Visual Studies Commons^™

The Making Of Everyday Hollywood: 1930s Film Influence On Everyday Women’S Fashion In Nebraska, Anna Naomi Kuhlman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research examines the influence of film fashions on middle-class, Nebraskan women’s dress during the Great Depression (1932-1940). The Great Depression challenged the middle class: while standards of living remained high, the economic means to achieve those standards diminished. Despite the crisis, women strove to keep up with current fashion trends. While previous literature has examined how Hollywood directly affected trends and styles of the 1930s in major American metropolitan contexts, the manifestation of trends in the dress of middle to lower socio-economic classes in Middle America remains under-examined. Against the backdrop of Depression-era hardships specific to Nebraska’s agricultural economy, …

“For Now We See In A Mirror, Dimly”: Dialectical Wholeness In Oshii Mamoru’S Ghost In The Shell, Mari Aida

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay argues that Oshii Mamoru's 1995 animated film Ghost in the Shell, while indicating possible alliances with the political interests of cyberfeminism, ultimately advocates for the oppositional agenda of dialectical wholeness. Foundational texts of cyberfeminism, such as Donna J. Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," have criticized narratives of isolation and a return towards a primordial wholeness implicit in Euro-American scientific culture. In the context of these texts, the cyborg symbolizes a departure from such narratives and guides the political project of reimagining epistemological boundaries. However, despite its apparent alignment with such projects, Ghost in the Shell dramatizes and …

The Wheel Of Power In Hbo's Game Of Thrones, Inbar Shaham

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Maps the familial power struggles and patterns of inheritance of Westeros as depicted in the television adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series by using A.J. Griemas’s semiotic square. Applying this framework to the title logo of the series also supports this interpretation.

Xbox In Japan? Understanding The Distinctions Of The Japanese Video Game Market To Increase Microsoft's Competitive Advantage, Sekani Adebimpe

Senior Theses

Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony remain the biggest players in the video game console space. While all three companies have achieved worldwide success, Microsoft’s performance with the Xbox brand in Japan is an outlier for its historically poor sales numbers dating back to its 2001 debut. The purpose of this thesis is to unearth the various cultural distinctions inherent to the Japanese gaming industry that Microsoft must consider to gain a stronger foothold in the country, as well as diagnose the biggest issues facing Xbox with Japanese consumers. To accomplish this, several cultural frameworks were used to assess the differences between …

Technology Of Cinematic Architecture In Science Fiction Movies, Hasan Al-Haj, Lena Hosni, Rana Ghannoum

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Cinematic architecture in the broadest terms, portrayed spaces as a scene, where it conceives and reads the built environment in terms of sequences. It explores the effect of futuristic architecture and highlight the significant role of cinematic architecture in the society. Both movies and architecture function as languages, with two components: the signifiers, which are the tangible forms of signs, and the signified, which are the concepts, thoughts, and ideals that the signifiers contain. Unfortunately, the world is experiencing fast changes as a result of the massive rise of technology and capitalism, and the cinema industry plays an important role …

Memorias De Mi Familia, Melissa Z. Montero

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Memorias de Mi Familia is an hour-long personal documentary through which I explore the meaning of “home.” I was born and raised in New York to a Puerto Rican mother and Ecuadorian father and lived between two worlds—sometimes more. While on a visit to Puerto Rico with my mother, Sylvia, I search for belonging and explore my family’s story of migration between the island and the United States.

Through interviews, family films, home videos and photographs spanning over 60 years, I examine the revolving migration pattern common to many Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora, a …

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 …

The Puppy In The Polka Dot Pajamas: A Multimedia Approach To Children's Literature, Grace Phillips

Honors Projects

In a world that seemingly becomes crueler by the day, some topics are not handled with the tact they require and deserve. Issues of bullying and self-expression can often evoke undesirable emotions when discussed. Although it may be difficult to achieve, every child deserves to grow up in a world free of bullying that promotes authentic self-expression. To do my part – however minor it may be – in fostering a more accepting community, I used this project as an opportunity to create a story that shared anti-bullying messaging in a suitable and enjoyable manner for children.

