Visual Studies Commons^™

Hyping The Hyperreal: Postmodern Visual Dynamics In Amy Heckerling’S Clueless, Andrew Urie

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

An iconic staple of 1990s Hollywood cinema, director-screenwriter Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995) is a cult classic. This article examines the film’s postmodern visual dynamics, which parody hyperreal media culture and its connection to feminine teen consumerism amidst the image-saturated society of mid-’90s era Los Angeles.

Architectural And Curatorial Extensions Of Extraction At The Royal Ontario Museum, Camille-Mary Sharp

Visual Arts Publications

No abstract provided.

Myth And Monument In Old Town Albuquerque: Southwest Pietà And The War Of Presiding Histories, Eric Castillo

Regeneración: A Xicanacimiento Studies Journal

Luis Jiménez’s Southwest Pietà (1984) intended to combat cultural amnesia that obscured Native Americans’ and Mexicans’ contributions to the state. Jiménez’s Pietà sought to counter the iconography that shaped New Mexico’s colonialist heritage. But Old Town Albuquerque shrouds Native American and Mexican contributions to the region. Albuquerque’s public art has often been deployed as a wedge to write and rewrite narratives about land inhabitants, but the city’s public art tells a powerful story about race and place in New Mexico. This essay explores the socio-historical battle of land memorialization in Old Town Albuquerque and provides a geo-racial perspective about the …

We're Swarming Again! Swarming, Collectivity, And Trope: The Case Of Extinction Rebellion, Tyler J. Behymer

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores the rhetoric of the eco-movement Extinction Rebellion, focusing on the use of swarming and nature tropes to mobilize collective action and revivify contemporary notions of collectivity. Drawing on rhetoric of social movement scholarship, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis, this essay theorizes swarming as a tropological economy that expands the conditions of propriety in the context of collectivity. Through an analysis of Extinction Rebellion’s discourse, this study demonstrates how the naturalization of swarming tropes works in various ways to rewild conventional political discourse, galvanize disruptive collective assembly, and challenge green neoliberalism.

Advisor: Casey Ryan Kelly

Exploring Gen Z’S Identity Formation And Its Influence On Consumption Of Pop Culture And Entertainment Merchandise, Melisa Annette Spilinek

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Fandoms have grown in size and influence, becoming a complex and dynamic cultural phenomenon that richly impacts the consumption of media and consumer behavior. The capitalistic United States with its diverse and media-savvy population, is a prime destination to study fan studies, particularly among young adults who are a crucial component of fandom influence.

The internet has grown to be a major component of the fan experience, an integral part of fandom culture. Online communities provide avenues for Generation Z to connect with others who share similar struggles, challenges, and interests, highlighting the importance of digital platofrms on the evolution …

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

Into The Wild: A Journey Paddling The Lower Mississippi River With Quapaw Canoe Company, Sarah Caroline Crall

Honors Theses

Humanity’s profound relationship with water is undeniable. From our reliance on it for sustenance and transportation to the recreation it provides, water is a fundamental aspect of our existence. Yet, in our contemporary era, we find ourselves increasingly disconnected from this life-giving source that shapes us and our surroundings. The Mississippi River stands as a prime example of this detachment. Often overlooked as a lifeless river, nothing more than the backdrop to our daily lives, its significance as the heart of America is underappreciated and misunderstood by many. This thesis embarks on a journey to share the true reality that …

The Phygital Design Process: Using Emerging Technologies To Create A Phygital Fashion Brand Rooted In Nostalgia, Madeline M. Mcdaniel

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This Master's Project is a comprehensive exploration of the intersection of digital fashion design, nostalgia, and sustainable practices. Its primary objective is to create 'project CYBERBAE,' a phygital fashion collection that draws inspiration from early 2000s video game characters, trends, and aesthetics. The project utilizes advanced digital tools like Clo3D to demonstrate a comprehensive digital fashion design process that emphasizes inclusivity and sustainability. It also pioneers the development of a 3D virtual world, providing users with an immersive environment to interact with and experience digital fashion. This virtual space serves as a platform for a community of fashion, technology, and …

