Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Saura Y Herzog: Dos Visiones Sobre La Búsqueda De El Dorado, Ramon Muniz Sarmiento

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Este ensayo realiza una comparación entre dos de las películas de los cineastas Werner Herzog y Carlos Saura. Ambas cintas se inspiran en un mismo suceso histórico: la expedición de Pedro de Ursúa en búsqueda de la mítica ciudad de El Dorado. Un aspecto central en ambas producciones es el personaje de Lope de Aguirre, quien es tratado de forma diferente bajo la mirada de los directores. La comparación se lleva a cabo con el fin de profundizar en el mensaje ideoestético e identitario de sendas producciones.

Stardom, Spectacle, Show, And Salability: United Artists And The Founding Of The Hollywood Blockbuster Model, Jessica Johnson

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

United Artists was an independent film distribution company that Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Mary Pickford jointly formed in 1919 to maintain creative autonomy over their work. Without the benefit of block booking practices through studio-owned theater houses, each founding artist established specific economic and aesthetic practices within their respective oeuvres in order to maintain company solvency. The resulting films produced during the company’s formative years (1919-1931) saw increased emphasis and innovation in regard to stardom, spectacle, show, and salability, features which ultimately innovated the model for the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster. Attributing the formation of the blockbuster to …

Batman’S Animated Brain(S): Paper Presented To The Batman In Popular Culture Conference, Lisa Kort-Butler

Department of Sociology: Presentations

I was in the beginning stages of a project on the social story of the brain (and a neuroscience more broadly), when a Google image search brought me a purchasable phrenology of Batman, then a Batman-themed Heart and Brain cartoon of the Brain choosing the cape-and-cowl.1 A quick search of “Batman brain” yielded something interesting: various pieces on the psychology of Batman (e.g., Langley 2012), Zehr’s (2008) work on Bruce Wayne’s training plans and injuries, the science fictions of Batman comics in the post-World War II era (Barr 2008; e.g., Detective Comics, Vol. 1, No. 210, 1954), going back to …

Touched By Grace? A Look At Grace In Bergman's Winter Light And Martin Luther's Writings, Kjartan Leer-Salvesen

Journal of Religion & Film

Ingmar Bergman holds a prominent place in the lineup of directors who have used cinema to investigate the meaning of life in a godless world. The so-called “Trilogy of God’s Silence” is often identified as the place where Bergman struggled most profoundly with core themes from the Christian faith. In Winter Light, he explores the topic of doubt, devastatingly, through a minister’s religious and existential crisis. This article, however, proposes that Martin Luther’s theology may provide resources for reappraising Bergman’s canonical film.

Tales As Old As Time: The Progression Of Classic Story Themes From Fairy Tales To Disney Films, Delaney N. Kunkle

Selected Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the original purpose of the most familiar fairy tales based on the state of society at the time of their conception, including the stories of the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen. The thesis will then compare these original themes to the themes of the Disney films they inspired, taking into account the cultural and historical factors that produced the final film. In addition, the thesis will take note of the modern interpretations of both the fairy tales and the films based on the viewpoint of our current society. In …

Discovering Faith In The Entertainment Industry, Leanna I. John

Selected Honors Theses

This thesis explores how secular entertainment can contain Christian themes and messages. Hollywood presents ideas that either agree with or contradict Christianity in the movies and shows that are produced. People need to be careful about what type of entertainment they decide to watch because they can become desensitized to graphic content. This thesis includes a selection of movies from multiple genres and the show Supernatural, and it describes the messages that are conveyed in them. Theology that comes from the Bible along with different Christian theologians, authors, and philosophers are provided to help people understand the truth of Jesus …

Reworking The White-Masculine Ideal, Steven H. Gonzalez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This text functions as an exploration of self through artistic practice, a designated space for reflection on contemporary Queer experience. In looking specifically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure as found within Western visual culture, social media and gay pornography become isolated as sites where these figures are commonly found. This line of inquiry defines how the ideal is reified through these differing digital platforms and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to determining the image of the perfect masculine physique through research, this text expands on how its' imaged representation becomes …

El Trabajo Y El Boxeo: Elegir Su Destino Frente A La Desigualdad, Cassandra R. Pritt

Student Publications

Florence Jaugey’s La Yuma was the first feature-length Nicaraguan film in twenty years when it was released in 2009 (Adams 172). Not only does the film constitute an effort by the director to establish the Nicaraguan film genre, but it also narrates a realistic vision of Nicaraguan society (Murillo 235). In this way, La Yuma can be considered both the dawn of the Nicaraguan film genre and an indictment of the actual social asymmetries present within the country’s capital, Managua. The film exposes the audience to the challenges that the protagonist, Yuma, faces due to the complex intersections between various …

1st Place Contest Entry: Countering The Current: The Function Of Cinematic Waves In Communist Vs. Capitalist Societies, Maddie Gwinn

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Maddie Gwinn's submission for the 2019 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on how the Czech New Wave and New Hollywood cinema are defined by their agency in preserving and prescribing cultural meaning across their societies while being bound to their economic systems, and her works cited list.

