Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Secrets And Hiding Places: The Worth Of Women In Nicholas Nickleby, Elizabeth Redmond

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In early Victorian England, married women were denied the legal right to own property, and social convention remanded them to ostracism if they chose to remain single. Likewise, jobs that were available to women failed to pay a living wage, so women were placed under tremendous economic and social pressure to marry. In Charles Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby, he depicts how marriage becomes manipulated within the working and middle classes as a means to acquire wealth. Dickens also compares the repression of women to the abuse suffered by school children in the Yorkshire schools, which had a reputation for neglecting …

Fabricating Freddy Vs. Jason: Understanding A Motion Picture As A Social Encounter Between Fans And Filmmakers, Jason M. Rapelje

Dissertations

The break in the mass communicative chain, which separates producers and receivers from one another in both time and space, impedes researchers from studying motion pictures as social encounters. As with face-to-face encounters, producers and receivers of motion pictures depend upon the use of "rules of relevance" (Goffman, 1961) and "typifactory schemes" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) for their encounters to take place. I examine the social encounter that takes place between some of the filmmakers and fans of Freddy vs Jason through the use of these concepts, as well as a revision of John B. Thompson's (1990) methodological framework of …

Balancing Rosie And June: A Study Of Lynchburg College Postwar Alumnae And The Impact Of The Feminine Mystique, Dinah Watson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In 2003, the movie Mona Lisa Smile debuted describing the frustrations that many college women may have faced in the years after World War II. Wellesley College was the elite all-female institution that openly and proudly prepared its young women with the proper rules of etiquette and correctness. Despite Wellesley’s own excellent academic reputation, its close proximity to the prestigious single-sex male college, Harvard, made it even more appealing and convenient for the Wellesley girls to find a “suitable” husband. The novice young art instructor, Katherine Watson, was unique in that she wanted to offer her students not only a …

Some Thoughts On China's Sexual Revolution: Sexuality And Social Change In Contemporary China, Sun Zhongxin

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The last two years saw several changes in the public discourse around sex and sexuality in China. So what are some of the most controversial sex-related topics to be raised in China recently?

These - Are - The "Breaks": A Roundtable Discussion On Teaching The Post-Soul Aesthetic, Bertram D. Ashe, Crystal Anderson, Mark Anthony Neal, Evie Shockley, Alexander Weheliye

English Faculty Publications

We met at Duke University - mid-summer, in the mid Atlantic, at mid-campus - to talk about teaching courses that focused on the post-soul aesthetic. We met outside the John Hope Franklin Center, and soon enough we five youngish black professors were walking a hallway towards a conference room near the African and African American Studies program. Not at all surprisingly, the walls of the hallway were lined with framed photographs of the esteemed John Hope Franklin at various stages throughout his long and storied career. For me, given the topic I was about to raise among these professional colleagues, …

Representation In Kenya, Its Diaspora, And Academia: Colonial Legacies In Constructions Of Knowledge About Kenya's Coast, Jesse Benjamin

Faculty Articles

This paper explores the construction of knowledge in Kenya in the context and aftermath of colonialism and underdevelopment. Those communities that were politically and economically marginalized in Coast Province over the past century were also displaced in terms of academic opportunities, resulting in fewer social science scholars from Mijikenda and other non-Swahili communities in both Kenyan and diaspora universities. Underdevelopment studies in Africa and Kenya are briefly reviewed, and the colonial history of asymmetric social relations at coastal Kenya is traced. Finally, key debates over identity and history are examined within this context and shown to be exacerbated by diasporic …

中国大陆九十年代以来独立电影文化的构成与城市青年文化实践, Xiaodao Liang

Lingnan Theses

本论文主要考察中国大陆九十年代出现的独立电影的特性，首先从一批年轻的独立电影导演及其作品出发，将它们放在当代大陆城市青年文化的历史脉络中，着重考察独立电影的特殊生产机制以及对“青年”的再现，与“青年”在社会建构中出现的变化之间的关系。然后通过使用民族誌的研究方法，重点考察大陆本土年轻观众对独立电影的接受情况，试图解释为何“边缘”成为当下论述大陆独立电影文化特性的重要话语。本文的主要立论是，“边缘”是由独立电影与城市青年文化在不同层面上互构而成的。

