Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

From Screen To Classroom: The Role Of Televised Narratives In Enhancing Educational Belongingness For Black American Students, Feyi Oshinyemi

Masters Theses

This creative thesis examines the influence of televised narratives on shaping the educational experiences of Black American students, exploring the interplay between media representation and educational belonging. It proposes how televisual narratives can better reflect and support the educational identities of Black American students, aiming to foster a greater sense of belonging and representation in educational media. This document serves as an accompaniment to the center of this work, a twelve minute pilot episode that explores the challenges and triumphs of students navigating their educational journeys. This work not only provides a detailed breakdown of the episode's narrative and production …

Food, Drink, Time, New Year And Cloth, Jian Li

Masters Theses

My project uses traditional Chinese calligraphy culture and my own family stories to create five daily use products to help my user find a sense of belonging to Chinese culture and also introduce my culture and stories to all audiences.

As an international student who came to the US, I have often struggled with a lack of cultural identity and belonging. This is a common issue faced by many who choose to leave their homes and venture to new places. However, I believe that we can overcome this by creating products that generate an emotional connection with their users.

Liquid Border, Yingfan Jia

Masters Theses

A River is a mighty and constantly-evolving force, leaving behind an intricately designed and constantly changing system. Not just a river, the Rio Grande stretches all the way from Colorado before intersecting with the US-Mexico Border in southern Texas - a point where the powerful forces of nature now merge with a clearly-defined political boundary. The outcome of this is a unique ecological niche, which may often go unnoticed despite its distinctiveness.

Texas is famous for its farms and ranches, and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was once an agricultural hub. However, urbanization and the depletion of water …

Q/A: A Semiotic Deconstruction Of Narrative Transportation On Episodic Television, Josh Grube

Masters Theses

Narrative transportation is a captivating phenomenon in which an audience member psychologically departs from material reality and immerses into the narrative world (Gerrig, 1993). Existing literature on narrative transportation mostly consists of audience-level studies, primarily focused on the phenomenon’s persuasive effects and audience attributes that mediate their ability to be transported. From a theoretical media perspective, transportation is conceived as an aspect of the larger audience cultivation process (Gerbner, 1998) due to its persuasive influence, revealing the importance of viewing it from the textual level. This thesis fills a significant gap in narrative transportation theory by examining television narratives through …

Faith Down The Rabbit Hole: A Critical Rhetorical Interrogation Of Q-Anon And Parasitic Christianity, Nate Carlson

Masters Theses

Over the course of the last six years, the conspiracy theory community known as Q-Anon has risen to prominence across the internet, coming to encapsulate a significant portion of the United States’ conservative and protestant populations. This study applies the act of Critical Rhetoric as proposed by McKerrow (1989) to the Q-Anon “drops”; message board posts wherein Q, the enigmatic leader of Q-Anon, preached conspiratorial ideology and misinformation to his followers. A pattern of Christian theology being usurped and retooled by Q as a method of faith-based political radicalization emerged throughout the texts, and this phenomenon was named “Parasitic Christianity.” …

Strangers In A Strange Land: Foreign-Born Mangaka And The Future Of The ‘Japanese’ Comic Industry, Michele Fujii

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses the phenomenon of the recent success of foreign-born mangaka in the Japanese comic industry. One in a long line of foreigners who have written about Japan, Swedish mangaka Åsa Ekström is a representative example whose success has been facilitated by a set of circumstances brought on by the influence of the international manga market, socio-economic policies stemming from the unique challenges presented by Japan’s declining birthrate and rapidly aging population, and changes in the landscape of the Japanese publishing industry. Drawing upon themes and excerpts from Ekström’s popular comic essay series, Nordic Girl Åsa discovers the Mysteries …

Troubles At Coal Creek: Rhetorics Of Writing, Research, And The Archive, Sumner Stevenson Brown

