Deva Plus Dog is a look at the life of a teenage girl singularly devoted to the sport of dog agility. The film explores how relationships develop and evolve in the high stakes world of competition, and how an alternative lifestyle impacts a youth’s coming of age.

"What's on Tap, Texas?" is an exploration of the interrelated worlds of the home brewer and the craft brewer in Texas.

The intention of this thesis is to analyze the figure of the post 9/11 Westerner as a modern character created from the preexisting archetype of the classic Westerner. 3:10 to Yuma (dir. James Mangold), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik), and There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) were released in 2007 and featured post 9/11 Westerners dealing with issues of fatherhood, demonstrating the prevalence of this figure within the modern western genre. Fatherhood becomes the prism through which these characters are depicted, which becomes the main source of their anxiety. The events of 9/11 contributed to a fracture of the western myth established by the classic postwar western that results in the post 9/11 Westerner attempting to reclaim a similar mythic status. The post 9/11 Westerner becomes an inversion of the classic Westerner seen through his insecure masculinity and ultimate failure to live up to his own imagined ideals.

Mineola is a poetic, observational, immersive documentary centered in the town of Mineola, Texas. The film provides an intimate, first person perspective of different locations in the town as well as underlying subversive beliefs and traditions. The film’s authoritative perspective guides the viewer not only in a direction of observation but personal connection to nostalgia of small communities.

Lisa Markley, a.k.a. "Miz Markley", is a genuinely happy person even if she is not particularly financially successful as a musician. In an effort to validate my own choices as an artist, I chose to follow her. What was intended to be a portrait of a working musician, becomes instead a feminist musical essay film about the transformative power of art making.

This thesis focuses on three fashion industry themed female friendship films: Pret-a-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994) by Robert Altman, The Devil Wears Prada (2006) by David Frankel, and The September Issue (2009) by R.J. Cutler. Female interpersonal relationships are complex – women often work to motivate, encourage and transform one another but can just as easily use tactics like intimidation, manipulation, and exploitation in order to save their own jobs and reputations. Through the lens of post-feminist theory, this thesis examines significant female interpersonal relationships in each film to illustrate how femininity is constructed and driven by consumer culture in the fashion industry themed films.

West Dallas AR is an interactive location-based app, using the power of multimedia and augmented reality to highlight the stories shared by West Dallas residents.

The Best Medicine is an animated documentary that explores the true stories behind the live performances of stand-up comedians. The film juxtaposes live stand-up performances with candid interview footage combined with animation and illustration. Three subjects– Michael Burd, Casey Stoddard, and Jacob Kubon– discuss alcoholism, childhood abuse, and sexual anxiety, respectively. Their candid, intimate interviews reveal personal information, creating a new context with which to understand live stand-up comedy performance. This illustrates themes of finding humor in dark or painful circumstances and the cathartic nature writing and performance.

This thesis looks at how women journalists are now also digital influencers on Instagram. It analyzes the gendered expectations of women journalists that are also included on their professional Instagram accounts.

Living the vast majority of my life in an area that celebrates diversity but thrives because of illegal cross-border activities (undocumented workers, drug imports) at times the distance between the United States and Mexico is in fact as thin as the width of a fence. Though it is typical for a filmmaker to hope to present a unique take on a subject, given how I have seen the topics of immigration and the perspective of the purpose of homeland security portray, I am confident that there is an opportunity to show these issues in a more personal, less aggressive light with the use of first person accounts instead of a dependence on the most violent aspects of these topics. The main subject will give character to this agency by blurring the lines of his life as an agent and as a citizen.

The intention of this thesis is to analyze the representations of masculinity in the anime series Dragon Ball Z as it aired on Cartoon Network's programming block Toonami, specifically the nature in which they were framed and how oppositional interpretations in the fandom became prevalent as a result. The series emphasizes the evolution of its central characters Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan into performing a sensitive masculinity, but there are a prevalence of images in the series that discredit this. Similarly, the way the series was advertised on Toonami placed emphasis on images of superficial violence and reinforced the masculinity that the series was attempting to move beyond. Understanding the ways fans have interpreted Dragon Ball Z on Toonami helps reveal that there is much more to a media text's influence than its themes and representations of gender.

The relationship between France and Hollywood is rooted in a deep history that dates to the late 1800s. French Cultural elites and policymakers have regulated Hollywood to prevent the American ideals that are depicted in Hollywood movies from infringing on French culture, restricting free trade distribution practices to limit audiences' accessibility of imported, non-French media. These import regulations have strengthened French exceptionalism, which is an ideal that recognizes France as being superior to any other culture, region, or market. Yet, the impacts of globalization and the rise of technology have shifted media consumption habits and forced France to regulate new modes of distribution, like digital streaming platforms, to continue to protect the French culture, film industry, and commerce. In 2014, when Silicon Valley-based streaming platform Netflix, entered France, the principles of French exceptionalism impacted the reception of the Hollywood-focused platform. Policymakers imposed a tax system which requires internationally based streamers to invest in the French media industry. Netflix invested their tax into local language, teen productions to target a demographic whose ideals were less rooted in French exceptionalism. Additionally, Netflix utilized the affordances of Instagram to visually appeal to teen users when marketing the local language productions Mortel (2019-2021) and …

This MFA graduate thesis explores the intersection of therapeutic photography, generational trauma, and Christian spirituality in promoting spiritual healing in disabled veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drawing from personal experience, rigorous biblical training, and extensive research, I argue that incorporating faith-based practices and beliefs can complement existing PTSD support and enhance spiritual and mental well-being. Through the lens of generational trauma, the thesis analyzes the complex interplay between individual and collective trauma. It posits that the healing process is intrinsically linked to the restoration of the individual and community. I present a framework for therapeutic photography that incorporates Christian spiritual principles and offers practical guidelines for implementation in conjunction with therapeutic photography. The thesis concludes with a call to action for faith-based communities, mental health practitioners, and policymakers to recognize and address the spiritual and artistic therapeutic needs of disabled veterans with PTSD.

