Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Commemorating The Kent State Tragedy Through Victims’ Trauma In Television News Coverage, 1990–2000, Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd at Kent State University and killed four students. This essay critically interprets mainstream television journalism that commemorated the shootings in the past 18 years. Throughout this coverage, predominant framing devices depoliticized the Kent State tragedy by characterizing both former students and guard members as trauma victims. The emphasis on eyewitnesses as victims provided the basis for a therapeutic frame that promoted reconciliation rather than political redress as a rationale for commemorating the shootings. This dominant news frame tacitly advanced a model of commemorative journalism that promoted reconciliation at …

The Child Protection Juvenile Court Process From A Communication Perspective: A Glimpse Behind The Veil Of Objectivity Reveals That Race Matters, Debra Ann Mixon Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reports indicate that in the United States disproportionate numbers of African American children are represented in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Studies also indicate disparities in the provision of services to African American young people. Some researchers claim that poverty is the cause. Others blame the high incidence of single-parent families. Others contend that individuals' biases and our racist systems are to blame. While it is almost certain that each of the aforementioned causes and many other factors contribute to disparate outcomes and the overrepresentation of African Americans in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, this project …

Will They See Me Coming? Do They Know I'M Running? Los Lobos And The Performance Of Mestizaje Identity Through Journey, Richard Pineda

Selected Works Temporary Series

Los Lobos’ album The Town and The City represents a lyrical narrative and performance of journey. The album’s strength and appeal is that it offers a poignant commentary on journey at time when the odyssey undertaken by immigrants to the United States are often demonized, misunderstood, or purposefully manipulated for political benefit. I argue in this essay that the Los Lobos album illustrates and complicates the performance of Chicana/o identity, mestizaje, and hybridity through the metaphor of journey. This metaphorical journey is represented as both a process and event that establishes a sense of connectivity for audiences.

Communication Privacy Management Within The Family Planning Trajectories Of Voluntarily Child-Free Couples, Wesley Durham, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Although the phenomenon of voluntary childlessness has garnered increased attention from researchers in a number of disciplines over the past 20 years (Connidis & McMullin, 1996; Letherby, 1998; Morrell, 1993; Park, 2002), little is known about the interaction processes that compose the family planning of couples who choose to remain child-free. In the present study, the researchers used Communication Privacy Management (Petronio, 2002) as the theoretical framework to describe the intradyadic communication processes that made up the family planning and decision making of voluntarily child-free couples. An interpretive analysis was performed on the transcripts of interviews with members of child-free …

Picture Imperfect: Re-Reading Imagery Of Aborigines In Walkabout, Mitchell Rolls

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

The representation of Aborigines in the popular Australian magazine Walkabout has attracted the attention of a small number of scholars. For the most part their analyses draw a distinction between the portrayals of primitive natives and those of the emergent modernising Australian nation. It is argued that Aborigines appear as debased, as noble savages, or as bearers of an idealised and imagined traditional culture. These representational strategies are evident in both photo- graphs and text in Walkabout. Whilst not necessarily disagreeing with these critiques, more nuanced readings of Aboriginal photographic representation in Walkabout are possible. This article seeks to reveal …

A Chinese Model Of Leadership Competence, Guo-Ming Chen, Ran An

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter aims to develop a model of leadership competence from the Chinese cultural perspective. In the introduction part, the impact of globalization on human society is discussed to lay down the foundation of the need for developing a model of global leadership competence. In order to examine the Chinese leadership competence, which can be integrated to a more comprehensive model of global leadership competence, the philosophical foundation of Chinese leadership competence is delineated in the second part. Based on the Chinese philosophical thinking, three dimensions of leadership competence, including self cultivation, context profundity, and action dexterity are proposed. Then …

Bridgewater “Comments” On 80 Years Of Men’S And Women’S Sports, Alicia Charpentier, Brian Hickey, Jaryd Cutting, Laura Donahue, Erika Dyer, Shannon Piatelli, Stephanie Burns, Lillianne Frye, Allison Haggerty, Sarah Blick, Courtney Gramstorff, Jared Mullane, Joey Saster, Joshua Rodrisuo, Kara Foley, Jenna Picton, Courtney Ryan, Nicole Affannato

