, 1976-2015, Helen Young

Journal of Tolkien Research

‘Tolkien’ the cultural phenomenon is far bigger than J. R. R. Tolkien the author, or even J. R. R. Tolkien the author-and-oeuvre. When Christopher Tolkien asserted in 2012 that his father’s legacy has been rendered monstrous he blamed its fate on the gross depredations of commercialization generally and the Warner Bros’ franchise in particular. Explorations of – and encomiums on – the afterlives of Tolkien’s novels generally focus on the impact of Peter Jackson’s films. The forces which have shaped contemporary ‘Tolkien’ are not only commercial however; fans also ‘do things’ with Tolkien’s writings. The drive to make …

Confessions Of A Media Literacy Scholar-Practitioner: Job Market Advantages, Research Agenda Challenges, And Theory-Driven Production, Christopher Boulton

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This essay explores how higher education’s move away from the liberal arts tradition of learning by thinking and towards more vocational “experiential” approaches has implications for media literacy educators’ career options, scholarly identities, and teaching strategies. Specifically, I consider my own negotiation of increasing administrative and student demands for “hands-on” production courses by confessing both my advantages on the job market and my post-hire challenges in articulating a clear research agenda. I then conclude with a case study of how I repurposed my scholar-practitioner identity and used critical theory to drive production by bringing film students into a cultural studies …

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety, Rebecca Schroeder

Honors Projects

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety is a triptych video and artifact piece inspired by the abstract analysis of my dreams. It recognizes worries held within my subconscious and brings them to life through graphic design, photography, and video. The process of creating provides a new perspective of looking at both art and occupational therapy as methods of solving emotional distress.

I have recorded over 80 of my dreams in the past year. In these dreams, regret, grief, and anxiety are common themes. These themes are represented in three triptychs that cycle through past, present, and future problems. The cycling of …

Visualizing Electronic Literature Collections, Urszula Anna Pawlicka

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Visualizing Electronic Literature Collections" Urszula Pawlicka discusses the development of electronic literature by visualizing material available in the Electronic Literature Collection <http://collection.eliterature.org/>. Her visualization of electronic literature presents a timeline with tag clouds of keywords related to works classified chronologically by dates of publication. Pawlicka's visualization includes also all keywords of the Collection (two date there exist three Collections) separately without division in the publication dates of works. Pawlicka argues that keywords turn out to be important data to demonstrate changes occurring in the history of electronic literature. Further, in her visualization of electronic literature …

Magic At The Crossroads: The Rise Of The Video Essay, Morganne Tinsley August

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the birth, rise in popularity, and evolution of the video essay, a subgenre of the essay found recently in online literary journals. Chapter one provides a brief history of the alphabetic essay as it expands to include photo essays, audio essays, and essay-films. The second chapter outlines the history of the online literary journal and John Bresland’s role in the introduction of the video essay as it appears in online journals. Chapter three contains an examination of the way image, text, and sound function in video essays and the tools and strategies essayists are using to create …

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy: A Metaphorical Look At Life, The Universe, And Everything, Thomas David Thompson

Communication Studies

A look at the integral use of metaphor as a heuristic in the process of human learning.

Occupy The Future: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Dystopian Film And The Occupy Movement, Justin J. Grandinetti

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The anarchic Occupy Wall Street protests, which began in 2011, had an immediate impact on politics and the global lexicon. By introducing the terms “the one percent” and “the 99%” into the public sphere, Occupy was able to draw attention to growing global income inequality. This revolutionary spirit was not lost on popular culture, as a number of films that followed the protests were linked to Occupy. The Hunger Games (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Elysium (2013) represent films that were not only extremely successful in the box office, but were also connected to the Occupy Movement because …

Jewish Games For Learning: Renewing Heritage Traditions In The Digital Age, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Rather than a discontinuity from traditional modes of learning, new explorations of digital and strategic games in Jewish learning are markedly continuous with ancient practices. An explication of the close connections between traditional modes of Jewish learning, interpretive practice, and gaming culture can help to explain how Jews of the Digital Age can adopt and are adapting modern Games for Learning practices for contemporary purposes. The chapter opens by contextualizing a notion of Jewish Games and the field of Games for Learning. Next, the chapter explains the connections between game systems and Jewish traditions. It closes with a case study …

Social Media & Audience Participation In Regard To Television, Jean Marie Mcbride

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Jean McBride

Major: Communications: Radio/TV Broadcasting & Mass Media Production

Project Sponsor: Dr. Sylvia White

Number of Project Credits: 3

Social Media & Audience Participation in Regard to Television

The purpose of my honors project was seeing if social media had an influence on television show ratings and popularity by incorporating audience participation. Especially in regards to television shows that have been around for years, I was interested to see if television ratings went up when using Twitter compared to when they did not use Twitter to increase viewers and audience participation. I surveyed forty-nine collegiate women between the ages …

Introduction To New Work On Electronic Literature And Cyberculture, Maya Zalbidea, Mark C. Marino, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Meaning And Relevance Of Video Game Literacy, Jeroen Bourgonjon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Meaning and Relevance of Video Game Literacy" Jeroen Bourgonjon argues that video gaming deserves scholarly attention as a social practice and a site for meaning-making and learning. Based on an overview of contemporary trends in literacy and cultural studies, he argues that video games cannot be approached like traditional text forms. He contends that video games serve as an important frame of reference for young people and call for informed decision making in the context of culture, education, and policy. Bourgonjon provides an integrated perspective on video game literacy by employing theoretical insights about their distinctive …

