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Publication En La Sombra: Cinema Culture and Modern Women in Mexico City, 1917-1931(University of Kansas, 2019-12-31) Sanchez, Courtney Aspen; Falicov, Tamara; Baskett, Michael; Preston, Catherine; Rosenthal, Anton; Wilson, RonaldThis dissertation is about cinema culture, modern femininity, and Mexico City between 1917 and 1931. It is a story about movie makers, movie spectators, and the movie texts that mediated between them. It is a study of on-screen divas, pelonas, and indigenas. It is also an account of an era that began with end of revolutionary bloodshed and ended with the beginning of Mexican sound cinema. The confluence of Mexican cultural nationalism and transnational modernity during this period prompted robust discourse around the categories “woman,” “women,” and “feminine,” which meant that these terms were under constant revision at the same time that Mexican silent cinema culture was developing a foundation for the subsequent Golden Age (1940-1950). Accordingly, the discursive history that follows aims to elucidate the reciprocal relationship between women and silent cinema culture in Mexico City during the immediate postrevolution era. While scholars of North American cinema have revealed that women played a more powerful role in film culture during the silent era than any other time since, and though studies of Latin American cinema have recently begun to interrogate the specific characteristics of silent cinema in the region, the assumption that Mexican gender ideologies barred women from participation in silent film culture persists. Moreover, Mexican silent film culture is often dismissed or bracketed from discussions of later cinematic developments in that country on the assumption that, because few silent films were made in Mexico, the influence of the era was similarly constrained. How, then, did women engage with the movies as spectators, filmmakers, and characters on screen? How did this engagement interface with Mexican gender ideals, and how did it help guide the development of Mexican cinema? The discourses that articulated postrevolution cinema culture spoke also to the gendered balance of social and political power in modern Mexico, so my project joins a growing body of work that appraises the role of women and the significance of popular culture in the elaboration of Mexican modernity. Ultimately, my comparison of different aspects of cinema culture underscores the ambivalence that characterized postrevolution Mexico City – while cinema culture granted women new opportunities to participate in public life and to fashion their own identities, cinema also created representations and desires that channeled postrevolution ideas about women in a direction favorable to state power.Publication Classified by Genre: Rhetorical Genrefication in Cinema(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31) Swanson, Carl Joseph; Preston, Catherine; Miner, Joshua; Preston, Catherine; Miner, Joshua; Baskett, Michael; Wilson, Ronald; Devitt, AmyThis dissertation argues for a rethinking and expansion of film genre theory. As the variety of media exhibition platforms expands and as discourse about films permeates a greater number of communication media, the use of generic terms has never been more multiform or observable. Fundamental problems in the very conception of film genre have yet to be addressed adequately, and film genre study has carried on despite its untenable theoretical footing. Synthesizing pragmatic genre theory, constructivist film theory, Bourdieusian fan studies, and rhetorical genre studies, the dissertation aims to work through the radical implications of pragmatic genre theory and account for genres role in interpretation, evaluation, and rhetorical framing as part of broader, recurring social activities. This model rejects textualist and realist foundations for film genre; only pragmatic genre use can serve as a foundation for understanding film genres. From this perspective, the concept of genre is reconstructed according to its interpretive and rhetorical functions rather than a priori assumptions about the text or transtextual structures. Genres are not independent structures or relations among texts but performative speech acts about textual relationships and are functions of the rhetorical conditions of their use. This use is not only denotative, but connotative, as well, insofar as certain genre labels evoke aesthetic or moral judgments for certain users. This dissertation proposes the concept of meta-genres, or the sum total of textual and extra-textual attributes plus the evaluative valances a given user associates with a generic label. Meta-genres help guide interpretation and serve as a shorthand for evaluative judgments about certain kinds of films, and are thus central to the kinds of taste politics negotiated through film texts. The rhetorical conditions of genre use can be typified, and this dissertation adapts concepts and methods from the field of rhetorical genre studies to show that the film genre use is most readily observable through its uptake rhetorical genres. These rhetorical genres, in turn, index the social groups and recurring situations that they are called upon to meet. By studying examples like academic writing, popular press reviews, filmmaker interviews, internet message board comments, and digital media recommendation systems, one can