Undergraduate Review

Sports media is important because it shapes the perceptions, aspirations and dreams of the viewers (Angelini, 2008). It shows the viewers the skill and athletic achievement of both male and female athletes. The media allows viewers to witness the athletic prowess of their favorite athletes on TV and in print. Within sports media, the viewers are able to learn about the many different sports that are offered around the world. The viewers are able to get a sense about who the athletes are, their talents, their sport and their achievement. It is apparent that sports media has a huge impact …

Chinese Harmony Theory, Guo-Ming Chen

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Based on Chen’s harmony theory of Chinese communication, this entry explicated that the ability to reach a harmonious state of human relationship is the main criterion the Chinese use to evaluate communication competence. In order to achieve harmony interactants are required to follow three principles: (1) intrinsically to internalize jen (humanism), yi (righteousness), and li (rite); (2) extrinsically to accommodate shih (temporal contingencies), wei (spatial contingencies), and ji (the first imperceptible beginning of movement); and (3) strategically to exercise guanxi (inter-relation), mientz (face), and power in the behavioral level.

Better Living Through Reality Tv: Television And Post-Welfare Citizenship [Book Review], Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The very first thing I can say about Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship is that I cannot wait for the authors to consider adding a Canadian version – more on that later – since they include British reality shows. Admittedly, many of these last shows have been successful enough to lead to Americanized versions. In considering reality television, the Laurie Ouellette (no known relation) and James Hay seem to sacrifice one of the oldest, and currently largely underexamined as such, varieties of the reality television, the game show. This is not to say that "new" game …

The Rise Of Private Equity Media Ownership In The United States: A Public Interest Perspective, Matthew Crain

Publications and Research

This article examines the logic, scope, and implications of the influx of private equity takeovers in the United States media sector in the last decade. The strategies and aims of private equity firms are explained in the context of the financial landscape that has allowed them to flourish; their aggressive expansion into media ownership is outlined in detail. Particular attention is paid to the public interest concerns raised by private equity media ownership relating to the frenzied nature of the buyout market, profit maximization strategies, and the heavy debt burdens imposed on acquired firms. The article concludes with discussion of …

Developing A Model For An Incarnational Ministry At The Webb Chapel Church Of Christ, L. Bert Alexander

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project to promote the development of an incarnational ministry at the Webb Chapel Church of Christ. This intervention employed a team of Webb Chapel opinion leaders representative of various subgroups of the congregation. In the fall of 2008, this group met for eight sessions to discuss the self-emptying practices of Jesus and the need for his followers to emulate those self-emptying practices in their individual lives. Through interaction in the eight sessions, the group developed a model by which self-emptying practices could be implemented at Webb Chapel. Evaluation of the …

Mcmansions: Re-Presenting A Divided, Subdivided And Uncanny Suburban Landscape, Mike Gray

Theses : Honours

This exegesis speculates on the rise and spread of 'McMansions' by exploring possible reactions to this architecture and the contextual dimensions of my photographic response. The exegesis aligns aspects of the 'Uncanny' (Freud, 1919) to new trends in domestic architecture and topographical photography. By pictorially offering a counter-narrative to more conventional representations of the 'dream home', it ironically demonstrates that some houses can be viewed as unhomely. The exegesis explains how cultural anxieties can be experienced when viewing contemporary trends in domestic architecture within new suburban developments. It does this by aligning the increased use of featurism (Boyd, 1980) in …

From Dreams To Nightmares : Cross-Generational Romance In Mainstream American Cinema, Sol Stern

Theses : Honours

This thesis is concerned with the changes in cinematic depictions of romantic relationships in which there is enough age disparity that the couple could be mistaken for parent and child. These cross-generational affairs have significance within the ideology of the family unit, the heterosexual couple and the classic Hollywood ideal of romantic love. The way that these relationships have been portrayed on screen has changed drastically in mainstream American cinema from the 1950s to the 2000s, and these shifts reflect changing values and attitudes in society since all films exhibit certain ideologies. Through sampling several relevant films made between 1953 …