Ang Mapanglasong Dagta Ng Homophobia: Pagsusuri Ng Kasarian At Pagnanasa Sa "Nagmahal Ako [Ng Bakla]" Ng Dagtang Lason (The Toxic Sap Of Homophobia: An Analysis Of Kabaklaan, Masculinity, And Desire In Dagtang Lason’S "Nagmahal Ako [Ng Bakla]"), Johann Vladimir Espiritu

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Gamit ang malapitang pagbabasa, sinusuri ng artikulong ito ang kantang “Nagmahal Ako [ng Bakla]” ng Dagtang Lason (2009) upang tunghayan ang pagkakahulugan nito sa kabaklaan. Isang seksyon ito ng higit na malawakang pag-aaral sa kabaklaan bilang karakter na nilalaman ng kantang bakla—o mga awit na nagmumula sa [personang] bakla, patungo sa [hantungang] bakla, o may pinatutungkulang [kuwento ng] bakla—nitong huling apat na dekada. Ang pagbasa/panunuri ay nakaangkla sa teoryang queer na kombinasyon ng samutsaring kritikang kapwa kanluranin at lokal, at nakatutok sa tatlong pangunahing salik: ang titik [o teksto, lyrics ng kanta], ang tinig [na kinakatawan ng literal na …

The Power Of Polish: Exploring The Impact Of Nail Adornments On Perceptions Of Attraction, Sara Demichele

Honors Theses

Understanding the significance of nail adornments in shaping perceptions of attractiveness and mate value provides insights into human behavior and preferences. In the current investigation, participants rated human nail length and color on physical attractiveness and partner desirability measures. Results revealed significant effects of nail length and color across different demographic groups. Medium-length nails consistently received higher ratings for physical attractiveness, cuteness, and partner desirability compared to short and long nails. White-colored nails were generally rated most attractive, while blue and black nails received the lowest ratings. Additionally, participants reported a moderate association between having manicured nails and feelings of …

Identifying Youth Appeals In Alcohol Alternative Social Media Content Through Framing, Melina Oneal

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Proposed regulations for alcohol advertising prevent beverage companies from targeting people under the legal drinking age. However, similar regulations for alcohol alternative beverages are less explored, which could allow alcohol alternative products to create awareness for alcoholic beverages among youth. Alcohol alternatives beverages, including no-alcohol and low-alcohol products, are increasing in popularity and can function as compliments to alcoholic products to decrease the total alcohol volume consumed or as substitutes for alcoholic products. Framing theory can be operationalized through the Content Appealing to Youth Index, an index of content elements found in research literature to be appealing to youth, to …

From Screen To Classroom: The Role Of Televised Narratives In Enhancing Educational Belongingness For Black American Students, Feyi Oshinyemi

Masters Theses

This creative thesis examines the influence of televised narratives on shaping the educational experiences of Black American students, exploring the interplay between media representation and educational belonging. It proposes how televisual narratives can better reflect and support the educational identities of Black American students, aiming to foster a greater sense of belonging and representation in educational media. This document serves as an accompaniment to the center of this work, a twelve minute pilot episode that explores the challenges and triumphs of students navigating their educational journeys. This work not only provides a detailed breakdown of the episode's narrative and production …

Media Literacy Policy In Morocco: A Strategic Milestone Missing, Abderrahim Chalfaouat, Karim Essoufi

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In the digital age, diverse walks of human life have reconfigured profoundly. In the Moroccan society, digitalisation plans and the skyrocketing numbers of internet users necessitate coping literacy policies. While several community initiatives have been taken to improve the quality of media literacy, they, as bottom-up efforts, cannot suffice to meet the needs of the whole Moroccan population. Rather, the absence of a central, nationwide, cross-sectoral media literacy policy significantly challenges the effective coordination of official strategies and community initiatives in media education. This article investigates current practices in media literacy in Morocco. Using document analysis, it delves into data …