Maddie is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in Film Production. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Carmichael Peters.

Violence In The Hands Of Women: An Analysis Of Gendered Violence In Life Is Strange And Before The Storm, Mitchi Anne Maja

Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the video games Life is Strange and Before the Storm and how they serve to reflect social expectations and norms placed upon both women and men even today. Cultural studies recently accepted video games as a form of media to study, especially with the prevalence and accessibility of video games in various platforms. Violence in video games is culturally associated with men and the male audience; my analysis focuses on violence in the hands of women. By analyzing the choices I made as a player and how these games present their narratives and characters, …

Direct Action Housing: Exploring The History Of Tenant-Led Housing Struggles—On Film—In Nyc, Arielle Lawson

Publications and Research

This independent research project dives into the history of tenant-led housing struggles in New York City with a particular focus on using film archives and documentaries to highlight key moments and case studies when housing activism opened up new political imaginations, intersections and possibilities in the city.

As outlined in the Direct Action Housing zine, I curated and hosted four public events in the spring of 2019 on different aspects of housing struggles documented through archival film records. This series of housing history films was a starting point and catalyst to think about the role of and for the home …

"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis studies the evolution, ideology and use of the myth of La Llorona through time in the Hispanic World. Considering this myth as one of the most known traditional narratives of the American continent, I begin by providing visual, ethnohistorical and ethnographical insights of weeping in Mesoamerica and South America and the specific mention of a weeping woman in some Spanish chronicles to say how western values were stablished in “the new continent” through this legend. I suggest that during the postcolonialism the legend did not tell anymore about a mother that cries and search a place for their …

Musical Artists As Entrepreneurs: Assessing Popular Artists’ Brand Partnerships, Social Media Usage, And Performance Of Identity Politics, Amara Pope

FIMULAW

Today’s popular music artists have the potential power to shape hegemonic ideologies of identity categories across multiple media and industries. This position of power is unique to modern musical artists due to recent changes in the music industry’s business model and the introduction of social media. Record sales have diminished. Labels and artists have adapted in new and creative ways with a heavier reliance on brand partnerships. I wish to fill a gap in the literature that explores how brand partnerships may affect modern musical artists’ performances of identity politics through three case studies: Drake, Post Malone, and Cardi B.

A Commentary On Narrative Platforms, Cinematic Universes, And Consumers Formerly Known As The Audience, Andreas Treske, Aras Ozgun

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

The Unfree Space Of Play: Emergence And Control In The Videogame And The Platform, Logan Brown

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This article attempts to understand the economic and informatic ramifications of the convergence between increasingly connective games and massive online platforms by considering recent trends in both that center around designing for emergence. Scholarship on emergence as a property of games overwhelmingly treats emergent design as a liberating force that privileges player agency in a virtual space. Yet, as games fuse with surrounding platform ecosystems like Steam, Facebook, and Google, those emergent behaviors are subject to vast systems of inscription that analyze user behavior in order to reshape the free space of emergence and extract greater social and financial capital. …

[Cntrl] + [Alt] + [Esc] ? Virtual Platforms As Spaces Of Control And Contestation, Aras Ozgun

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Novel Media: Global Contemporary Fiction In The Digital Age, Mary Catherine Pappalardo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Novel Media argues that contemporary literature—particularly the novel form—is best decoded in terms of the new media forms that have proliferated since the dawn of the internet. Perhaps no other development has so dramatically shaped contemporary life than the ubiquity of the internet, internet-capable devices, and the myriad social networks that have blossomed within. Fiction is no different; the social media forms that dominate our lives online have also, I argue, rewired the way novels work in the twenty-first century. As such, a new reading practice is required that attends to these seismic changes to the novelistic terrain. The project …

Modes Of Cartoon Corporeal Performance, Gregory Langner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation project works to introduce and interrogate a phenomenon I am calling cartoon corporeality. The phenomenon refers to the varied ways in which cartoons “escape” their usual two-dimensionality through performance, appearing to manifest in physical environments in ways that should be understood as culturally impactful. Cartoon corporeality encompasses different modes of performance wherein the explicit visual presence of a cartoon subject informs an immediately observable physical impact through the body of the performer. I interrogate the phenomenon by focusing on four select modes of cartoon corporeal performance: videogame play, cosplay, theatrical adaptation, and the active weaving of cartoons …