identify how specific deployments of generic terms serve as a nexus of text, user, group, and social activities, and can develop a methodology for studying genre as use relative to those dimensions.Publication Documenting Drill Music: Understanding Black Masculine Performances in Hip-Hop(University of Kansas, 2018-12-31) Green, Demetrius; Halegoua, Germaine; Baskett, Michael; Willmott, KevinWhen it comes to analyzing stereotypical representations of black masculinity in contemporary media, commercial hip-hop and the imagery associated with many of the artists is filled with caricatures of black men. The images are often a negotiation between the record label who distributes and finances the music and the artists who perform these negative tropes. On one hand the record labels cater to mainstream audiences that are familiar with negative imagery of black men and women. On the other hand, many of the artists are performing tropes of black masculinity that are linked to the social spaces and the codes of black masculinity in their environment. This linkage between hip-hop performances and the social context that perpetuates these performances is often blurred in the commercial hip-hop video. This study will employ drill music videos to analyze the linkage between space and black masculine performances in hip-hop. Drill music videos’ modes of production are similar to those found in documentary films and allows us to draw inferences about artists’ performances in relation to the social space where they are filmed. Bill Nichols’ Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary is used as a key text when contextualizing drill music performances. Along with documentary theory, this study will use concepts presented by Michel Foucault that analyze systems of confinement and their role on producing drill music performances. The study begins with an exploration of what drill music is, a comparison with commercial hip-hop and the social context of Chicago that constructs black masculine performances. These points of emphasis culminate in my case study of one of the most prominent drill music artists, Chief Keef.Publication CinemaCon: Identifying the Voice of the Film Exhibition Industry Through the National Association of Theatre Owners’ Field-Configuring Event, 2011-2018(University of Kansas, 2018-12-31) Pitzer, Juli Stone; Falicov, Tamara; Halegoua, Germaine; Hurst, Robert; Wilson, Ron; Anatol, GiselleThis dissertation examines the film exhibition industry’s main field-configuring event, CinemaCon (2011-2018), deemed the largest convention and trade show in the world with over 4,000 participating delegates each year. Though CinemaCon is the newest industry event operated by the exhibitor trade organization, the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), it has quickly become the prominent annual ritual activity for film exhibitors and production and distribution industry delegates to attend. This study draws upon extensive primary and secondary source materials from archival research; immersive field attendance as a participant-observer at the multiple events; and industry artifacts. It combines these analyzed resources with multi-disciplinary approaches from media industry studies, political economy, organizational, management and event studies in order to present a detailed case study of the CinemaCon event as well as a critical examination of the ‘semi-embedded deep texts’ of its activities, presentations, and messages. Overall, I argue that CinemaCon is a powerfully constructed film exhibitor field-configuring event where its dominant organization is the represented ‘voice’ of the film exhibition industry that reinforces technological standards and intra-industry practices. The study begins with an overview of film exhibition’s history of formulating a unified convention event as it attempted to organize its body during the beginnings of the film industry. I draw upon substantial archival research in articulating the experimentation and evolutionary aspects of national convention events as they formed ritualistic practices and promoted a sense of exclusivity among film exhibitors. This analysis includes the formation of the principle trade organization, NATO, in 1966 and its first convention, as well as the shift toward outsourcing conventions, like ShoWest, as the event industry evolved. Chapter Three begins the case study of CinemaCon, when NATO took back its convention from a for-profit organization and launched its own in 2011. I draw heavily upon three years of convention attendance (2014-2016) in addressing what CinemaCon is and how its programming, badging, trade show, panels and sessions reinforce the ritual of convention attendance in promoting an exclusive experience for exhibitors through the marketing of “hype” and “buzz.” These activities create opportunities for dialogue among exhibitors that highlight areas where the homogenization of exhibition is not definitive. Furthermore, Chapter Four continues building on this case study in addressing the activities—studio presentations, advanced screenings, NATO’s president John Fithian’s “CinemaCon State of the Industry” addresses, and the final awards ceremony—that occur in The Colosseum space. This exclusive space is viewed as a place where the three areas of the film industry unite, yet these industry stakeholders sometimes contradict one another as small fissures reveal discontent and