Male And Female Interactions: A Multimodal Analysis Of Shonen Manga, Alexandria Perez

The Montana English Journal

A qualitative multimodal content analysis of popular manga examined how female and male character interactions represented gender roles. An analytical tool was developed using multimodal, semiotic, social semiotic, gender, and feminist theories to understand representations of males and females in this popular media. This study showed that traditional gender norms are still present in manga, but there are some that break stereotypes. Also, in using both textual and visual elements to interpret multimodal texts, understanding of character interactions were enhanced because the intermodal interactions created new meaning. Implications suggest positive outlooks for manga being used as an educational tool by …

Cultural Predicaments: Neorealism In The Netherlands, 1927–1945, Stephanie Huber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes as its subject Dutch Magic Realism, also known as “Neorealism,” an unsettling style of figurative painting developed by Dutch painters Pyke Koch, Carel Willink, Charley Toorop, Raoul Hynckes, Dick Ket, and Wim Schuhmacher during a moment of rising totalitarian regimes in neighboring countries and the Nazi Occupation of The Netherlands. Like their European counterparts, these Dutch Magic Realists conveyed the experience of modern alienation by perversely appropriating stylistic characteristics and iconographic motifs of revered national schools of painting – in their case, Early Netherlandish and Northern Renaissance traditions.

The fortunes of Neorealism exemplify the pressures brought to …

Armored Feelings: Romantic Love, Sexual Consent, And Gender-Based Violence In French First World War Narratives (1914–1956), Angélique Ibáñez Aristondo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Armored Feelings examines how the First World War reconfigured how the French thought and wrote about romantic love, sexual consent, and gender-based violence. It posits this devastating event as a critical juncture during which the misogynistic and racist notion of amour à la Française took its modern shape as a rhetoric buttressing the nation’s brittle sense of cultural superiority while obscuring diverse forms of gendered aggression – especially those perpetrated by its citizens against women. This dissertation also establishes that the notion of women’s sexual consent coalesced during the period under examination as a troubled and troubling response to the …

Neither Invisible, Nor Silenced: The India-Maghreb Connections In Female-Authored Cinema, Chandra Balkaran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Third-World” women have long been excluded from center screen space, and positioned as stereotypical characters in liminal, coded spaces—such as harems, brothels, convents, ashrams, zawiyas or in domestic space. Yet, spatial organization is integral to the production of the social, not merely its result, and is fully implicated in both history and politics. Space is thus a crucial category of analysis in any cinema. My thesis examines how spaces, from the domestic to the virtual, socio-religio-cultural are reclaimed, redefined, and reformulated by women in politically engaged films made by Third-World women directors focused on women. Their struggles for space are …

Steve Mcqueen, The Filmmaker, And Kant’S Sensus Communis, Livia Melamed Margon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reflects on the ways in which art reinforces community and reduces political polarity by stimulating shared feelings, namely through Kant's idea of sensus communis. To illustrate its argument, this thesis analyzes the work of Steve McQueen, a politically aware, ethically engaged, and broadly recognized filmmaker and artist.

The Right To Sleep, Perchance To Dream, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

No abstract provided.

Rodcon, Program, 2022, University Of Northern Iowa. Rod Library.

RodCon Documents

Contents:

--Welcome to RodCon
--Location
--Schedule
--What's That?
--Artists
--Food
--Sponsors
--Autographs

Countercode: Bodies Un-Becoming, Aaron Reynolds

Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalogue Gallery, 2022

In COUNTERCODE: BODIES UN-BECOMING, my intent is not to present a cohesive map or identify a single, primary mode of resistance. Rather, the five artists I have selected —Shana Moulton, Cooper Gibson, Amy Yeager, Jazmine Morris, and Clara Wouters—explore the socio-cultural implications of identity expression and persona play, particularly as it relates to the encoding of subjectivity in contemporary forms of digital media and pop culture. Their works glitch codes, find slippages, and create opacities in the fabric of capitalist realism, a term used by theorist Mark Fisher to describe the widespread acceptance of capitalism as the only viable economic …

Tangled Roots: Exploring Appalachian Feminisms, Magenta Palo

Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalogue Gallery, 2022

Women have long been overlooked as key figures in the cultural history of Appalachia. The exhibition Tangled Roots: Exploring Appalachian Feminisms seeks to examine the ways in which women artists across the region have kept traditions alive while redefining creative practices that were once seen strictly as “women’s work.” In particular, the exhibition aims to explore how women have reimagined “craft” through skillful attention to materials, manual dexterity, and application of critical and conceptual rigor. The concept of craft is defined in this context to include all hand-made work that requires developed skills, whether they belong to traditional craft-based practices …

Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …

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

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggel

Contemporary Films And Contemporary Issues: An Introductory Film Class Curriculum, August W. Liguori-Chien

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

Teachers spend years teaching students to interpret texts. This interpretive skill is deemed vital in our education system, but little time is devoted to developing students’ ability to interpret film, the most popular media students engage with. Film is an incredible amalgamation of words, motion, and music. The world of film offers students incredible opportunities to interpret, analyze, and be moved. If our students must be able to interpret literature shouldn't they also be able to do the same in the immense world of film.