Vulnerability And Resistance In Carmen Aguirre’S Mexican Hooker #1, Cinta Mesa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Vulnerability and Resistance in Carmen Aguirre’s Mexican Hooker#1,” Cinta Mesa examines Chilean-Canadian playwright and actress Carmen Aguirre’s latest autobiographical novel, Mexican Hooker#1, to analyze Latina vulnerability in relation to exile, emigration, gender violence and stereotypes. The article relies upon Judith Butler’s definition of vulnerability (20), which is excluded from official texts. The consequences of these types of trauma, which are written on female bodies, are expressed through post-traumatic stress disorder. The author expresses the difficulty of acting because of her post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and the challenges she meets on her way to heal herself and …

Motherhood, Vulnerability And Resistance In The Elysium Testament By Mary O’Donnell, María Elena Jaime De Pablos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Mary O’Donnell’s novel The Elysium Testament (1999) narrates the story of Nina, an accomplished grotto restorer, but a neglectful wife and mother according to the Irish patriarchal symbolic order –the “register of regulatory ideality” (Butler, Bodies that Matter 18). Estranged from her husband, Neil, she sends him a series of letters, her “testament,” where some of the most significant aspects of her life are exposed. Readers discover that Nina’s and Neil’s marriage begins to crumble after the birth of their second child, Roland, to whom Nina attributes a frightening dual nature, which she tries to control through physical and psychological …

Chase Riboud’S Hottentot Venus (2003) And The Neo-Victorian: The Problematization Of South-Africa And The Vulnerability And Resistance Of The Black Other, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article touches upon issues of captivity, suppression, misrepresentations and exclusion of black people from a historical and cultural point of view through the analysis of Chase-Riboud’s neo-Victorian novel Hottentot Venus (2003). It also focuses on the implications and consequences for contemporary South Africa of situations of slavery and exploitation of African descended peoples. Notions of identity and moral and legal inclusion of black women into past and contemporary societies and communities will be also discussed from the point of view of postcolonial and gender and sexuality studies. The complexities of blackness and the violation of human rights as a …

The Commodified Body And Post/In Human Subjectivities In Frears’S Dirty Pretty Things And Romanek’S Never Let Me Go, Rocio Carrasco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Following new materialist analysis, this article takes the body as the central locus of analysis, and relates it to broader questions such as ethics, ideology, power and/or technologies. Specifically, it revolves around the idea of embodied subjectivity as articulated by scholars Rosi Braidotti, Sherryl Vint or Cary Wolfe, whereby body and subjectivity are indissolubly and interestingly connected. Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) exploit the idea of the commodified body, understood here as a vulnerable body, a disposable commodity at the service of powerful and/or wealthy people. Victims of the cruelties inflicted …

Trespassing Physical Boundaries: Transgression, Vulnerability And Resistance In Sarah Kane’S Blasted (1995), Paula Barba Guerrero, Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Sarah Kane’s Blasted has been analyzed from various perspectives that address the layers of destruction it exposes. From the questioning of its title and meaning, to the unravelling of the protagonists’ abusive relationship, the analyses have emphasized the depiction of vulnerability as the defining human trait that Jean Ganteau observes in contemporary British literature. However, a key aspect has been overlooked in the critical response to the play: for Kane vulnerability does not equal helplessness, but rather stands in opposition to it. Hence, this article concentrates on how Blasted formulates a new understanding of vulnerability that fits Judith Butler’s later …

Introduction, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz, Manuela Coppola

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue addresses contemporary representations of “vulnerable” bodies in transit in Anglophone literature and culture and explores their strategies of resistance. The use of the expression “bodies in transit” in this issue has to be understood both as a reference to the materiality of diasporic, exiled, migrating, trafficked bodies, and as an allusion to the metaphorical transition of these marginalized subjects from alienation to regeneration in multiple contexts. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue tackle vulnerability as a marginal(ized) and potentially enabling condition entailing the crossing of bodily, sexual, mental, ethical, cultural, and national borders. Ranging from literature …

Representations Of Immigration In Québécois Film, Roland R. Buchta

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Québec is a region where national identity plays a particularly important role, mainly due to its social context, and the historical influence of anglophones on the province’s affairs. This element is reflected in its cinematic productions, as Santoro, Bachand, Desroches and Loiselle stated, “Québec cinema is indeed but the most recent example of the Québécois’ ability to translate their cultural specificity into an enduring and increasingly appreciated source of cultural and economic vitality” (161). Santoro et al further claimed that “Québec cinema is indeed a rich and increasingly diversified art form and has taken its place on the world stage …

