Visual Studies Commons^™

Off The Rez: Witnessing Indigenous Knowledges Through Social Media, Deborah Hales

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

The term “Off the Rez” is used, in the title, to mean research that is not done on a reservation or in urban areas. This study aims to discover if social media can be used as an innovative option for non-Indigenous allies to conduct respectful research. The study research questions were, (1) can social media be used as a research tool, to witness Indigenous Knowledges? (2) Can social media be used as research, by non-Indigenous research allies, to have the least impact on Indigenous communities?

This research was conducted using social media, with selected Indigenous participants who were 18, identified …

Middle Savannah River: An A/R/Tographic Ecopedagogical Ethnography Experimenting With Rhizomatic Perspectives, Lisa Augustine-Chizmar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an experiment in perspective. Using the four commonplaces (Schwab, 1978), I practiced letting the Savannah River teach me what there is to know about the water, the land, the people, and the other entities that depend on ki through artistic, ethnographic, and ecopedagogical lenses. The ethnographic findings describe the social actors that depend on ki and give a voice to the River. The a/r/tographic findings display the River on a canvas map through two hundred years using paint, clay, photography, video, abstract acrylics, and fabric. Together, these methods contribute to a unique ecopedagogical journey. This word cloud …

Meet And Run, Gia M. Binner

Theses and Dissertations

A defense for Gia Binner’s MFA Thesis, Meet and Run, argues that accessible art, known in this paper as commercial dance, is a meaningful vehicle for social change and that it has the ability to dismantle the outdated, European concert dance dominance by modeling the interdependency of both worlds.

Press Any Button To Get Started: Approaching Japanese Culture And Society Through Video Games, Amanda Weber

East Asian Studies Honors Papers

This project argues for inclusion of video games into the liberal arts curriculum alongside more traditional texts. Three Japanese-developed video games are analyzed in terms of their appropriateness for the Ursinus Quest curriculum while also exploring their appropriation of characters, themes, and values from Japanese mytho-history. My approach incorporates the methodology introduced by the scholar James Paul Gee who studies video games through the lens of semiotics and gaming theory. Gee defines key elements presented in video games as ‘lifeworld domains,’ which incorporate cultures, societies, and individual and group experiences. The value of video games resides in the players’ development …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Writing Not Writing: Transdisciplinary Poetics, Institutional Critique, Miriam L. Atkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of transdisciplinary creative practice as a means of institutional critique. The artists I have chosen as my primary focus—Robert Kocik, Eleni Stecopoulos, Zora Neale Hurston, Jimmie Durham, Leslie Scalapino and Lyn Hejinian—employ multiple mediums and fields of discourse to address the presumptions and exclusions that are structurally integral to the institutions that house them. They enact “architextural” interventions through their use of forms that move between the page and three dimensional space, incorporating architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, performance, poetry and prose. My work aims at a renewed understanding of critique as such, and therefore—though …

Using Film As A Multimodal Text In The Language Classroom, Kate Marie Steckmest

MA TESOL Collection

Film is a powerful medium for language acquisition; Not only does viewing films allow learners to experience language used in various real-life contexts, but the medium of film itself is a form of communication. Through the active viewing of films, students can explore how people with diverse backgrounds, accents, and cultures communicate using multiple modes such as gestures, images, and sounds. When learners are familiar with the techniques used by filmmakers to convey meaning, they can use the medium of film themselves to tell their stories and share their perspectives through filmmaking projects. Such projects can be collaborative and engaging …

The Mother Of All Mysteries: How Mothers Are Disavowed And Undermined In Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), Juli Lindenmayer

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

This thesis explores how Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) depicts inadequate and detrimental examples of mother-figures in cinema through the characters Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca. While Mrs. Danvers’ oppressive control over the Manderley manor and her hardened demeanor towards the second Mrs. De Winter mark her as a sadistic mother-figure, Rebecca’s promiscuity, narcissism, and lack of empathy reflect the traits of a self-indulgent mother-figure who puts her needs first. Both expressions of motherhood serve to perpetuate the disavowal of mothers in film. This negative characterization serves to exemplify the long-held tradition of mothering as a source of trouble, which is largely …

