Reading and Language Commons^™

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 …

Interview, Elizabeth Naiden

Theses and Dissertations

An exploration of work by Liz Naiden in the form of a conversation discussing light and dark, attention and proprioception, and design and architectural theories of space in installation works. Addresses the role of voice, speech, and reading and speaking aloud, performing for oneself, and performing for others.

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 …

Framing The Superheroine: Form And Character In Contemporary Comics And Manga, Dana Elizabeth Lubow

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

The Attention Crisis Of Digital Interfaces And How To Consume Media More Mindfully, Kristen M. Liu

Scripps Senior Theses

Digital forms of media are monopolizing individuals' attention spans, utilizing visual strategies that demand our interactions. Throughout the history of media technology, mediums have become increasingly immersive, presenting more information than ever before. The user interface designs of digital platforms can damage our ability to focus and distribute attention in meaningful ways. Through analysis of our digital media consumption, this capstone project ultimately proposes mindful practices that help us lead more balanced lives and thrive in the digital age. The second half of this capstone project is a digital zine with digital illustrations, animations, and editorial-style articles. The digital zine …

New Roots: A Transracial Adoption Story, Scarlett Kuang

Capstones

This is a documentary on transracial adoption. Transracial adoption is becoming more and more common in America. In 2011, 4 out of 10 adopted children were raised by families of a different race or ethnicity. Daniel and Lisa Conklins have 11 children. After giving birth to 6, the couple adopted another 5 children from 5 different countries. They live in Castile, a farm town in upstate New York. The then 6-year-old Ezra needs to adapt to a totally new environment and embrace his new family. For Elaina who was adopted as a baby, the challenge is to survive in a …

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. …

Work/Death, Of Each In Their Own, Micah H. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Writings in support of my visual thesis, including some background, and bibliographic information: Oregon/Death/Animation/Vocation and the artist as an agent of potential.

Creative Advertising Portfolio, Hayley E. Sunderman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Since I was a young child, all I wanted was to draw and write. I would compose entire binders of my artwork, as well as Microsoft Word documents of the beginnings of mystery novels. As I grew older, I let my self-doubt take over and I convinced myself that I was not talented enough to pursue any type of creative career path. I came into college as a Marketing major knowing that my future career options would be fairly vast. During my junior year, I realized my strong desire to work in creative advertising. Graphic design, copywriting, photography, videography, and …

We Are Cells Living In The World While The World Lives In Us, Tara Law

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What has been called the Anthropocene epoch is the first period of time in which human activities and technological advances have measurably contributed to climate changes. It is common to live in the shadow of industrial architecture. The landscapes we live in and the changes to our air, soil, and water quality are interconnected. Our bodies are made up of cells moving through the world, but the world also moves through us. I’m interested in how our environment changes us and what we can do to change our environment.

An exploration of book forms and by extension the many forms …

Use Of Student Created Video Podcasts To Promote Foreign Language Grammar Acquisition In Middle School, Sergio Parra

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The use of video podcasts in education has emerged as a phenomenon that has gained a considerable amount of attention over the last few years. Although video podcasting is becoming a well-established technology in higher education, new multimedia instructional strategies such as student-created video podcasts in grades K-12 are under-researched.

The study investigated the effects of video podcasts created by students to promote foreign language grammar acquisition at the middle school level and find how students described such experience. The current investigation was conducted by using the explanatory sequential design, which is a mixed methods research design that occurs in …

Magic At The Crossroads: The Rise Of The Video Essay, Morganne Tinsley August

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the birth, rise in popularity, and evolution of the video essay, a subgenre of the essay found recently in online literary journals. Chapter one provides a brief history of the alphabetic essay as it expands to include photo essays, audio essays, and essay-films. The second chapter outlines the history of the online literary journal and John Bresland’s role in the introduction of the video essay as it appears in online journals. Chapter three contains an examination of the way image, text, and sound function in video essays and the tools and strategies essayists are using to create …

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.

The World Through Your Eyes: An Analysis Of Spike Jonze's Her, Thatcher Kupple Snyder

Senior Projects Fall 2015

The skeptical concerns of Spike Jonze's Her mirror those of Stanley Cavell's, representing a cinematic adaptation of his therapeutic analysis of philosophical skepticism. Her addresses the loneliness of the skeptic, and demonstrates a way by which one can pacify, or better understand, the skeptical impulse.

The [Ftaires!] To Remembrance: Language, Memory, And Visual Rhetoric In Chaucer's House Of Fame And Danielewski's House Of Leaves, Shannon Danae Kilgore

Honors Program Theses

Geoffrey Chaucer's dream poem The House of Fame explores virtual technologies of memory and reading, which are similar to the themes explored in Danielewski's House of Leaves. "[ftaires!]", apart from referencing the anecdotal (and humorous) misspelling of "stairs" in House of Leaves, is one such linguistically and visually informed phenomenon that speaks directly to how we think about, and give remembrance to, our own digital and textual culture. This paper posits that graphic design, illustrations, and other textual cues (such as the [ftaires!] mispelling in House of Leaves] have a subtle yet powerful psychological influence on our reading and …

Opportunity For Engagement : How Viewing "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" Transcends Traditional Reader Response, Molly Hayes

Honors Program Theses

For hundreds of years, publishers have worked to understand the relationship between a reader and a text. This relationship between a reader and a text has changed dramatically as technology develops, allowing readers to interact with a text in new ways. As years pass, the technology available to content creators as well as consumers changes drastically, often resulting in adaptation of text. One text that has been adapted many times is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The novel has been recorded on tape, made into a television series, adapted for the big screen, and now has been brought to an …