Intertwined Markings: Metafiction In The Digital Age, Taylor Danielle Orgeron

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Intertwined Markings: Metafiction in the Digital Age maps the historical and thematic relationship between video games and contemporary works of metafiction first by detailing the intertwined histories of video games and contemporary metafiction, and then by applying new materialist and game studies methodologies to both video games and contemporary novels. Not only does the height of postmodern metafiction directly coincide with the introduction of home consoles and the golden age of arcade video games in the 1970s, but the same postmodern works considered to be canonical in metafiction studies are also those lauded as the first hypertexts in new media …

Behind Closet Doors: Horror And Dislocation In The Queer Closet, Corey C. Allen

Theses and Dissertations

“Behind Closet Doors: Horror and Dislocation in the Queer Closet,” is composed of a collection of sculptures, videos, and sound works that are directly associated with themes of horror and anxiety derived from the precarious space of the queer closet as detailed in this thesis of the same name.

Dinesh Sabu Interview, Mitch Buangsuwon

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Dinesh Sabu made his first feature documentary Unbroken Glass with Kartemquin Film. It played at numerous film festivals and was broadcast on America ReFramed’s 5th Season in May 2017. Dinesh was awarded “Best Director” at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival in 2017 for his debut feature. Before Unbroken Glass, Dinesh shot parts of American Arab and The Homestretch with Kartemquin filmmakers. He also shot and is co-producing the forthcoming How to Build a School in Haiti with director Jack C. Newell. He is currently attending Stanford University’s Documentary Film and Video MFA program.

Scipp: An Expanded Community Of Practice - Community Publishing, Juan Delgado, Kelly (Kl) Straight Dortch, Daiana Rodriguez, Alex Avila, William Beshears, Juliana Cruz, Gina Hanson, Frank Houlihan, Lacey Kendall, Larry Light, Cati Porter, Molly Tor, Timothy "Isaac" Pieper, Bianka Sanchez, Sara Trowbridge, Daniel Aguilar, Bernardo Benigno, Arely Bernal, Alejandra Bueno, Emily Campos, Jason Cannon, Griselda Caudillo Gallo, Joshua Clemente, Sarah Coblentz, Diana D'Arcangelo, Georgia Darwin, Mary Grace Deasis, Kaylan Els, Keith Fernandez, Maria Flores, Khiyara Frontela, Anthony Galvan, Monica Galvez, Martin Garcia, Jessica Godin, Freda Guzman, Madison Hall, Diana Huitron Munoz, Jennifer Ledesma, Maria Lias Chacon, Rebekah Linares, Prisma Loya, Elijah Magana, Alberto Mancillas, Lorinda Maya, Jennifer Pimentel, Nancy Ramirez, Angelica Rodriguez, Alexis Ruvalcaba, Sandra Sandoval De Rosas, Emily Stoddard, Andrea Tinajero, Lesly Velez Montenegro, Saulo Velez Montenegro, Matthew Vigil, Sergio Zamora, Marylou Alvarez, Roxanna Cervantes, Tenaya Fuentes, Wendy Moreno, David Valenzuela, Philip Colunga, Augustine "Auggie" Fuentes, Nadia Fuentes, Olive Fuentes, Sophia Fuentes, Miraya Martinez, Diego Mercado, Iker Valenzuela, Roma Valenzuela

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

SCIPP redefines and expands the existing notions about what makes for a vibrant and robust community of practice by partnering CSUSB students and professors with K-12 students, parents, and educators, along with committed community partners. SCIPP encourages curiosity in ways that leads to critical thinking, exploration, "risk taking", confidence building, open-mindedness, and other personal traits that equip them with the softskills to be active, critical, and creative contributors to our communities. SCIPP pedagogy embraces our students' collective wisdom and focuses on relational building where multi-directional communication is promoted and students are viewed as equal stakeholders in their own educations. SCIPP …

Annual Report 2018-2019, Depaul University College Of Computing And Digital Media

CDM Annual Reports

LETTER FROM THE DEAN

I am pleased to share with you the 2018-19 College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM) annual report, highlighting the important work done by our faculty, students, and staff. We’ve said this before, and we’ll say it again: it was a big year. In 2018-19, programs across all three of our schools (Computing, Cinematic Arts, and Design) were ranked nationally. Our faculty were published in dozens of scholarly journals, screened their films over 100 times, and had their work exhibited globally. Student and alumni accomplishments included an Emmy nomination, a first place win in a Department …