points of conflict. This chapter reinforces my argument that field-configuring events, such as CinemaCon, are valuable research fields that provide inter- and intra- organizational insights from film exhibitors about film exhibition. CinemaCon is an event where industry knowledge is shared, unification is attempted, and the principle ‘voice’ of the film exhibition industry represented by NATO is made known.Publication Strategies of Digital Surrealism in Contemporary Western Cinema(University of Kansas, 2018-05-31) Kartashov, Andrei; Preston, Catherine; Wilson, Ronald; Jamieson, MargaretThis thesis joins an ongoing discussion of cinema’s identity in the digital age. The new technology, which by now has become standard for moving images of any kind, has put into question existing assumptions and created paradoxes from a continuity between two different media that are, however, thought of as one medium. I address that problem from the perspective of surrealist film theory, which insisted on paradoxes and saw cinema as an art form that necessarily operated on contradictions: a quality that resonated with surrealism’s general aesthetic theory. To support my argument, I then analyze in some depth three contemporary works of cinema that possess surrealist attributes and employed digital technology in their making in a self-conscious way. Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, Pedro Costa’s Horse Money, and Seances by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson all point to specific contradictions revealed by digital technology that they resolve, or hold in tension, in accordance with the surrealist notion of point sublime. I find that neither work suggests a radical difference between analog and digital cinema but rather, they highlight the difference that exists within cinema as inherent in it.Publication Producing Gayness: The 1990s “Gay Boom” in Japanese Media(University of Kansas, 2017-12-31) Ogawa, Sho; Baskett, Michael; Halegoua, Germaine; Preston, Catherine; Schofield, Ann; Takeyama, Akiko; Wilson, RonThis dissertation examines the gay boom in the Japan, where various media from magazines, novels, television shows, to feature films reported on and represented male homosexuality in scale that was unprecedented and is unmatched to the present. The number of reports and narratives on male homosexuality reached its peak during 1991 to 1994, when Japan was facing numerous social changes such as the burst of the economic bubble, recognition of social stratification, shifts in women’s roles in the family, and increased promotion of Japan’s internationalization. The Japanese media’s production of gay male images was shaped by these social changes and the anxieties, producing an idealized gay subject who can respond to these situations and produce a new set of norms that govern the alternative social formations. This is not to say that gay men were universally accepted in the Japanese media, but through various conflicting representational modes of exoticization, celebration, abjection, and domestication of gay men, the Japanese media defined which subjects would be granted visibility for straight consumers. The gay boom’s grafting of the gay man’s lifestyle into matters of the family, class, and the national body were comprised of a complex set of negotiations, which often obscured and alleviated the issues faced by recessionary Japan. This process of commodification of gay images championed the fashionable, hybrid gay subject, which resulted in the exclusion of the unfashionable, uneducated, uncultured, rural lives, and the less wealthy.Publication SECRET SUPERSTARS AND OTHERWORLDLY WIZARDS: Gender Biased Hiding of Extraordinary Abilities in Girl-Powered Disney Channel Sitcoms from the 2000s(University of Kansas, 2017-05-31) Hodel, Christina Hereiti; Halegoua, Germaine R; Preston, Catherine; Wilson, Ronald; Miner, Joshua; Doan, AleshaConformity messaging and subversive practices potentially harmful to healthy models of feminine identity are critical interpretations of the differential depiction of the hiding and usage of tween girl characters’ extraordinary abilities (e.g., super/magical abilities and celebrity powers) in Disney Channel television sitcoms from 2001-2011. Male counterparts in similar programs aired by the same network openly displayed their extraordinariness and were portrayed as having considerable and usually uncontested agency. These alternative depictions of differential hiding and secrecy in sitcoms are far from speculative; these ideas were synthesized from analyses of sitcom episodes, commentary in magazine articles, and web-based discussions of these series. Content analysis, industrial analysis (including interviews with industry personnel), and critical discourse analysis utilizing the multi-faceted lens of feminist theory throughout is used in this study to demonstrate a unique decade in children’s programming about super powered girls. This research is invested in answering questions about how and why this decade of gendered programming was constructed and its impact on television’s portrayal of female youth. To address these issues, close study of dialogue and action via textual analysis, and application of insights from socioeconomic and historical perspectives elucidate the antics surrounding the hiding and misappropriation of extraordinary power by young girl role models. In addition, such methodologies