这种互构关系的建立，表现在几个方面：首先，大陆进入商品经济时代，具有整合性的建构青年身份的国家意识形态话语失效，导致了年轻人的迷茫和失落，他们断裂和破碎的身份，通过独立电影在国家制片体系之外的生产和制作模式中被再现出来，被称为“边缘”的特殊个体。其次，大陆独立电影被部分青年影迷用来对抗互联网上出现的话语资源垄断和话语权威，从而确立“业余爱好 者”、“草根”等被称为“边缘”的身份。最后一个方面，即是作为影迷的城市青年对不同观影场所和对独立电影不同消费方式的选择，建立了在电影院线、个人在家庭观看影碟等主流渠道以外的，被称为“边缘”的观影方式，但这种方式又不可避免的会引起影迷的身份焦虑。

Remade In Hong Kong : How Hong Kong People Use Hong Kong Disneyland, Wing Yee, Kimburley Choi

Lingnan Theses

Recent studies of globalization provide contrasting views of the cultural and sociopolitical effects of such major corporations as Disney as they invest transnationally and circulate their offerings around the world. While some scholars emphasize the ubiquity of Disney’s products and its promotion of consumerism on a global scale, accompanied by cultural homogenization, faltering democracy, and diminishing state sovereignty, others highlight signs of contestation and resistance, questioning the various state-capitalist alliances presumed to hold in the encounter between a global company, a local state, and the people.

The settlement process and the cultural import of Hong Kong Disneyland in Hong Kong …

The Rhetoric Of Crisis: How We Talk About The Vulnerability Of Youth, Casey Cramer

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The classical definition of rhetoric is generally understood to be the art of persuasion. Originating in ancient Greece, rhetoric was one of the three original liberal arts. It focused on effective use of language, most often in the arena of politics and public discourse (Brummett, 35). By mastering persuasive language, politicians were able to shape and sway public opinion in their favor. Conversely, by understanding the mechanics of rhetoric, citizens were able to recognize and interpret speech that was purposefully constructed. The prevalence of rhetoric in political speech made it an integral part of a democratic society - politicians needed …

Boffin's Books And Darwin's Finches: Victorian Cultures Of Collecting, Michael W. Hancock '89

Doctoral Dissertations

Although wealthy continental virtuosos had passionately and selectively accumulated a variety of natural and artificial objects from the Renaissance onwards, not until the nineteenth century did collecting become a conspicuous national pastime among all classes in Britain. As industry and empire made available many new and exotic goods for acquisition and display, the collection as a cultural form offered the Victorians a popular strategy of self-fashioning that was often represented in the literature of the age as a source of prestige and social legitimation. Through interdisciplinary readings of Victorian fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry, my study examines how textual representations …

Revisiting Queer Latinidad: A Clags Seminar Course Review, Anel Méndez Velázquez, Ileana Jiménez

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Anel: The construction of a latinà-queer "we" is very problematic. The construction of a "queer we" and a "latinà we" separately—and any attempt to add them up in a "queer-latinà we"—privileges and universalizes particular imagined identities at the expense and exclusion of specific cultural and personal practices and ways of being.

Addams's Internationalist Pacifism And The Rhetoric Of Maternalism, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Addams's pacifism grew out of her experiences working for social justice in Chicago's multi-national immigrant community. It rested on her well-tested conviction that justice and international comity could only be achieved through nonviolent means. While Addams at times used maternalist rhetoric, her pacifism was not based on a belief in woman's essential, pacifist nature. Instead, it was grounded on her understanding of democracy, social justice, and international peace as mutually defining concepts. For Addams, progress toward democracy, social justice, and peace involved both institutional reform and changes in moral, intellectual, and affective sensibilities.

A person's sensibilities grow out of his …

Personalized Gravestones: Your Life's Passion For All To See And Hear, Peter A. Maresco, Ahmed U. Zafar

WCBT Faculty Publications

In the past several years, a trend has developed that in an earlier age would have seemed inappropriate and perhaps even morbid; the increased personalization of gravestones (memorials). What makes this trend interesting is the variety of shapes, designs, manufacturing processes, and types of personalization actually appearing on gravestones, including seven-inch LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screens recessed into the face of memorials. This paper discusses gravestones (memorials) in a religious context. It examines the rapidly developing market for elaborately designed memorials both in their traditional forms, typically vertical and created out of granite with just a name and date of …

On Chris Lehmann's Revolt Of The Masscult, George Ciccariello Maher

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The good folks at Prickly Paradigm are certainly doing their job. Their stated objective is “publishing challenging and sometimes outrageous pamphlets,” and Lehmann's short piece fulfills this claim brilliantly, evoking intellectual mood swings that span from shouting for joy at a particularly lucid formulation to shouting angrily at the deftness with which Lehmann transforms his lucidity into suspiciously wrongheaded and reactionary assessments. The clinical bipolarity of this work, as we will see, is no coincidence: it is precisely the political entanglement of the subject of mass culture (“masscult”) that leads to both respect for one's opponents and suspicion …

Too Many Options Dilute Shared Experience, David E. Drew, Hedley Burrell

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Despite the red carpet glitter of the Oscars, it is no secret that Hollywood has had a far from perfect year at the box office.

