UMD Theses and Dissertations
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Item The Surface of Things: Reading a Cinema of Decline(2018) Leininger, Derek Michael; Giovacchini, Saverio; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A declensionist imagination dominated intellectual and cultural discourse in American society through the late twentieth century. The 1970s and 1980s were punctuated by real declines of multiple sorts, but the alarmed debates about juvenile delinquency, rural blight, urban decay, and violent crime often obscured coterminous trends and the more meaningful critiques of the historical forces prompting the changes felt as decline. By looking at American films from the 1970s and 1980s focused on thematic decline of varied sorts, this project explores the postmodern social experience of the late-twentieth century and the cultural roots of overcriminalization in the United States. Reading between the filmic lines (or what film theorist Siegfried Kracauer called the surface expressions of cinema) provides clues into unpacking the often contradictory political, social, and cultural configurations taking shape at the end of the twentieth century.Item MODERNIZATION AND VISUAL ECONOMY: FILM, PHOTOJOURNALISM, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE IN BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA, 1955-1980(2010) Halperin, Paula; Weinstein, Barbara; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the relationship among visual culture, nationalism, and modernization in Argentina and Brazil in a period of extreme political instability, marked by an alternation of weak civilian governments and dictatorships. I argue that motion pictures and photojournalism were constitutive elements of a modern public sphere that did not conform to the classic formulation advanced by Jürgen Habermas. Rather than treating the public sphere as progressively degraded by the mass media and cultural industries, I trace how, in postwar Argentina and Brazil, the increased production and circulation of mass media images contributed to active public debate and civic participation. With the progressive internationalization of entertainment markets that began in the 1950s in the modern cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires there was a dramatic growth in the number of film spectators and production, movie theaters and critics, popular magazines and academic journals that focused on film. Through close analysis of images distributed widely in international media circuits I reconstruct and analyze Brazilian and Argentine postwar visual economies from a transnational perspective to understand the constitution of the public sphere and how modernization, Latin American identity, nationhood, and socio-cultural change and conflict were represented and debated in those media. Cinema and the visual after World War II became a worldwide locus of production and circulation of discourses about history, national identity, and social mores, and a space of contention and discussion of modernization. Developments such as the Bandung Conference in 1955, the decolonization of Africa, the Cuban Revolution, together with the uneven impact of modernization, created a "Third Worldism" and "Latin Americanism" that transformed public debate and the cultural field. By researching "peripheral" nations, I add to our understanding of the process of the transnationalization of the cultural field and the emergence of a global mass culture in the 1960s and 1970s.Item "IT LOOKS LIKE SOUND!" : DRAWING A HISTORY OF "ANIMATED MUSIC" IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY(2010) Robertson, Emily; Haggh-Huglo, Barbara H.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the early 1930s, film sound technicians created completely synthetic sound by drawing or photographing patterns on the soundtrack area of the filmstrip. Several artists in Germany, Russia, England, and Canada used this innovation to write what came to be called "animated music" or "ornamental sound." It was featured in a few commercial and small artistic productions and was enthusiastically received by the public. It was heralded as the future of musical composition that could eliminate performers, scores, and abstract notation by one system of graphic sound notation and mechanized playback. Its popularity among mainstream filmmaking did not last long, however, due to its limited development. The artists drawing animated sound were dependent entirely upon their technological medium, and when the sound-on-film system faded from popularity and production, so did their art. By examining from a musicological perspective, for the first time, specific examples of animated music from the work of Norman McLaren, Oskar Fischinger, Rudolph Pfenninger, and several filmmakers in Russia, this thesis enumerates the techniques used in animated sound. It also explores the process of its creation, adaptation, and decline. In doing so, it reveals an important chapter in the little-known early history of modern synthesized sound alongside the futuristic musical ideas it both answered and inspired.Item Kim Ki-duk and the Cinema of Sensations(2008-12-11) Min, Hyunjun; Wang, Orrin; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite the apparent usefulness for film analysis, the notion of "sensation" disappears in Deleuze's two Cinema books (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image [1983] and Cinema 2: The Time-Image [1985]) published right after Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1981), which develops the idea of sensation. By tracing the conceptual origin of sensation from "event," "sense," and "affect," this dissertation answers the mystery of the disappearance of sensation in the Cinema books and clarifies the possibilities and limitations of using "sensation" in the analysis of film. It puts Deleuze's concepts of affect and sensation