The Writing For Healing And Transformation Project, Heather Elizabeth Osborn

Education Doctorate Dissertations

As a qualitative action research study, the purpose of The Writing for Healing and Transformation Project was to facilitate more inclusive writing strategies and to promote individual and collective healing on issues of social suffering and oppression (Kleinman, Das, & Lock, 1997; Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016) for diverse students at a community college located in the northeastern United States. The 18 participants in the study included students in my English II literature and composition course. The theoretical framework encompassed Pennebaker’s (2016) “writing for healing” paradigm, advocating the use of expressivist writing and “social suffering theory,” examining how power structures affect …

Whatever It Takes: Redemption, Individualism, Altruism And The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Rianna Jeanine Robinson

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Caudill College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Rianna Jeanine Robinson on December 14, 2020.

Paradigm Of The Unknown, Vasia A. Pemberton

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This project is about portraying the essence of certain unexplained or controversial areas of belief that affect the lives of each and every one of us whether or not we are aware of it. My focus is to explore these confusions over the paranormal, the existential, and the supernatural, by overlaying, compiling, and comparing these different narratives as well as connecting them to a sense of greater mystery, or a fundamental knowledge that we are somehow not privy to.

Indominable, Kathleen A. Fox

CGU MFA Theses

INDOMINABLE, Kathleen A Fox

The reformation of the feminine portrait from that of idealistic sexual beauty into a portrait of strength, community, longevity, transformation, and inane human foundational essence of societal value. This collection of portraits illustrates the uniqueness that is often overlooked for the fast, idealistic and instantly read images of women hailed as beautiful. These women contain a space they have earned with their strength of character, spirit, and unwillingness to be moved from their places of significance. Created with an expressive abstractive edge to traditional portraiture, these female portraits refuse to be easily glossed over, for their …

The Media, Education, And The State: Arts-Based Research And A Marxist Analysis Of The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Meng Zhao

Education (PhD) Dissertations

By 2019, the Syrian civil war has lasted for nearly eight years and it has created the largest humanitarian crisis since WWII (Achlume, 2015). Using the siege of Aleppo in 2016 as a case study, the author applied a Marxist-humanist theoretical framework and incorporated arts-based research methodology to examine how US news media supports capitalist social relations. The research question for this study was: how do the US media depictions of the siege of Aleppo, Syria in 2016 reflect capitalist social relations? There were three sub-questions that followed: (1) Which elements of the siege of Aleppo in 2016 get the …

"Name Her Reiko!": The Ikemiya Diaspora, Morgan Ikemiya

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This creative-nonfiction project encapsulates a Japanese family diaspora to America beginning in the late 1880s. Through short stories, poems, and monologues, the author expresses familial struggles such as living in a foreign land and being Japanese in White America. The author reflects on her grandparents' time in the Japanese internment camps where they faced hardship and hegemonic oppression as well as her father's experience of growing up Japanese-American in Los Angeles. The stories weave together history, hardship, and race to create a unique diaspora story.

Subtle Asian Womxn, Long Tran

Global Honors Theses

My involvement with the Global Honors Program culminates with a senior capstone project for T GH 496 Experiential Learning in Global Honors. Over the course of spring quarter, I had the opportunity to produce a documentary film, under the supervision of my faculty advisor, Dr. David Coon, to fulfill the requirements to graduate with a minor in Global Engagement and earn the full distinction from the program. My film actively engages with the intersection of the historical representations of Asian womxn and their lived experiences with dating. As of Wednesday, May 1, 2019, I have been able to interview 14 …

Dance Of Exile: The Sakharoffs’ Visual Performances In Montevideo (1935–1948), Pablo Munoz Ponzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life-work chronology of the dancers and choreographers Clotilde von Derp (whose surname then was Sakharoff) and Alexander Sakharoff, who were exiled in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1941 and 1948. During their stay in the Rio de la Plata region, the Sakharoffs stirred up the art scene by performing extremely detailed dances with great attention to costume design. This thesis begins with a review of the reception of the dancers’ performances by the artistic and cultural circles in Montevideo, arguing that the Sakharoffs’ “queer” trajectory resonated with the Uruguayan artistic community, influencing the creation …

Literarische Filmsimulation: Heinrich Eduard Jacobs Medienphilosophische Filmästhetik In "Blut Und Zelluloid", Paula Vosse

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heinrich Eduard Jacob´s novel Blut und Zelluloid was published in 1929 and therefore mostly reviewed as a critical artwork regarding European film-propaganda before the outbreak of the Second World War. This thesis provides the interested scholar with a different approach: It discusses Jacob´s media-philosophical method to simulate the upcoming medium film in literature. With his implicitly and explicitly organized systems of diverse media, he circumvents constraints of the Paragone-discourse and offers a well-balanced literary construction.