Masters Theses

Digging through the past can uncover painful truths. As such, historiography that does not acknowledge negotiated spaces, cultural erasures, and flexible frameworks may fall short. It may limit both breadth and depth of the past, thereby (re)producing erasures, whereas a reflexive theoretical framework delivers not only depth and breadth, but it also adds texture and dimension to historical writing and research processes. It is for these purposes that the value of alternative methodologies is not situated at the margins of the rhetorical canons. Instead, it is embedded in the very core of the canons, defined as an element that works …

Summoning The Body That Acts, Brendan M. Mccauley

Masters Theses

Seven series of artworks; painted, drawn and performed. These works are presented as affective incorporation exercises, that test modes of aesthetic communication in response to varying political contingencies. The constitutive processes used to develop the work also function as a methodology for my own political radicalization. As an artist I am wagering how to talk, as an activist I am preparing to act. The artworks discussed occur at the crossroads of these desires as enactions of futurity within the subjunctive mood.

Framing Urban Change: Gentrification Discourses In The Media Coverage Of The Gülbol Eviction In Berlin, Eric Daniel Gedenk

Masters Theses

This thesis examines gentrification discourses in Berlin by highlighting an extraordinarily large protest sparked by the eviction of the Gülbol family—long-time residents of Berlin who immigrated to Germany from Turkey. Media outlets chose to frame the event in very different ways. I analyze articles from various media sources in an attempt to discover how these sources chose to frame this event, then analyze how these frames are applied to the general gentrification discourse in Berlin. Non-traditional, or “advocacy” media outlets used technology to break away from mass media frames on the subject and frame the event as governmental oppression and …

Refresh. Create. Inspire. The Mission, Vision And Values Behind The Coca-Cola Company And The Digital Marketing Strategies Of The "Open Happiness" Campaign, Sara Svendsen

Masters Theses

Due to the influence of Coca-Cola on advertising, digital marketing, and marketing strategies, the present rhetorical analysis seeks to show the many aspects of digital media in the Company's present "Open Happiness" campaign. The study of the campaign seeks to show that the Company mission statement, Company values and the vision of The Coca-Cola Company are implemented into all of the different facets of the Open Happiness campaign, and in the context of Mood Management Theory, exude the overall theme of the campaign, happiness. The parts of the campaign that were analyzed were focused on the YouTube channels of The …

Hangin' With Judas: A Narrative Analysis Of Stephen Adly Guirgis's 'The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot', Constance Falconer

Masters Theses

Stephen Adly Guirgis has created an era-melting play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which explores the timeless debate between divine mercy and free will. A systematic application of Walter R. Fisher's narrative analysis, through form identification and a functional analysis, determined how Guirgis accomplishes persuasion. This qualitative study focused on Guirgis's narrative, using Walter R. Fisher's narrative paradigm as a framework to answer the research question(s): (1) If Guirgis's ideology and created world in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot are foreign and imagined, how is narrative probability and narrative fidelity achieved?; and, (2) How does Guirgis persuade his …

A Nation In Its Prime: A Pentadic Study Of Walt Disney World's Main Street, U.S.A., Casey Guise

Masters Theses

The purpose of this paper is to consider the entrance to Walt Disney World, Main Street, U.S.A., as a rhetorical text and apply Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad. Background is provided on rhetorical theory and The Disney Company. Meanings are derived from messages interpreted using semiotics and symbolic interaction within the location. The significance of Main Street, U.S.A., as a replica of historic architecture and an illustration of revival architecture in creating emotive messages is discussed. Further discussion includes the implications of this study on corporations and the field of rhetorical studies in addition to suggestions for further research.