reveal much about the attitudes of the creators of these programs (mostly white, middle-aged, Western, heterosexual males). What is discerned from scripted material on the motivations behind elaborate attempts to hide the extraordinary are the meanings disseminated from the female subject-position representations in these blockbuster sitcoms that reveal despite Disney’s progress towards creating empowered girls, the network is at best locked into tradition.Publication RABINAL ACHI. Scenographic Design of a traditional Mayan Play(University of Kansas, 2017-08-31) Rodríguez-Montero, Pamela; Reaney, Mark; Unruh, Delbet; Hodges Persley, Nicole; Vogel, KellyThe Mayan dance-drama Rabinal Achí is one of the most important remaining pre-Columbian artistic expressions today. The script of the play is written in the Mayan language of K’iche’ and is performed every year at the end of January in Rabinal, Guatemala. Believed to have first been written and performed during the Mayan Postclassic Era (AD 900-1524), the play expresses the issues that concerned the inhabitants of the region of Rabinal at the time—myths of origin, popular and political actors—through masked dance and music. This thesis is intended to explain the design process and research needed to create a scenographic design of the Rabinal Achí. The design elements created for this project include: set, lighting and costumes and are aimed to reach a contemporary North American audience in Lawrence, Kansas.Publication Beyond The Phantom Edit: A Critical History and Practical Analysis of Fan Edits(University of Kansas, 2017-09-31) Wille, Joshua; Tibbetts, John C; Jacobson, Matthew; Willmott, Kevin; Wilson, Ronald; Johnson, KijFan edits are essentially unauthorized alternative versions of films made by fans, whom I define as people with intense interest in films and related media. Unlike traditional film editing, which is characterized by a new assemblage of original film or video content, fan editing is a form of recombinant filmmaking that reactivates existing arrangements of audiovisual material. Fan edits are noncommercial transformative works that illustrate the mutability of digital cinema as well as the potential for new media artists, experimental filmmakers, and diverse critical voices to emerge from a networked public. The Phantom Edit (2000) is a seminal fan edit based on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) that established a model of production and distribution for fan edits. As a central research problem, this study recognizes that the failure of previous scholarship to account accurately for the history of The Phantom Edit, as well as an evident lack of close engagement with contemporary fan edits, have hindered the ability of scholars to grapple with significant developments in fan edit culture. In general, film and media studies have failed to account for both The Phantom Edit and nearly two decades of progressive work. This study builds upon the limits of previous scholarship in order to illustrate a historical trajectory of fan editing from The Phantom Edit to its more diverse present state, which is exemplified by Raising Cain: Re-cut (2012), a fan edit based on Raising Cain (1992) that was eventually endorsed by Brian De Palma and sold as the official director’s cut. Furthermore, this study examines practical trends of fan edits and effective means of classification. Combining archival research, interviews, practical fan editing experience, and textual analysis of fan edits collected over several years of participation in the fan editing community, this study offers a foundation of knowledge about the technology, legal contexts, and cultural practice of fan edits.Publication More Than Movies: Social Formations in Informal Networks of Media Sharing(University of Kansas, 2017-08-31) Van Esler, Michael W.; Halegoua, Germaine; Baskett, Michael; Preston, Catherine; Miner, Joshua; Tucker, SherrieThis project examines the social structures, formations, and practices of informal networks of media sharing (INMSs) through both historical and sociological lenses. INMSs are comprised of individuals who distribute and circulate media to one another through noncommercial, unauthorized networks. The networks can be centered around texts, such as the early videophile publication The Videophile’s Newsletter, or they can be constituted by disparate groups of people who come together as a community using digital platforms like BitTorrent. While nominally concerned with circulating media, INMSs are also sources of social sustenance for their members and are sites of struggle for social and symbolic capital and power. They illuminate the complex ways in which community members utilize media as a starting point to satisfy a variety of needs, including developing bodies of cultural and technical knowledge, thinking through legal and ethical concerns, creating social bonds, and engaging in a variety of pedagogical practices. In short, INMSs are loci of social and cultural meaning-making for their members. This dissertation catalogs and analyzes the social practices and formations of three INMSs, the aforementioned Videophile’s Newsletter and two private, BitTorrent networks focused on cinema, Great Cinema and FilmDestruction, showing there to be diachronic and transplatform similarities between different networks. Rather than instances of rupture and divergence, this project argues that these