Jacob´s method is compared with Pinthus´ Kinobuch and Pirandello´s Shoot!, while Simmel and Benjamin provide the thesis with a fundament to support Jacob´s theoretical approach. …

The Cinematic College Professor: Conceptions And Representations, John C. Fitch Iii

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Depictions of college professors in American films are common, and while a number of studies have investigated various aspects of college life in motion pictures, few have focused exclusively on the cinematic professoriate. In addition to being an indelible part of history, cinematic depictions of college professors are part of the national discourse on the role and function of the faculty and university. An investigation of how college professors have been represented in American films, and how these representations are read and created by real-life college professors and filmmakers may provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between popular culture …

The Horse's Ass: A Survey Of Comediology, William M. Fisk

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

What is comedy? Can someone learn to be funny? Are there rules or guidelines for the production of laughter, the universal language? This paper, which outlines an investigation of successful comedians and the production of a short film, determines to aggregate as many of the relevant prerequisites of inducing giggles as possible, especially as they relate to the audiovisual medium of cinema.

Safeguarding For The Future: Managing Born-Digital Collections In Museums, Kimberly Kruse

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Over the past few decades, advancements in technology have changed society entirely. Every bit of information about world news, popular culture, and art is just a tap of a touchscreen away. So many aspects of the contemporary world have become digitized so that it was only a matter of time before museums would have to face the issue of born-digital media in their collections. From videos to web-based art, museums have to tackle how to save this new form of cultural heritage. Museums have to do so now before it gets lost forever. The challenge of born-digital objects lies in …

Navigating The Interim, Joseph E. Saphire Jr

Masters Theses

Navigating the Interim attempts to build a framework for the ways in which visual art, media studies, and forms of social practice might intermingle within a career in the arts, as well as within a thorough art education curriculum. From broad theoretical analysis to the specificity of technical exercises and prompts, this paper serves as a roadmap for the ways in which production, teaching, and organizing might begin to merge into a single holistic practice. The author’s projects provide an anchor from which to analyze the various conceptual trajectories of art that have stemmed from modernism throughout the 20th century, …

Scribblescholar Was Here: Confessional Notes Of A Vandal Academic, Clay Shields

Theses and Dissertations--English

As a (former) vandal-punk in the academy, I often fear succumbing to Ivory Tower Stockholm syndrome. The identities I perform, vandal-punk and scholar, ideologically clash to the point that they often feel irreconcilable. By codemeshing the high-low discourses associated with these adopted cultures, I attempt to disrupt any hierarchal privileging of either, instead searching for a way to live with and harness both.

Ar Physics: Transforming Physics Diagrammatic Representations On Paper Into Interactive Simulations., Yao Zhou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A problem representation is a cognitive structure created by the solver in correspondence to the problem. Sketching representative diagrams in the domain of physics encourages a problem solving strategy that starts from 'envisionment' by which one internally simulates the physical events and predicts outcomes. Research studies also show that sketching representative diagrams improves learner's performance in solving physics problems. The pedagogic benefits of sketching representations on paper make this traditional learning strategy remain pivotal and worthwhile to be preserved and integrated into the current digital learning landscape. In this paper, I describe AR Physics, an Augmented Reality based application that …

Motion Picture Screen Plays For The Study Of English As A Second Language, Frances Vivian Rudolph

MA TESOL Collection

This material contains six motion picture screenplays for the study of English as a second language. Each screenplay is lightly comical, situations and conflicts of interest to the high school age and above. The motion pictures, to be later made from the screenplays, will lend themselves to many facets of language learning, but more particularly to that of either values clarification, pronunciation, or sentence structure.