Teaching Digital Humanities In Romania, Mădălina Nicolaescu, Adriana Mihai

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Teaching Digital Humanities in Romania" Mădălina Nicolaescu and Adriana Mihai describe a research project that sets out to promote digital humanities with an internet based platform in Shakespeare studies at the University of Bucharest. Texts have been collected and catalogued and the platform's technical construction is in construction. Based on the Shakespeare platform's content and presentation, Nicolaescu and Mihai propose participation strategies for involvement in the creation of a digital database that is both a research tool and a digital storytelling environment. The database is a collection of digitized translations of Shakespeare in Romanian followed by participants' …

New Challenges For The Archiving Of Digital Writing, Heiko Zimmermann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "New Challenges for the Archiving of Digital Writing" Heiko Zimmermann discusses the challenges of the preservation of digital texts. In addition to the problems already at the focus of attention of digital archivists, there are elements in digital literature which need to be taken into consideration when trying to archive them. Zimmermann analyses two works of digital literature, the collaborative writing project A Million Penguins (2006-2007) and Renée Tuner's She… (2008) and shows how the ontology of these texts is bound to elements of performance, to direct social interaction of writers and readers to the uniquely subjective …

Case Study Two: Jewish Time Jump: New York, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Gottlieb presents an early case study of his mobile augmented reality game Jewish Time Jump: New York design on the ARIS platform for the iPhone and iPad (iOS). The game is set on-location in Washington Square Park in New York city. Players in 5th-7th grade take on the role of time-traveling reporters, landing on site on the eve of the Uprising of 20,000, the largest women-led strike in U.S. History. Based on their GPS location they receive media from over 100 years in the past, interactive with digital characters as they work to gather a story for the fictional Jewish …

Nurturing Play-Makers & Active Investigative Agents: Schwartz Tag, Good Video Games And Futures Of Jewish Learning, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

How can an experiential approach to education, in combination with a games-based orientation, help us reach often-elusive educational goals? In many ways the study of games and game design bring us back to tenets of education that we have long known, including the benefits of self-directed learning and project-based work. Games-based design and learning may provide a way to shift the discussion from “What should an educated Jew know?” to “How does a learner develop a taste for Jewish learning and living?”

“All Data Is Credit Data,” Or, On Close Reading As A Reciprocal Process In Digital Knowledge Environments, John Hunter

Faculty Journal Articles

The new knowledge environments of the digital age are often described as places where we are all closely read, with our buying habits, location, and identities available to advertisers, online merchants, the government, and others through our use of the Internet. This is represented as a loss of privacy in which these entities learn about our activities and desires, using means that were unavailable in the pre-digital era. This article argues that the reciprocal nature of digital networks means 1) that the privacy issues that we face online are not radically different from those of the pre-Internet era, and 2) …

The Evolving Definition Of Narrative, Alexandra Birr

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

No abstract provided.

Study Guide For United In Anger: A History Of Act Up, Matt Brim

Open Educational Resources

The United in Anger Study Guide facilitates classroom and activist engagement with Jim Hubbard’s 2012 documentary, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. The Study Guide contains discussion sections, projects and exercises, and resources for further research about the activism of the New York chapter of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The Study Guide is a free, interactive, multimedia resource for understanding the legacy of ACT UP, the film’s role in preserving that legacy, and its meaning for viewers' lives.

Standardization, Compromise, Or Specialization: A Content Analysis Of Magazine Advertisements In America And Taiwan, Yi-Fan Chen

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

When researchers studied standardization and specialization of advertising, most of them only focused on comparisons of the cultural influences of the advertisements across the different nations. McCarty (1994) studied the general role in cross-cultural research and international marketing and advertising of several different cultural values, such as individualism versus collectivism: masculinity versus femininity; time orientation, activity orientation and humans’ relationship with nature. Kahle, Beatty and Mager (1994) studied implications of social values for European community communications. Astroff (1994) (1994) studied the language culture use of women in advertising.

Huang (1995) studied the different cultural factors, such as norms and ethics, …

A Survey Of Army Reserve Officer Training Corps Instructors To Determine The Importance Of Integrating News Media Training Into The Cadet Curriculum, Kent P. Cassella

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The cover of the November-December 1995 issue of Military Review is emblazoned with the quotation, “We don’t win unless CNN says we win.” This testament to the power of the news media in military operations was given by General John Shalikashvili, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was carried on the cover of this professional journal of the United States Army. The implied message in his statement is that professional military officers need to comprehend the power the news media have in a democratic society and their importance for the success of modem military operations.

War reporting …

An Experimental Study Of The Effects Of Army Recruitment Television Advertising On High School Seniors, Jeffrey A. Dean

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In order for Army recruiters in the Appalachian region to effectively reach their target audience through television advertising, they must know which segment within the overall stated target audience of high school seniors between the ages of 17 to 21 are most likely to be influenced by Army recruitment advertising. Recruiters must also determine the type of programming preferred by the primary target segment to enable recruiting messages to be placed in programming where it is likely to have the most impact and achieve maximum frequency of exposure among the most receptive audience.