Visual Studies Commons^™

A Twilight World Of Unspeakable Horror: Lesbian Camp And The Vampire Lovers (1970), Mirielle Lemay

University Honors Theses

From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, a wave of lesbian vampire themed exploitation films proliferated through UK, US, and Western European cinemas. In critical literature on this subgenre, camp reading is often dismissed, unacknowledged, or understood as circumscribed by authorial intent and/or intended audience. With this alternating lack of attention to and dismissal of camp, the interpretive agency of the queer spectator is constrained, their spectatorship implicitly subordinated to that of the "conventional" horror audience—the voyeuristic-sadistic male spectator. Through a reading of The Vampire Lovers, a 1970 British production from Hammer Studios, I seek to explore how …

Pathos, Winter 2026, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione

Pathos, Fall 2025, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione

Intersectional Realities, Multi-Dimensional Films: Reading Julie Dash's Illusions As An Activist Text, Amelia Morrison

University Honors Theses

This paper reads Julie Dash's 1982 film Illusions as an activist text, which challenges dominant cinematic and historical narratives through its Black feminist perspective. It explores the cinematic and narrative devices that Dash uses--including the weaving of fantasy and history, the strategic use of period aesthetics, and masking--to expose and subvert the mechanisms of white supremacist and patriarchal hegemony within Hollywood. Drawing on intersectional feminist theory from scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, and bell hooks, alongside cinematic theory, this analysis demonstrates how Illusions critiques the historical erasure of people of color from United States cinema and history. By …

Cultural Shadows: Vampires And The Shifting Fears Of The West, A Creative Exploration Of Vampire Media And Its Reflection Of Evolving Social Anxieties, Tasha Sayre

University Honors Theses

Cultural Shadows: Vampires and the Shifting Fears of the West is a creative-critical thesis that explores vampire media as a reflection of evolving social anxieties in Western culture. Focusing primarily on film and television, with reference to key literary texts, this study examines how the vampire figure is used to articulate and dramatize recurring societal fears—particularly those surrounding women's sexuality and autonomy, queer identity, and class-based inequality. Through close readings of influential vampire narratives, the thesis demonstrates how these stories mirror cultural tensions and moral panics, transforming the vampire into a symbol of both fear and fascination. Drawing on gender …

A House With No Walls Where Persimmons Grow In The Garden: Photography As A Collaborative Feminist Practice And Using Archives To Reframe The Present, Jada Wheeler

University Honors Theses

A House With No Walls is an investigation of the idea of chosen family, as it exists apart from the influence of any institution. It alludes to the home as a place that exists within space shared with the people we choose as family and within our own free bodies. This project investigates the collaborative potential of photography, and uses it as a tool in creating a feminist representation of family. All the photographs were made with close friends, in an unplanned and spontaneous manner, to document intimate moments of our everyday lives.

Where Persimmons Grow In The Garden is …

Pathos, Spring 2025, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione

Pathos, Winter 2025, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione

Pathos, Fall 2024, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione

Pathos, Spring 2023, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Stephanie Gresham

Pathos, Winter 2023, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Pathos, Fall 2022, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Pathos, Spring 2022, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Pathos, Winter 2022, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggel

Pathos, Fall 2021, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Pathos, Fall 2021, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

"The Caucasian Persuasion Here In The 'Dale": Othering, White Normality, And Post-Racialism In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Isaiah Lee

University Honors Theses

This thesis engages the construction of race within the television landscape of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to investigate how well-meaning, progressive media either reinvents or repudiates racial stereotype. This paper also examines the figure of the Other, as it is evoked in horror, and utilizes Hazel Carby's conception of the fantasized black subject to analyze the setting and characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with an eye towards the inherent assumptions the show makes about race. Ultimately, I argue that Buffy's representation of race assumes a white normality, flattening its non-white characters under the guise of inherent difference, even …

Pathos, Spring 2021, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Pathos, Winter 2021, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Claire Miller

Pathos, Fall 2020, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Interim Editor-in-Chief: Claire Miller

Pathos, Spring 2020, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Claire Miller

Pathos, Winter 2020, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Pathos, Fall 2019, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Pathos, Spring 2019, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Pathos, Winter 2019, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Pathos, Fall 2018, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Pathos, Spring 2018, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Volume 12 No. 3

Pathos, Winter 2017-2018, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Volume 12 No. 2

Pathos, Spring 2017, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Jessica Moore

Volume 11 No. 3

Pathos, Winter 2017, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Jessica Moore

Volume 11 No. 2