Family Legacies: Constructing Individual And Family Identity Through Intergenerational Storytelling, Blair Thompson, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jordan Soliz, Jason Thompson, Amber Epp, Paul Schrodt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The current study focused on discovering the ways in which the intergenerational transmission of family legacy stories both enables and constrains individual family members’ sense of their own identities. Using semistructured interviews, 17 third-generation family members identified a multitude of both positive and negative family legacies. Both positive and negative legacies were influenced by the storytelling context. Positive legacies portrayed families as hardworking, caring, and cohesive while negative legacies were more idiosyncratic. Individual family members typically responded to their family legacies by embracing the positive and rejecting the negative. However, individuals’ responses also pointed to additional complexities in accepting or …

Communicative And Relational Dimensions Of Shared Family Identity And Relational Intentions In Mother-In-Law/Daughter-In-Law Relationships: Developing A Conceptual Model For Mother-In-Law/Daughter-In-Law Research, Christine Rittenour, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

From the perspective of daughters-in-law (N = 190), this study examined communicative and relational factors associated with positive and negative mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships. A structural model tested perceptions of shared family identity as a mediator between communicative factors (supportive communication, nonaccommodation, self-disclosure), family-of-origin factors, and daughter-in-law intentions regarding caregiving and future contact with the mother-in-law. Further, open-ended responses were content analyzed to identify additional relational aspects associated with satisfying mother-in-law relationships. Results from both analyses were integrated into a conceptual model to guide future research on this relationship.

Beyond Public Health : The Cultural Politics Of Tobacco Control In Hong Kong, Wai Yin Chan

Lingnan Theses

This work provides cultural and political explanations on how and why cigarette smoking has increasingly become an object of intolerance and control in Hong Kong. Since the 1980s, the smoking population has been falling. Smoking behavior, sales and promotion of cigarette products have been under close surveillance by the government, medical experts and society at large. Cigarette smoking, as well as smokers, has increasingly been rejected and demonized in the public discourse. What are the conditions that make the growing intolerant discourses and practices against cigarette smoking possible and dominant? Why and how has the tobacco control campaign become prevalent …

Protesting Liberalization In India: An Examination Of Discursive Strategies Used By Street-Vendors, Squatters, And Small-Retailers To Create And Universalize Resistance Narratives, Rajesh Gaur

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The retail sector in India is experiencing a shift from an industry dominated by small grocers serving the needs of local markets to one characterized by chain retailers, both national and international. The liberalization of the retail sector in the last decade has edged the street-vendors, squatters, and small retailers from the prime business spaces to marginalized peripheries, which had led to widespread localized protests by the small retailers all over the country.

The Aminabad Market in a metro city in northern India provided a unique opportunity to study ongoing resistance against chain retailing. The retailers of Aminabad were at …

If We Seek, Do We Learn?: Predicting Knowledge Of Global Warming, Leeann Kahlor, Sonny Rosenthal

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Derived from the risk information seeking and processing model (RISP), this study sought to isolate predictors of the public's knowledge of global warming. Using a national sample ( N = 805), multiple regression yielded a number of significant relationships among 13 moderators. Notably, the number of media sources used for information about global warming, information seeking effort, and general education were relatively strong predictors of knowledge. Counter to expectations, informational subjective norms were inversely related to knowledge.

A Postmodern Look At Modernism: A Review Article Of Books By Pera And López On Modernista Writers In Hispanic Literature, Richard A. Cardwell

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Communication, Crisis, And Identity: Dialectical Tensions In Family Narratives About Hurricane Katrina, Laura Poole Rogers

Dissertations

In this study victims of Hurricane Katrina ordered their experiences with the crisis into meaningful themes which expressed their values, actions, inactions, occupations, needs and losses, and feelings. In interviews participants explained what happened, when it happened, how they responded, how they thought they should have responded, and how they handled situations surrounding the storm. Narratives about situations after the storm revealed descriptions of their and others' relationships in interactions with representatives of larger social units. The dialectical analysis revealed dialectical tensions that emphasized participants' dynamic and changing relationships and identities. Dialectical analysis of narratives about those relationships revealed dialectical …

"George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People": Hip Hop, Public Discourse And Black Politics In The Early 21st Century, Hazel Bell James Cole

