Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A New Twist On The “Un-African” Script: Representing Gay And Lesbian African Weddings In Democratic South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This essay examines the media coverage surrounding two African weddings of lesbian and gay couples in South Africa, as a lens onto the evolving cultural politics of black queerness in that country. Two decades after South Africa launched a world-leading legal framework for LGBTI protections, I argue that these media representations depict the growing inclusion of black LGBTIQ people as a process of bridging the supposed “gap” between homosexuality and African culture. This new “bridging the gap” script seemingly rejects the older, dominant script portraying homosexuality as intrinsically “un-African.” But I argue that it instead reproduces the “un-African” script in …

Digital Occult Library, Alexis Brandkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a website, titled Digital Occult Library, hosted by the CUNY Commons and built with WordPress. The site address is:

digitaloccultlibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu

It features (in this iteration) twenty-five unique pages with information on and discussion of occult and esoteric topics. It also hosts a forum that can be accessed and utilized by anyone, not just those registered on the Commons. The purpose of the site is to inform three types of interested parties on the highlighted topics: a general audience with no current knowledge of the occult, practitioners of esoteric traditions, and academics. Not only is the …

Analysis Of Newspaper Coverage Of Psilocybin From January 1, 1989 To December 31, 2019, Dax Oliver

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psilocybin is a chemical compound that has received a lot of attention from medical researchers in recent years. However, this research is not merely a medical issue but a social and political one as well. In the 1960s, psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds were widely ingested outside of clinical settings. This alarmed some of the American public, resulting in severe legal restrictions on psilocybin use and research.

Today, many psilocybin advocates hope that it will avoid the negative public sentiment of the 1960s. To help gauge public sentiment about other psychoactive compounds, some studies have examined newspaper coverage, but there …

The Effects Of Podcasts On Mental Health Stigma, Sarah N. Dure

Student Theses

Research indicates that media can have both negative and positive impacts on mental health stigma and self-stigma. No studies, to our knowledge, have examined the impact of audio media representation (podcasts) on mental health stigma. Our study therefore examines the effects that both positive and negative portrayals of mental illness in a news podcast would have on mental health stigma. We hypothesized that participants assigned to podcast conditions that primed for mental illness would lead participants to attribute an incident to mental illness. Additionally, we hypothesized that listening to a podcast that speaks negatively about individuals with mental illnesses would …

Fascist Aesthetics From 1940 To Contemporary Times, Anna M. Gellerman

Publications and Research

Movies and literature all over the world share some common aesthetics: militarization, romanticization of death, beauty of perfection, and even purity. What most don't think about is how these tropes rose to popularity due to Nazi Germany's propaganda films. This work describes these fascist aesthetics, and uses famous publications from the 1940s until now to paint just how common these themes are.

Visual Rhetoric Worksheet, Janelle Poe

Open Educational Resources

Designed for a Writing for the Sciences course at CCNY, this worksheet is to be completed after watching an environmental journalism video on noise pollution by David Owens for The New Yorker (2019). Students can complete individually, in pairs, or groups. Largely focused on analyzing visual rhetoric, creator, publisher, and audience bias, students should complete this worksheet after learning the elements of visual rhetoric to assist with the development of their rough drafts for the Rhetorical Analysis/Visual Rhetoric essay assignment.