"It's Just That For The First Time, I Feel... Wicked": A Rhetorical Analysis Of Wicked's Elphaba Using Kenneth Burke's Guilt-Purification-Redemption Cycle, Patricia Foreman

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the Broadway production, Wicked, and more specifically, the character of Elphaba, or the Wicked Witch of the West. The study utilized Kenneth Burke's theory of the guilt-purification-redemption cycle, and considered Elphaba's journey between the three steps of Burke's cycle. In order to understand this journey better, the researcher considered various facets of the show, including the script, lyrics, costuming, including attire and make-up, and interactions with other characters in the production. Elphaba's causes of guilt, including her mother's death, her relationship with Glinda, her cause in working with Animals, and failed magic …

Creating A Millennial Generation Contextualized Church Culture, Christopher Deitsch

Masters Theses

The Millennial generation, or Generation Y as some people know them, is the biggest generation in the United States of America history. As they flood schools, universities, and the job market it is easy to see that there are major differences between them and previous generations. Simultaneously, the church in America has hundreds of individual churches each year closing and tens of thousands each year declining; most churches are ceasing to grow. The inability to reach Millennials is one of the reasons for this decline. This thesis purposes to give a snapshot of the Millennial generation, overview a few of …

Teach For America Teachers' Blogs On Teaching, Samantha Nicole Holt

Masters Theses

In 1989, Princeton University senior Wendy Kopp conceived the idea of a national teacher corps that would place the brightest young people in the schools that were the most difficult to staff. This idea, which became Teach For America (TFA), took life in 1990, and has since become a powerful force in the public education reform movement. TFA consistently attracts college graduates from the nation’s top universities, and with the funding it receives from private donors as well as the federal government, the organization recruits and trains these individuals who commit to teach in the country’s highest-needs public schools. Critics …

Bears, Baby Carrots, And The Colbert Bump: An Analysis On Stephen Colbert's Use Of Humor To Set The Public's Political Agenda, Dominique Mckay

Masters Theses

In recent years, political satire has risen in popularity and recognition as an effective means of transmitting political news to a younger generation of voters. This recent development brings forth new questions about the role of political satire in setting the public's political agenda. Using Agenda-Setting Theory as a framework, this study takes The Colbert Report, one of the most popular satire television shows of this generation, and analyzes it for a possible political agenda. In the end, what this study finds is that in the six weeks leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential election The Colbert Report chose …

From A Rodent To A Rhetorician: An Ideological Analysis Of George Alexander Kennedy's Comparative Rhetoric, James Begley

Masters Theses

George Alexander Kennedy, a professor of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has given birth to a new understanding of rhetorical studies: he argues for the evolution of rhetoric from animals to humans. Using Sonja Foss's methodology of "ideological criticism," this thesis examined Kennedy's case as presented in his book, Comparative Rhetoric: an Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. This study discovered that the book was heavily influenced by a secular, pro-evolutionary ideology which dually contributed to its selective use of scientific evidences and production of inconsistent arguments. Evaluated on the basis of Biblical principles, this thesis concluded …

Orientalism And Three British Dames: De-Essentialization Of The Other In The Work Of Gertrude Bell, Freya Stark, And E.S. Drower, Lynn Sawyer

Masters Theses

Although postcolonial criticism has run its course for thirty years, a fresh look at Edward Said's Orientalism offers insight into how Orientalism functions in the writings of three British dames. Gertrude Bell in The Desert and the Sown, Freya Stark in The Southern Gates of Arabia, and E.S. Drower in The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, however, challenge Said's theory. Their writing raises questions about how gender alters the discourse about the Other, and whether Said essentializes the Occident. Bell, Stark, and Drower serve as case studies in which to analyze the politically and rhetorically complex interactions between the West …

You Sir Are A Fine Young Gentleman. Thank You, My Lady: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Eighteenth Century Conversations Regarding Gentility And Gender, Kati Overbey

Masters Theses

This study rhetorically analyzed the eighteenth century work of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison's The Spectator and Eliza Haywood's The Female Spectator using Kathleen Turner's framework for rhetorical history as social criticism integrating text and context. Ten essays from The Spectator as well as ten essays from The Female Spectator were selected based on content and subject matter regarding manners and gentility. When Turner's framework for analysis was applied to the essays, defining characteristics of gentility were revealed. A presentation of the results of the textual and contextual analysis of these twenty selected essays is provided. An analysis of the …