side by side with Korean director Kim Ki-duk's films so that they can initiate mutually beneficiary discussions. Among the fourteen films Kim made, Crocodile, The Isle and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring are analyzed in detail. Each of these three films represents each stage of Kim Ki-duk's own transformation as a director, and corresponds to Deleuze's own deployment of the event into affect, sensation, and becomings. In the Cinema books, the concept of "sensation" is retained through the discussion of signs and images, but buried under the notions of the "affection-image" and the "impulse-image" because of the way "sensation" is conceptualized in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation and because of the worry that "sensation" might be confused with the "sensational." While maintaining the conceptual thrust of event and sense, Deleuze reformulates affect and sensation in relation to movement in the Cinema books. Thus, "affect" appears when the movement decreases to a minimum, whereas sensation appears to mobilize the frozen movement. The understanding of Deleuzian usage of sensation prepares us to move beyond the conventional conceptual tools of narrative, symbolization, representation, and signification towards the flows of materials, forces and the virtual.Item Constructions of Violent Jamaican Masculinity in Film and Literature(2008-07-28) Harewood, Gia; Collins, Merle; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Greg Dimitriadis and Cameron McCarthy sketch out what they see as an emergent postcolonial aesthetic percolating in the postcolonial artist's imagination. According to their analysis, postcolonial artists make meaning in their work through three critical motifs that help shape this aesthetic: "counterhegemonic representation, double or triple coding, and emancipatory or utopic visions" (19, italics in original). Counterhegemonic representation "rework[s] the center-versus-periphery distinction . . . to look beyond its strictures to new histories, new discourses, new ways of being" (24). Double coding combines "two or more fields of reference or idiom in any given work" pulling images from places such as "the East and the West, the first world and the Third, the colonial master and the slave" (26). And utopic visions are about "imagining possibility even when faced with impossible barriers" (30). My project is fundamentally interested in constructing healthy (masculine) identities and its arguments are ultimately guided by their first and third motifs. Using feminist theory, masculinity studies, cultural studies and postcolonial theory, I focus on the representation of black Jamaican men as violent criminal beings in three films (The Harder They Come, Third World Cop and Shottas), two novels (The Harder They Come and For Nothing at All) and one ethnographic travelogue (Born Fi' Dead). I argue that "real/reel" Jamaican masculinity is ultimately connected to gun violence and the most popular films out of Jamaica over the past thirty years only perpetuate this image. While not the only source for role models, visual images play a significant role in the lives of young men (and women) who are trying to live up to social standards of masculinity. With limited access to social mobility, they often emulate the shotta (gangster) glory that they see sparkling on the screen. Through close readings of these texts, I show how hegemonic masculinity is reinforced and reveal that non-violent models of masculinity do exist, despite being overshadowed by violent "heroes." I call for that "utopic vision," to excavate the vulnerable and intervene on behalf of peace to help young men and boys find alternative models of masculinity and ultimately create sustainable communities.Item In the Margins: Representations of Otherness in Subtitled French Films(2008-05-05) Turek, Sheila; Eades, Caroline; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Translation involves integration of a multitude of disciplines and perspectives from which to compare two or more cultures. When translation is extended to film dialogue, in subtitling, the target language viewer unfamiliar with the source language must rely upon the subtitles to access the film's dialogue provided within the space of the verbal exchange, and often the subtitles offer an altered version of the dialogue, particularly given the time and space constraints of the medium. Subtitling, a unique form of translation, not only involves interlingual transfer but also intersemiotic transfer from a spoken dialogue to a written text. This work examines the linguistic treatment of three marginalized groups--homosexuals, women, and foreigners--as expressed in subtitles. In many instances, translation of certain elements in the films, such as forms of address and general referential language, change the meaning for the TL viewer. Cultural references present in the oral dialogue often get omitted or modified in the subtitles, altering the TL viewer's perception of the narrative and characters. These differently rendered translations have connotative qualities that are often differ significantly from the oral dialogue. In many cases, epithets and grammatically gendered language in the SL dialogue get diluted or omitted in the TL subtitles; likewise, power relationships expressed through use of forms of address, such as titles or tutoiement and vouvoiement, cannot be adequately conveyed, and the TL viewer is excluded from this nuanced form of discourse. Cultural references providing supplemental information, including non-dialogic text, are not always rendered in the subtitles, depriving the TL viewer of additional layers of meaning. In dual-language films featuring foreigners, nuances expressed by code switching and code mixing cannot be completely represented in the subtitles. Close analysis of subtitles within the framework of the sociolinguistic and cultural