From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

The Influence Of The Abraham Accords On The Visual Coverage Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict In Arab Media: A Comparative Analysis, Mona Alsaba

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the influence of the official signing of the Abraham Accords on the Arab media visual coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This study operationalized visual frames in terms of the human-interest vs technical frame and peace vs war frame, and explored the use of graphic portrayal as a framing device, in order to compare between the Arab media visual framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before and after the official signing of the Abraham Accords to examine the impact of foreign policy on the coverage among news outlets of different Arab countries. A comparative analysis was conducted relying on …

Metamorphis, Luca Lee Sobarzo Faust

Theses and Dissertations

Web3D interactive experience that explores time, communication, and transformation, from a personal storytelling perspective. Hosted on a web platform, the experience displays three environments: Metamorphis, Cuir AI, and Hain. These spaces propose a fragmented narrative that seeks to interrogate both the characters and the viewer’s perception on the linearity of time

(Re)Constructing National Memory In Neoliberal Chile Through Patricio Guzman's The Cordillera Of Dreams (2019), Mica Barrett

Scripps Senior Theses

One of the most renowned Chilean exile filmmakers is Patricio Guzmán. Best known for his documentary work regarding the Allende years, Guzmán has continued to make films regarding his homeland in the decades following his initial exile.

The Cordillera of Dreams is the concluding film in a trilogy exploring the natural lands of Chile and their relationship to physical remnants of the human past. The initial and most renowned film in the series, Nostalgia for the Light, centers the Atacama Desert and Chileans’ relationship to the geography as a gateway to revealing artifacts of Chile’s recent history of genocide …

A Photo Documentary: Exploring Queer Identities In Kwazulu-Natal, Nicholas Graves

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Media can be a powerful tool in examining the structures of power that both hinder and advance LGBTQIA+ representation and subsequently, lived experiences. Therefore, being able to understand the varying feelings that everyday South Africans feel towards queer people, will be measured through the media that people consume. For the vast majority of South Africans, this would look like movies, TV soap operas, and discussions that take place on the radio. Understanding the role media plays within the country is vital to understanding the overall progress that has been made.

The media’s ability to reflect lived experiences within gay and …

Cinema Studies, Burak Turten

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

PREFACE

Cinema Studies is a comprehensive book that, is hoped, will provide students and researchers with film studies and other persons interested in cinema with a useful reference book on film analysis and, where relevant, the different discussions surrounding that. The contributors analyze some films using ideas and concerns from modernism, cinematographic narrative, ideology, propaganda, migration, nomadism, and the sense of revenge. The book provides new insights into films and turns the discussion towards recent research questions and analyses, representing and constituting in each contribution new work in the discipline of film text analysis.

Therefore, each chapter of this book, …

The Message Design Of Raiders Of The Lost Ark On The Atari 2600 & A Fan’S Map, Quick Start, And Strategy Guide, Miguel Ramlatchan, William I. Ramlatchan

Distance Learning Faculty & Staff Books

The message design and human performance technology in video games, especially early video games have always been fascinating to me. From an instructional design perspective, the capabilities of the technology of the classic game consoles required a careful balance of achievable objectives, cognitive task analysis, guided problem solving, and message design. Raiders on the Atari is an excellent example of this balance. It is an epic adventure game, spanning 13+ distinct areas, with an inventory of items, where those hard to find items had to be used by the player to solve problems during their quest (and who would have …

Inaccessible Interpolated Imagery: How Coffee Farmers In The State Of Chiapas Might Access Political Economic Opportunity Through Representation, Paolo Fiann Bicchieri