networks are best understood through an evolutionary lens. It contends that INMSs and other similar formations should be increasingly studied because of their prevalence throughout the 20th and 21st centuries and their importance to consumers as unauthorized media distribution spaces whereby network members have greater latitude to experiment with media and create unique, diverse social structures and practices that are not contingent upon restrictions imposed by the media and copyright industries.Publication Embodied Spectatorship: Phenomenological Turn in Contemporary Film Theory(University of Kansas, 2017-05-31) Glushneva, Iuliia; Preston, Catherine Lee; Miner, Joshua D.; Wilson, RonSince the early 1990s, film theorists have been particularly interested in the studies of film experience and relations between viewers and films. In contrast to the classical and post-1960s film studies of spectatorship, recent film theory has made a substantial contribution to the development of phenomenological perspectives on the film viewing, engaging concepts, and methods rooted in the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The phenomenological endeavor has served as an alternative epistemological paradigm competing with established theoretical approaches to questions about how to study the film experience and what constitutes the nature of film spectatorship. This paradigm marks a shift from thinking of the viewer as an ideal, abstract subject to thinking of him/her as an embodied, material agent whose existence represents the integral whole with the film and the world as such. While acknowledging the diversity and hybridity of film phenomenology, this thesis focuses on the sociocultural, heuristic and philosophical foundations underlying the entire phenomenological project in contemporary film studies. It examines film phenomenology not as a complete “Grand” theory of film experience but as a specific methodology and model of philosophizing, which challenge ocularcentrism, rationalism, the body-mind and the subject-object dichotomies of the previous film theories and Western epistemologies in general. By investigating the intellectual heritage of philosophical phenomenology and such basic phenomenological notions as experience, intentionality, reduction, and description, this study aims to delineate and clarify the fundamental strategies employed by film phenomenology in the exploration of cinematic experience. The emphasis on these strategies and central assumptions of film phenomenology is motivated by the desire to uncover the cultural and research potential of the phenomenological project which often seems to be obscure and ambiguous, and for this reason irrelevant.Publication Remembering What We Lost: Ecomemory, Visual Ecomedia, and the Discourse of Environmental Concern(University of Kansas, 2016-12-31) Woodson, Mary Beth; Preston, Catherine; Falicov, Tamara; Willmott, Kevin; Jacobson, Matthew; Conrad, KathrynIn this study I examine the evolving discourse of environmental concerns within visual ecological media that utilizes what I define as ecological memory—ecomemory. As part of this examination, I analyze the forms ecological memories take, how those memories are presented, and the role they play. Employing a combination of ecocriticism and memory and nostalgia studies, I conduct a discourse analysis of a variety of visual ecological media (ecomedia) examples from each of three time periods: 1970-1980, 1980-2004, and 2005-present. Additionally, I contextualize my examples by discussing the concerns of the times in which the media appeared. As an exploratory study, my ecomedia sampling is small: it includes: feature films (Silent Running, The Lord of the Rings, and Interstellar), television programs (Cosmos: A Personal Journey and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey), a picture book (The Lorax, as well as a short form-TV version and the feature film), and both corporate and environmental group advertisements and PSAs. This study not only examines the evolving discourse of environmental concerns during specific time periods, but also illustrates the connections and changes between differing periods. It illustrates the place of visual ecomedia within the larger environmental discourse over the last forty-plus years. Ultimately, it shows the consistency over time of collectively-held ecomemories and of the nostalgia for and longing to return to the lost edenic utopia of those memories.Publication Rushing Towards Death: Alienation and Doom in the 1940s American Crime Film(University of Kansas, 2016-08-31) Unruh, Isley Demetrius; Willmott, Kevin; Wilson, Ron; Hurst, RobertWhile the criminals found in classic American crime films take many forms, from frontier outlaws to big city gangsters, they all serve, on some level, as surrogates for audiences’ darker impulses and desires. And, while these criminal characters have undergone many changes and permutations, a small cycle of gangster films from the early 1930s have come to disproportionately represent a broad period of classic Hollywood crime films. Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) have dominated the discourse surrounding the classic American crime film to such a degree that important variations on the criminal character can become generically linked to these early films even though their defining qualities are, in reality, quite different. In this study, I will examine one criminal variation which I have labeled the “Doomed Criminal.” I will both disentangle this unique Doomed Criminal archetype from the influence of pre-Code characterizations, and determine the significant factors which led to the development of this new character that appeared in a cycle of films throughout the 1940s. Also, by first situating the Doomed Criminal within the socio-historical framework of its time, I will establish the proper background for a focused look at the authorial contributions of W. R. Burnett and John Huston to the Doomed Criminal. Both of these creators were responsible for the three films I use as case studies in my textual examination of the character: High Sierra (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and The Asphalt Jungle (1950). By giving each of these three films a close textual analysis, I will be able to illuminate and support the traits identified as unique to this character throughout this study. This multi-pronged approach will ultimately reveal a distinct character archetype that was noble, professional, competent, and, above all, doomed to alienation and death within a world in which it had no place.Publication Lucem Ferre(University of Kansas, 2016-05-31) Tawde, Lopeeta Sudhakar; Westergard, Gina; Stanionis, Lin; Havener, JonLucem Ferre, a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition was influenced by an interpretation of bioluminescence, a chemical process in which a living organism catalyzes and releases light from within; this process is also effected by microorganisms living symbiotically within host animal and plant bodies. It is primarily observed in deep-sea marine as well as in terrestrial life. Bioluminescent life forms embody dualities; they are luminous and subdued, beautiful and repulsive, still and active. I use non-traditional materials, silicone, phosphorescent pigments and ultraviolet light, to create a jewelry collection of “wearable creatures” inhabiting an enigmatic and unworldly gallery environment. This 15-piece collection includes brooches, rings, armbands and a neckpiece; they are ambiguous, mysterious, luminous and whimsical jewelry pieces synthesizing visual and tactile elements to stimulate their simultaneous experience for viewer and wearer. As “wearable creatures” they exemplify the notion of portraying a blown-up world of microscopically investigated living organisms, simultaneously suggesting their internal growth and decay and their interactions with the body. Similar to bioluminescent life forms, these “wearable creatures” inhabit a life of dualities as they bear and bare their light.Publication The Development of the Post-Classical Hollywood Sports Business Film Trend: A Socio-Historic Approach(University of Kansas, 2016-05-31) Sutera, David Micheal; Baskett, Michael; Wilson, Ronald; Tibbetts, John; Willmott, Kevin; Utsler, MaxThis dissertation examines the development of an emerging trend in contemporary sports film production identified as the post-classical Hollywood sports business film. Post-classical Hollywood sports business films stand in contrast to their classical Hollywood sports film predecessors based on some distinguishing characteristics relating to different points of narrative emphasis, themes, and character types. Initially, post-classical sports business film narratives focus primarily on the business side of professional team sports rather than themes devoted to athletes achieving on the field of play in the world of sports. As a result, much of the filmic action in post-classical Hollywood sports business films occurs in business setting such as offices and board rooms rather than in sports stadiums, arenas, or playing fields typical of classical era sports films. Finally, non-athlete sports film protagonists (NASP) in post-classical Hollywood sports business films have supplanted athlete protagonists as the main characters in this new sports film trend, with athlete characters occupying supporting roles in the overall narratives. The focus of this study concentrates on two stages of development in the post-classical Hollywood sports business film. After providing a brief history classical sports films, the first stage of development in this new trend is identified as taking place starting from the late 1960s and continuing to the mid 1990s. During this time period, an increasing number of Hollywood sports business films featured matters of sports economics and other off-the-field matters related to professional team sports as significant components of the narrative. In addition, athlete protagonists, in contrast to their classical era predecessors, began to show greater concern for their personal careers rather than helping their teams win championships. The second stage of development initiated with the film Jerry Maguire in the mid 1990s, which signaled the appearance of the non-athlete sports film protagonist (NASP) as one of the most distinguishing traits of the post-classical Hollywood sports business film trend that continues into the 21st century. Moreover, Jerry Maguire (1996) exists as the prototypical sports business film, and marks a crucial turning point in Hollywood production leading to the development of the ensuing trend and potential sports film sub-genre. This study takes a socio-historic approach drawing on Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery’s historiographical methods from Film History: Theory and Practice (1985) in examining a range of contemporaneous economic, political, and social generative mechanisms is facilitating the rise of the post-classical Hollywood sports business film trend. Using discursive textual analysis of certain post-classical Hollywood sports business films, this study positions the spread of neoliberalism and free market principles as significant generative mechanisms in the appearance of distinctive representations, themes, and narrative elements evident in post-classical Hollywood sports business film trend. Film such as Bang the Drum Slowly (John D. Hancock, 1973), North Dallas Forty (Ted Kotcheff, 1979), Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996), and Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011) among others, are examined as examples of post-classical Hollywood sports business films exhibiting these new themes and narrative patterns.Publication Wild Yonder(University of Kansas, 2016-01-01) Raymer, Mark Alister; Krueger, Michael; Brackett, David; Burke, MatthewWild Yonder is a body of large mixed media, collage wall hangings made from scrapes fabric, textiles, prints, drawings, and rubbings. All these elements come together to form a post-apocalyptic world in each piece, populated by scooters, beer cans, satellites, and wild people called wildings. The artwork deals with themes of environmentalism, and legacy by way of a science fiction narrative.Publication Reimagining the Explicit Image: A Discourse on Transgressive Self-Expression and the Fe-male Body(University of Kansas, 2016-05-31) Nixon, Patricia Ann; Velasco, Maria; Velasco, Maria; Rosenthal, Benjamin; Batza, KatieMy studio practice focuses on the intersection of sexuality and art. More specifically, I am locating my queer identity through a theoretical lens where pleasure, gender, and power come to the forefront in this Thesis. I examine the theories of philosophers Judith Butler and Michel Foucault as it relates to my work. Pornography scholarship of Margret Grebowicz is also an important part of the conversation in linking the sexually explicit image with my own questions regarding sex and art. My investigation into transgressive self-expression led to the formation of the exhibition Pleasure Pusher: Reimagining the Explicit Image.Publication Extant Fragments(University of Kansas, 2016-05-31) McKenna, Edward Patrick; Hartman, Tanya; Akers, Norman; Brackett, David; Pultz, JohnExtant Fragments explores the social context of the artist’s studio space and the importance of developing an art making process that is personal. The studio becomes a metaphor for the confines of daily life and the art making process a metaphor for ritualistic and behavioral patterns. In exploring a litany of qualitative and perceptual experiences within the artist’s social space, it is the present materials that are addressed and reassessed – incessantly and obsessively – the ‘left-overs’, the minutia, bits and scraps, detritus... This process of dealing ONLY with what is presently available leads to a profound self-discovery: to examine ones process of art making is a way to remain invested in the present. What exists’ in the present are [the few] historical remnants – Extant Fragments.Publication Bare: A Pop Opera(University of Kansas, 2016-05-31) McNamara, Casey; Reaney, Mark; Klein, Jeanne; Vogel, Kelly; Christilles, DennisSuicide is the second leading cause for LGBT adolescents. Religious groups are the most outspoken against the LGBT community, leading LGBT youth to have a negative self worth. Many religious groups stick to their respective rhetoric instead of choosing compassion. Bare: A Pop Opera brings to light the effects religious rhetoric has on youth, the severity of bullying on an individual and on a community, and the importance of support for LGBT youth. The design concept for Bare: A Pop Opera will shine a light on these themes and issues.Publication Dystopian Performatives: Negative Affect/Emotion in the Work of Sarah Kane(University of Kansas, 2016-05-31) Knowles, Scott Knowles; Bial, Henry; Rovit, Rebecca; Gronbeck-Tedesco, John; Hodges Persley, Nicole; Forth, Christopher"Dystopian Performatives: Negative Affect/Emotion in the Work of Sarah Kane" seeks to combine three areas of theoretical inquiry to understand the way that affect/emotion operates on an audience in the theatre: affect/emotion science, performance theory, and utopianism. Utilizing Sarah Kane’s body of work as a case study, this dissertation connects each of her plays to a distinct basic emotion in order to bracket the vast interconnections between affect/emotion science and the theatre: disgust within Blasted, anger within Phaedra’s Love, fear within Cleansed, memory within Crave, and sadness within 4.48 Psychosis. Specifically, Dystopian Performatives investigates the negatively valenced experiences that occur in the theatre as a kind of dystopian practice that seeks to critique the present and promote action to adjust the future. The dystopian performative theory demonstrates the way in which experiential and viscerally impactful moments in the theatre potentially create change within an audience that directly attacks social and cultural issues relevant to the content of Kane’s plays. The experience of affect/emotion, I argue, performatively “does,” or acts, on the body of the audience in a way that has a meaningful impact on cognition, behavior, ideology, and morality.