This class will not focus exclusively on the history of film or the classically taught …

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 …

Les Représentations Féminins Dans Le Cinéma Maghrébin: L'Expérience Des Femmes Et Le Rêve Féministe Dans Les Silences Du Palais Et Viva Laldjérie, Danielle Mills

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

It is evident that in the realm of gender studies concerning the Maghreb, many scholars have studied literary texts from prominent female Maghrebi writers such as Assia Djebar and Fatima Mernissi. However, certain forms of expression have been neglected, such as film. The purpose of this work is to analyze and evaluate how cinema has portrayed the situation of women in the postcolonial Maghreb. I will be examining two examples of Maghrebi cinema which include the Tunisian film Les silences du palais by Moufida Tlatli and the Algerian film Viva Laldjérie by Nadir Moknèche. Through the examination of these two …

Merging Modest With Complexity, Mark Garry

Doctoral

This thesis will enable a retrospective critical examination of aspects of my practice as an artist from 2005 - 2020. The research question addresses the implication of multiple forms of inter-reliance enabled in the practice. This will be enabled by opening a discursive space that retrospectively, integrates and critically examines the role and function of inter-reliance as a structural methodology and how this is implicated in the practice over this period.

This thesis will use term inter-reliance to define a play of relations where individual art works when viewed in isolation exist only in partial illumination as a form of …

Autorretratos: Autoimágenes De Directores, Guilherme Delgado

Teatro: Revista de Estudios Escénicos / A Journal of Theater Studies

Resumen: Este artículo sugiere la utilización del concepto de autorretrato para reflexionar sobre los significados de la aparición del director, de cine o teatro, en escena. Apartándose de las tradicionales lecturas de la autoimagen como confesión biográfica y acercándose a la construcción simbólica que los artistas hacen de su medio y de su roles sociales, el ensayo hace un análisis de trabajos de José Celso Martinez Correa, Tadeusz Kantor, Alfred Hitchcock y Jafar Panahi.

Abstract: This article aims to use the concept of self-portrait to reflect about the appearance of the theater or cinema’s director in scene. Considering self-image as …

Out Of The Gutter, Into The Gram: A Comical Message And A Digital Medium, Tala Majzoub

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

By analyzing three different comics on Instagram by the Lebanese political cartoonist, the Art of Boo, this essay argues that comics generate political meaning through emulating the medium of Instagram on the one hand, and by inviting the audience to become active participants on the other. Although a lot has been written about digital activism and political cartoons in the Arab world, little has been theorized about what makes this form of political artistic expression and dissent powerful on digital platforms. By drawing on Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, this essay demonstrates that the medium of comics operates as a …

Greenpeace In Germany And The U.S.: A Case Study In Non-Profit Web Design, Maximilian J. Weirauch

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis draws on Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model, connects it to basic principles of web design, and applies it to a website analysis of the global non-profit organization Greenpeace. This case study of cultural dimensions in web design utilizes Hofstede’s framework from 1974 throughout all its chapters and focuses on the cultural differences between Germany and the U.S. My hypothesis that successful marketing materials such as websites must communicate differently with their U.S.-American and German audiences is partially borne out. But it is important to note that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model cannot fully account for certain intercultural dimensions of …

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 …

The Cowboy Conundrum: An Examination Of Representation Within The Western Film Genre, Madelynn E. Woodard

Honors College Theses

Despite historical demographic data indicating otherwise, much of the Western Film Genre depicts The Cowboy as a white male individual. Previous research has demonstrated that filmmakers often tell and depict stories within which they identify themselves, and with the predominant population of directors within the Western Genre being that of white men, the narrative of the West being portrayed on screen has shifted public perception to an inaccurate portrayal of the history of the West. From Vaqueros to liberated slaves, much of the Cowboy community was comprised of Black, Spanish, Mexican, and Indigenous people of color. This study employed a …

Until One Resembles The Other, Chad E. Mundie Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

A written accompaniment to Chad Mundie’s thesis exhibition titled Until One Resembles the Other, conceived during the years 2021-22 and installed at The Anderson Gallery, Richmond from April 9-22nd.

The following writing explores themes of labor within the home, generational knowledge, interiority, exteriority, and emotional residue through a series of essays surrounding areas of interest within my practice. The writing concludes with documentation of the show and an accompanying explanatory text.