Master's Theses

Here is a useful parable to boil down the idea of this project and set the tone: when one goes to the bar to tell a story about a fight at the bar, they would never venture to place themselves as the hero of the brawl, taking out three drunkards in a single punch, unless they were really in the bar, at that time, fighting a good fight. One would never do this as the bartender, locals, and regulars would all know if this were the case or not. Yet transnational corporations, governments, and even consumers do this all the …

Because Potato, Candice Evers

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …

A More Equitable Film Pedagogy: Including Media Literacy In Higher Education Film Classrooms To Result In Better Media Practitioners, Alexis Romero Walker

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article explains the importance of including critical media literacy practices in skills-based classrooms in film education. Students continue to use methods of filmmaking that are inherently biased because they continue to be taught an age-old set of skills that do not engage in critical analysis. With the convergence of contemporary film theory in the classroom, educators can help students learn new methods of filmmaking that are representative for all communities and people. Through textual analysis of three films, this article shows why educators in higher education film programs must include critical media literacy in the skills course curriculum and …

The Shape Of Things: A Theatrical Examination Of The Progression Of Emotional Manipulation, Kylee Lorio

Honors Projects

In Neil LaBute's work, The Shape of Things, graduate art student Evelyn Thompson meets security guard and future muse, Adam Sorenson, in an art museum during his late-night shift. Their meeting poses the question of just how far humans are willing to go for love. In less than two hours, LaBute’s insight regarding manipulation between intimate partners calls the integrity of our own interpersonal relationships into question. This project encapsulates the materials of Bridgewater College student Kylee Lorio while directing this production during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lee Isaac Chung, Minari (2020): Having An Amerikorean Life, Nagehan Uzuner

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Minari by Lee Isaac Chung is a drama which chronicles the life of a Korean family who moves to the USA during 1980s in pursuit for a better life. The acculturation process is experienced differently by family members. Children are mostly bored with their new life in the rural area of Arkansas while their mother, Monica, is terrified of living in a mobile home which is made of a truck trailer in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, the grandmother joins the family from Korea to take care of the kids with a more positive approach dealing with their struggles. The …

Sensing Brownness: On Racialization, Perception, And Method, Amber Jamilla Musser

Publications and Research

Maureen Catbagan’s Dark Matter (2020) photography series invites us into sensing brownness. In these images of museum passages and stairwells, silhouettes of museum guards, and evocative shadows, Catbagan presents the landscape of the museum. However, this may not be immediately recognizable because the photographs draw focus to the parts of museums to which we rarely pay attention. In particular, Catbagan’s attention to the presence of guards allows us to perceive dynamics of racialized and gendered labor and laborers who, in an echo of their architectural focus on minor, peripheral spaces and shadows, hover between the underrecognized and oft-neglected, thereby allowing …

A Stillness In The Desert? Engaging The Public Through An Immersive Exploration Of Southwest Soundscapes, Julian Kilker, Thomas Bjelic

Creative Collaborations

The pandemic highlighted the anthropocentric nature of soundscapes, while the recent popularity of electric cars, quadcopters, and “noise cancellation” earbuds demonstrated how consumer products can rapidly change our awareness of sound. While light pollution is already extensively addressed in scholarly research, popular works such as The End of Night, and public engagement such as The International Dark Sky Association, the complex interplay of sound, natural resources, and public engagement is still emerging, particularly in creative fields.

Two UNLV scholars and artists are collaborating on this project: Julian Kilker, who specializes in visual and emerging technology research, and Tom Bjelic, who …

Perhabs I Will: A Content Analysis And Media Production Focusing On Contemporary Comedy And Comedians, Abs Anderson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This research examined the comedy talk shows Billy on the Street (2011-2017), The Eric Andre Show (2012-present), and Ziwe (2021-present) in order to discover the specific types of humor incorporated within their programs. This study searched for the presence of cringe, stand-up, surreal, sketch, and improvisational comedy in each show. The study analyzed each program using the benign violation theory and the hierarchy of influences model. A content analysis of 15 episodes selected across every program found at least three of the five genres present in their content. An additional purpose of this study was to produce a comparable program …