Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Visions For Japanese Society: An Examination Of Japanese Postwar Occupation Period Film, Kaitlin Smith, Michael Gibbs

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

By following the films of directors Akira Kurosawa ( 黒澤明), Yasujiro Ozu ( 小津安二郎), Masaki Kobayashi (小林正樹), and Shohei Imamura (今村昌平) around occupation period Japan, unified visions for Japanese society are formed as it transitions from wartime into the postwar era. Each of these films conveys a sense of rapid change in society, external pressures and foreign influence, a daily struggle, and immediate postwar suffering. Not only can these films be seen across a wide variety of styles, but they also each approach these issues with immediacy and show tentative outlooks for how Japan functioned and felt for most people …

People And Place: A Journey Through Film, Tourism, And Heritage, Sarah Beals

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Old Tucson Studios is a theme park where film, tourism, and heritage all converge through the American Western genre. During national social change, Westerns increase in number to reflect national values and identity. Westerns that ally with landscapes and people are potentially the most powerful storytelling tool in mainstream media. My research shows that this paring of people and place creates a prevailing image in the audience’s memory. The results suggest that the current image of the West comes from films made between 1951-1970, despite there being newer Westerns. John Wayne and saguaro cactus are enduring images with historic, cultural, …

The Colored Pill: A History Film Performance Exposing Race Based Medicines, Wanda Lakota

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Of the 32 pharmaceuticals approved by the FDA in 2005, one medicine stood out. That medicine, BiDil®, was a heart failure medication that set a precedent for being the first approved race based drug for African Americans. Though BiDil®, was the first race specific medicine, racialized bodies have been used all throughout history to advance medical knowledge. The framework for race, history, and racialized drugs was so multi-tiered; it could not be conceptualized from a single perspective. For this reason, this study examines racialized medicine through performance, history, and discourse analysis.

The focus of this work aimed …

Storytelling And Self In Public Broadcast: A Visual Ethnography Of Rocky Mountain Pbs, Emily Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Embodied storytelling in Denver's public broadcast media establishes how the intersectional identities of storytellers influence narrative practices in Denver's public sphere. Five approaches to communicating identity informed my theoretical background: embodiment, visual anthropology, the public sphere, practice theory, and phenomenology. Rocky Mountain PBS, a 60-year-old broadcast institution, served as my research site during the summer of 2018. In my thesis, I overviewed the history of RMPBS and observations of production activities performed by the creators of the show Colorado Memories. Using a phenomenological methodology, the research design and data collection included filmed participant observations, semi-structured interviews guided by a …

A Child Shall Lead Them: Exploring Discourses Of Efficacy And Climate Change As They Appear In Children's Animated Film, Jason Derry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent climate change discourse has tended to presume scientific knowledge and rational argumentation as the principle factor in convincing peoples and publics toward climate action. However, scholarship across numerous fields reveals myriad other contributing factors in how people think about and respond to this environmental crisis, which leans predominately toward silence and apathy. Alongside this, children are often centered as inheriting a calamity, yet find themselves largely disempowered. From out of this rhetorical milieu I interject by way of a multidisciplinary grounding to examine the predominate framings of efficacy in the context of children, climate change, and environmental discourse. To …

The Responsible Project, Shannon N. Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to create a public relations campaign consisting of a series of promotional videos filmed specifically for Patagonia, the outdoors sportswear company, emphasizing their corporate social responsibility for viewing on their social media and web-based platforms. The commercials will feature three Colorado non-profit organizations tied to Patagonia through Patagonia's Growing Grassroots Grant program.

Lifting The Veil On Hindi Film Song Sequences: An Approach To Analysis, Maria A. Souliotis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to augment previous scholarly research on Hindi film song through the presentation of a multivalent approach to thoroughly understanding and interpreting Hindi film song sequences. In a case study of the song sequence “Pardā Haı̃ Pardā” ("There Is a Veil,"? from Manmohan Desai's 1977 film Amar Akbar Anthony), the three essential elements of these sequences (on-screen visuals, text, and music) are connected to the context of South Asian history and culture to demonstrate how scholarly approaches to music, film, and cultural studies can be united to create a more interdisciplinary approach to analysis. The approach also …

Kicking The Can, Peter Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Kicking the Can is a video documentary that explores the financial crisis of 2008 and the socio-political factors that led to the collapse. The documentary was produced over the course of a year and a half, and contains interviews with economists, politicians, academics, and U.S. citizens. Kicking the Can ultimately reveals that the financial crisis is a complex issue that can be analyzed and interpreted from a variety of political and social perspectives. This paper documents the making of the film, the production involved, and the process of working with collaborators and other crewmates.

Feasting On Four Wheels, Mariel Patricia Rodriguez-Mcgill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The documentary film Feasting On Four Wheels explores the new wave of "gourmet" food trucks on the streets of Denver, Colorado. What started as a bigger movement across the country made its way to the Mile High city in 2010 and snowballed to the food-loving community portrayed during the summer of 2011. Interviews with food truck owners, a food truck fabricator and a blogger for DenverStreetFood.com, explore the nature of the movement and how its existence creates a feel of community and culture within the city. The evolution of street food history and the influence of new technology are also …