And unfortunately for Tinsel Town, its problems go beyond the obvious need for more successful films.

The way we experience both movies and television has evolved. We don't do things together the way we once did. We rent movies and watch them at home rather than going to a local movie theater with family and friends. Box office returns suffer and the centrality of film in our lives is weakened.

The same fragmentation is true …

Cosmic Patriotism And Spiritual Internationalism: Addams’S Newer Ideals Of Peace, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), Addams notes the coming of a “beneficent and progressive patriotism,” a “newer patriotism” that may grow large enough “to soak up the notion of nationalism.” She charts rising cooperation and fellowship within cosmopolitan cities and across national boundaries. Not knowing what to call this phenomenon, Addams writes, “We are driven to the rather absurd phrase of “cosmic patriotism.”

What is she talking about? The first several times I read Newer Ideals, a question tugged in the back of my head: what is this book about? I had too much respect for Addams as a …

Boffin's Books And Darwin's Finches: Victorian Cultures Of Collecting, Michael W. Hancock

Faculty Publications & Research

Although wealthy continental virtuosos had passionately and selectively accumulated a variety of natural and artificial objects from the Renaissance onwards, not until the nineteenth century did collecting become a conspicuous national pastime among all classes in Britain. As industry and empire made available many new and exotic goods for acquisition and display, the collection as a cultural form offered the Victorians a popular strategy of self-fashioning that was often represented in the literature of the age as a source of prestige and social legitimation. Through interdisciplinary readings of Victorian fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry, my study examines how textual representations …

Setting The Pole: Critical Factors In Nascar's Success, Matthew N. Maisano

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This study examines the critical factors that make NASCAR so successful. Now known as the fastest growing sport, NASCAR started out as a limited funding, dirt track racing sport to a multimillion dollar, super speedway sport. Just like every sport, NASCAR has gone through many changes and this study will further discuss how it went from a sport to a business and then to entertainment and now a lifestyle. In the beginning NASCAR drivers were renegades with ties to moonshining; today drivers are considered role models and are active in Pop Culture. Constant changes in the sport have allowed it …

Shooters To The Left Of Us, Shooters To The Right: First Person Arcade Shooter Video Games, The Violence Debate, And The Legacy Of Militarism, Karen J. Hall

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Adult concerns about video games erupted in the 1990s when parents and politicians came forward with claims that Doom, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and games like them were partially responsible for the rash of school shootings in predominantly white, middle class communities. The author of this chapter argues that arcade games serve the national interest by entertaining consumer-citizens and creating a consumer-based demand for military technology. However, when adolescent shooters disrupt the status quo, it is the games rather than militarist social and economic structures that are criticized by the news media, politicians, and parents. The author of …

The Game's Afoot: Images Of Infinite Games In Samuel Delany's Trouble On Triton, Marc R. Zaldivar

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Games are frequently used in speculative literature as a metaphor for real-world activities. In Trouble on Triton, Samuel Delany uses several sorts of games in order to explore complex systems of modeling and interrelationships between fiction and reality, extending a tradition in science fiction of placing games at the very center of social reality. Zaldivar's essay seeks to define some of the concepts of game theory that can be used to understand this complex novel and its representation of human social life. In particular, Zaldivar explores finite and infinite games and their uses within a deconstructive theoretical framework. A …

“Texts Memorized, Texts Performed: A Reconsideration Of The Role Of Paritta In Sri Lankan Monastic Education.”, Jeffrey Samuels

Philosophy & Religion Faculty Publications

During the past twenty years there has been a growing interest in monastic education within the larger field of Buddhist studies. Within the last ten years in particular, a number of monographs and articles examining the training and education of monks in Korea (Buswell [1992]), Tibet/India (Dreyfus [2003]), Thailand/Laos (Collins [1990], McDaniel [2002, 2003]), and Sri Lanka (Blackburn [1999a, 1999b, 2001] Samuels [2002]), have been published. Many of those works have paid particular attention to the texts used in monastic training, as well as to how the information contained in those very texts is imparted to and embodied by monks …

Le Français D’Origine Maghrébine Face Au Prisme Médiatique, Hassiba Lassoued

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Whether we admit it or not, the mass media manipulates the masses. This fact proves to be especially dangerous in the context of French people of Maghrebian origin. The media presents them as either incapable of being “assimilated” or as models of integration. At any rate, there seems to be no middle ground between these two extremes.