The Godzilla media franchise is one of the longest running media franchises, which means the character himself has gone through many changes throughout the years. However, in American pop culture, the characters of Godzilla is perceived as a hero, a friend of humanity and defender of Earth. This reputation comes from the Showa Era, where Godzilla often fought on the side of humanity, rather than trying to destroy them as depicted in the original Gojira. In recent years, Toho, Godzilla's corporate owners, have been steering the King of the Monsters back into the villain role. Despite this tone shift by Godzilla's owners, American Godzilla paratexts still generally depict Godzilla as a hero. These depictions of Godzilla are used to maintain his status as a family friendly heritage brand and keep a door open for parents to introduce their children to the brand. Such a strategy allows Godzilla to survive into the modern day as an international powerhouse franchise.

This thesis provides an overview of the various ways in which select marginalized identities are represented within the twenty-first century American musical film. The first intention of this thesis is to identify, define, and organize the different subgenres that appear within the twenty-first century iterations of the musical film. The second, and principal, intention of this thesis is to explore contemporary representations of African-Americans, women, and queerness throughout the defined subgenres. Within this thesis, key films are analyzed from within each subgenre to understand these textual representations.

"The Great Hanging" is a documentary film that tells the story of the largest extra-legal mass hanging in U.S. History. This story is told through stage play recital of "October Mourning" written by historian and professor Dr. Pat Ledbetter. Using the stage play as a vehicle, the film showcases cinematic re-enactments based in the events in Gainesville, Texas during October 1862. These events show how a small community became overwhelmed by the fog of war and delved into madness as the Civil War crept closer and closer to their doorstep.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a massive ongoing franchise that began as a 1984 self-published comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Its history is intertwined with the creators' rights movement and the Creator's Bill of Rights (CBR), which rejected work-for-hire contracts, wherein creative laborers—creative authors—cede authorial control of their labor. Because the production of comic books and their franchises is highly collaborative, intellectual property (IP) rights are often consolidated in a single rights holder—a corporate author—via work-for-hire contracts. Eastman and Laird, as both creative and corporate authors, initially maintained strict control of TMNT licensees, but allowed their employees to retain IP rights over creative contributions to TMNT. However, in 1992, Eastman and Laird sent retroactive work-for-hire contracts to all current and former employees. This TMNT case study illustrates how the CBR represented the conflicting interests of publishers and creative laborers and ultimately reinforced the individualistic view of authorship that undergirds work-for-hire doctrine. Additionally, because IP legal infrastructure uses individualistic discourse to consolidate control of media franchises in one entity that allows authorized individuals access to a shared database of creative expressions that workers can borrow from or add to, media franchises resemble folklore and are made …

The intention of this thesis is to identify and analyze the precise shift from an exploitative archetype to an empowered representation of women warriors, to identify the arena in which male and female characters are given equal agency in the context of war, and finally explore the key characteristics that make up an empowered female hero. This thesis also addresses the sociocultural nature of the warrior woman archetype as it pertains to the current role of women in the military. The films analyzed in this thesis are all post 9/11 films; a fact that links them culturally to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent years, numerous milestones have been reached for women in the armed services, especially for those women in combat positions. For the first time in American history women are being recognized for their active role as soldiers in combat. Therefore, it is valid to consider the correlation between seeing women as military professionals, fighting alongside male soldiers in these films, and the cultural impact of female combat soldiers. This aspect of the thesis also imbues the female just-warrior archetype with a legitimate history, mythology, and current cultural reference; which is essential to the visibility of …

The trope of the queer cannibal recurs throughout fiction as well as film and television. While literature scholars such as David Bergman and Caleb Crain have written about this figure in American literature, the queer cannibal remains unstudied in the realm of media studies. This thesis analyzes six media texts that feature queer cannibals: Hannibal (2013-2015), Ravenous (1999), The Terror (2018), Yellowjackets (2021-), Raw (2016), and Bones and All (2022). Through these analyses, this thesis establishes a genre termed "queer cannibal texts." These texts function on two different levels: they include a cannibal character who is or can be read as queer, and they in some way cannibalize and queer an existing story or societal script. The presence of a queer cannibal character often signals that the work itself is a queer cannibal text. These texts are built on an awareness of existing power structures and narratives. By cannibalizing these narratives—whether they be a fictional narrative that is being adapted, or societal narratives of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and so on—and interrogating them from a queer perspective, queer cannibal texts create reparative narratives that speak from the margins. Queer cannibal characters act as a textual manifestation of this framework, providing a …

This study of radio news stations adds to the field of Twitter research into broadcasters' use of this social media microblogging platform; previous research has predominantly focused on television. This case study, based on a survey with numerous open-ended questions completed in face-to-face interviews, begins to fill in data on how Twitter is being used in major market radio station newsrooms. Limited in scope, this exploratory study used answers from seven members of two radio newsrooms in trying to find out if there were stated goals for tweets; if separate, unique content was being tweeted or was content tied to the stations' on-air product; how tweets seek to increase station listenership and/or increase station website traffic; what were the most frequently tweeted topics; what hyperlinks were included in tweets for internal or external web content; and were tweets personal and/or opinionated, or kept more professional with just factual material. From a strategic management theory standpoint, there is neither a stated plan nor goals sought with these newsrooms' use of Twitter. Unique tweet content includes sending out photos which add visuals to the pictureless world of radio news and live-tweeting of ongoing news events, while complementary content is promotional to push …