Dissertations

Recently, more scholars are examining hip hop as a powerful cultural, communicative force, yet hip hop's political orientation goes unnoticed. This study highlights the politics found in hip hop culture and in rap music since 2000 by exploring hip hop as a social movement. This study utilizes a critical, cultural approach by applying ideological case study and textual analyses methods. Song lyrics, activist efforts and black politics prove the political orientation of hip hop culture, which revealed that rap music in general is limited by capitalistic, hegemonic restraints juxtaposed to rappers serving as the legitimate voice of the marginalized and …

Metamorphosing Worlds In The Cinema Of The Fantastic, Juan González Etxeberria

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Metamorphosing Worlds in the Cinema of the Fantastic" Juan González Etxeberria reads fantastic films as appealing products of both unconscious psychological and institutionalized sociological anxieties. A result of the binary opposition of rhetorical strategies that shaped modern culture, the genre is an open door to other worlds where to dream of uncertainties and to indulge in our traumas. Its transgressive indeterminacy against the Cartesian system is traced from the origin of creative filmic language to postmodern disturbing fantasies about the unknown, having social control and individual free will as the only limits of its imaginary trips across …

The Posthuman Ethos In Cyberpunk Science Fiction, María Goicoechea

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Posthuman Ethos in Cyberpunk Science Fiction" María Goicoechea explores the posthuman tendencies of Anglo-American popular culture as they are manifested in the representations of the cyborgs, clones, and artificial intelligences that populate cyberpunk science fiction. Choosing the figure of the cyborg as the central myth of cyberculture, Goicoechea exposes the underlying tensions and contradictions present in cyberpunk prescient visions of humanity's evolution. Goicoechea reviews the variety of contradictory meanings that have been sedimented over this hybrid creature, using as ideological framework the digital narratives of "Technoromanticism" and "Cybergothic," respectively the dominant and the countercultural trend inside …

Selected Bibliography Of Studies On The Fantastic In Literature, Terri Ochiagha

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Cinema's Doubles, Their Meaning, And Literary Intertexts, Pilar Andrade

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Cinema's Doubles, Their Meaning, and Literary Intertexts" Pilar Andrade analyzes the figure of the double as an element of cinema. Andrade does not take under consideration films in which the double is considered merely as a clinical case with no mystery (for example as in David Fincher's Fight Club or Brad Anderson's The Machinist) or in which it is used as a useful piece to make the plot without referring to the fantasy world (as in Joel Schumacher's Bad Company); instead, Andrade focuses on films that make a clear connection between the alter ego and fantasy, including …

Introduction To New Studies On The Fantastic In Literature, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Entropy And The Fantastic In Pynchon's Narratives, María Rosa Burillo Gadea

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Entropy and the Fantastic in Pynchon's Narratives" María Rosa Burillo Gadea postulates that dealing with Pynchon's fiction one is not sure if paranoia is presented as an alternative way of grasping other possible spheres, a more comprehensive vision of the world, or merely a joke. Pynchon's stories try to reproduce reality in different fictional grounds. He uses the notion of entropy, the level of molecular disorder of a thermodynamic system when heated as a metaphor for a disorderly and chaotic universe, necessary, however, in order to avoid the fatality of system exhaustion or death. A kind of …

Fantasy Literature And The Misanthrope: A Review Article Of New Work By Cottom And Zipes, Terri Ochiagha

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Literary Fantastic In African And English Literature, Terri Ochiagha

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Literary Fantastic in African and English Literature," Terri Ochiagha begins with pointing out that in his Introduction á la literature fantastique, Tzvetan Todorov proposed the theoretical frameworks he believed should be the basis of the identification and analysis of a literary work as fantastic. While Todorov's text is only one of the many treatises on the fantastic in literary scholarship, in most of these African prose is seldom a subject of exemplification or analysis. In the rare instances in which such texts are mentioned, they are often and hastily classified as magic realism. Ochiagha posits whether …

Cultural Scenarios Of The Fantastic, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Cultural Scenarios of the Fantastic," Asunción López-Varela Azcárate explores the relationship between technological development, the materiality of objects, the concept of ontological presence, and the emergence of abstract and fantastic models. López-Varela Azcárate argues that since the early twentieth century there has been a return to the fantastic in literature and that this is related to neo-baroque attitudes whose foundations are a systemic way of knowing that unveils a world understandable from an epistemology of complexity and ambiguity. In postmodern neo-baroque aesthetics, with its focus on technological re-mediating, that is, transferring information across different media, originality is …