¡Dame Un Ritmo (Y Sueldo)!: La Sustentabilidad Económica De Los Artistas Callejeros En El Gran Santiago, Zachariah Smith Cheema

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Street artists in the greater Santiago area are the product of a high unemployment rate and a history of street music in the city. Street artists can be found in every part of Santiago, from the shopping centers to the tranquil parks. Santiago’s street artists vary in age, talent, and future plans. However, these street artists confront many similar risks, such as the threat of detention, other street vendors, or the spectators themselves. While street art as a long-term job is a possibility, there is not a lot of room to save money for the future. Street art lacks support …

Toward A Cleaner Whiteness: New Racial Identities, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article re-examines racial and ethnic identity within the context of pedagogical attempts to instill a positive white identity in white students who are conscious of the history of white racism and white privilege. The paper draws heavily from whiteness studies and developmental cognitive science in arguing (against Henry Giroux and Stuart Hall) that a positive notion of white identity, however postmodern its construction, is an oxymoron, since whiteness designates less a cultural/ethnic ethos and meaningful way of life than a pathological structure of privilege and narrowminded cognitive habitus.

Parental Influence On Children's Ethnic Identity Among Chinese Americans, Sham'ah Md. Yunus

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the influence of Chinese American parents on their children's ethnic identity. Two research questions were designed to examine these relationships: Does the personal construct of Chinese American parents influence their children's ethnic identity and does the length of stay in the United States of Chinese American parents influence children's ethnic identity? Parental influence was identified as parents' ethnic behaviors, parents' ethnic values, parents' personal construct, and their length of stay in the United States. The 93 families who participated in this study were purposely selected from three Chinese language schools from a Midwestern city of the United …

An Examination Into The Effects Of Social Positioning And Capitalist Immersion On Gendered Attitudes Towards Homosexuality In The United States, Fiona J. Blee

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Previous research on attitudes towards homosexuality has concentrated on characteristics of individuals, and neglected the capitalist structure of society that provides the contextual setting for the creation and maintenance of cultural attitudes.

This thesis uses responses collected in the general social survey of the United States between 1993 and 1998, to provide a more comprehensive explanation of differences in attitudes towards homosexuality, through an analysis of social position and the capitalist agenda. The analysis revealed significant relationships between sex, age, race, income, beliefs regarding the domestication of women, and attitudes towards homosexuality.

The analysis showed that respondents categorized as black …

Book Review, Oscar G. Chase

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Foucault And Habermas, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article is a comprehensive comparison of Foucault and Habermas which focuses on their distinctive styles of critical theory. The article maintains that Foucault's virtue ethical understanding of aesthetic self-realization as a form of resistance to normalizing practices provides counterpoint to Habermas's more juridical approach to institutional justice and the critique of ideology. The article contains an extensive discussion of their respective treatments of speech action, both strategic and communicative, and concludes by addressing Foucault's understanding of parrhesia as a non-discursive form of truth-telling.

Mosaic: Exploring Patterns In Literature: Volume 2: Virtual Voyages, Institute For The Development Of Gifted Education, Ricks Center For Gifted Children, University Of Denver

Ricks Curriculum Units Series

Virtual Voyages is an integrated thematic unit developed to weave together the academic strands of geography and literature into a single curriculum that fosters appreciation, awareness, and understanding of cultures around the world. The individualized research format meets the needs of gifted students to work within a particular area of passion, to work at an individualized pace, and to work with depth and breadth on projects that especially engage their interests.

Images Of God: The Effect Of Personal Theologies On Moral Attitudes, Political Affiliation, And Religious Behavior, Christoper Bader, Paul Froese

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Social scientists often explain religious effects in terms of religious group affiliations. Typically, researchers identify religious groups by denomination or some broader popular categorization, such as “fundamentalist” or “evangelical.” To capture religious differences more effectively, Steensland et al. (2000) propose an intricate classification of American denominations that takes into account the theology and historical development of various American religious traditions to predict individual attitudes and behaviors. We believe that equal care and attention should be devoted to the development of key measures of belief that may cross denominational lines. In this article, we propose one such measure: personal conceptions or …