interpretations of the resultant TL dialogue reveals a great deal about the transmission and reception of cultural ideas and has not been addressed to this extent from this perspective. It is to be hoped that this study will inspire interest in further explorations of this nature and contribute to the ever-growing corpus of research in subtitling studies.Item The Life and Legacy of Laskarina Bouboulina: Feminist Alternatives to Documentary Filmmaking Practices(2007-10-17) Householder, April Kalogeropoulos; Fuegi, John; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)When Michael Moore won the Academy Award in 2004 for his film Fahrenheit 9/11, the documentary re-emerged as an important critical discourse in the making of culture. As a political consciousness-raising tool, the documentary fits squarely into the goals of independent media activism. With the development of digital videomaking technologies, a distinctive means through which to explore the issues of culture, class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality that have been neglected in mainstream documentary filmmaking practices has emerged. Specifically, this new methodological approach to collecting, preserving, and analyzing history provides a voice for the stories that have been under-- and misrepresented in the consumption and production of biographies of women in film and literature. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a series of social, political, cultural, and economic events convened in Europe which enabled Greece to spark the War of Independence. This national instability provided a space for the emergence of a heroine who broke all established gender codes in the area of politics and on the battlefield: Laskarina Bouboulina (1771-1825). Over the course of her life, Bouboulina owned a successful merchant fleet, became an international diplomat, and was the only woman to join the Filike Etairia, an underground organization that prepared the Greeks for the war with the Ottomans. She is the first woman in world naval history to have earned the title of Admiral for her command of the Spetses fleet in crucial naval battles. Her life represents an alternative history to the masculinist and nationalistic depictions of the Greek War of Independence, as told in both Greek and Philhellenic literatures. It is a radical re-imagining of gender and the Greek identity in the nineteenth century, and foregrounds the many contributions made by women to modern Greek history. It also provides an alternative to the images of Greek women in the historical imaginary of Hollywood and other dominant media practices. Using historical documents and artifacts, interviews with Bouboulina's descendants and specialists in the fields of Greek and Ottoman History, live footage, music and artwork of the period, as well as contemporary film and media as grounds for cultural comparison, this hour-long documentary video synthesizes multi-media artifacts to create a critical pedagogy that explores the margins of Greek history through the life and times of one of Greece's most important revolutionaries.Item "An Unpleasant Wartime Function": Race, Film Censorship, and the Office of War Information, 1942-1945(2007-04-30) Wagner, Jessica Lauren; Gilbert, James B.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This paper will try to untangle how the U.S. Office of War Information's Bureau of Motion Pictures tried to enact change in the world, using Hollywood films, during World War II. It will also show how inconsistencies within the agency and lack of support from the President, Congress, and Hollywood often sabotaged the Bureau's project. I argue that a structural component and a thematic component helped cripple the OWI's Bureau of Motion Pictures. First, the extremely decentralized, bureaucratic and conflict-laden nature of the government information network, and the limited enforcement power of the OWI and in particular the Bureau of Motion Pictures, limited its success. Second, the BMP's passionately liberal and racially progressive interpretation of U.S. war aims helped contribute to its downfall. The BMP operated during a watershed moment in race relations, in which hierarchies of racial and ethnic groups were shifting dramatically.Item Just a Click Away from Home: Ecuadorian Migration, Nostalgia and New Technologies in Transnational Times(2007-05-14) Mejia Estevez, Silvia; Harrison, Regina; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Focusing on three different narrations of migration from Ecuador to the United States, Spain and Italy, this documentary video and its study guide explore how new technologies such as the Internet, satellite communications, email, videoconferences, and cell phones have changed the experience of displacement. The two components of this dissertation propose that, due to the encounter with new technologies intent upon shrinking space and time, nostalgia is becoming digital -a quest for continuity of time and space through the simultaneity offered by digital media. Under these new circumstances, transnational businesses profit from nostalgic markets, whereas transnational families and organizations grapple with digital technologies to foment a "globalization of solidarity." As an aesthetic artefact, the project responds to the controversy within film theory regarding subjectivity and fiction storytelling procedures as defining features of documentary, a film genre traditionally marketed as objective and non-fictional. For this reason, the video is composed of what I call not three case studies but three stories of migration. The documentary starts out in Cuenca (Ecuador), where, speechless, Arturo and Mercedes see their children on the videoconferencing screen. It is their first "reunion" since the children left Ecuador and settled in New York City, eleven years ago. In another Ecuadorian city, Gloria -whose husband migrated from Quito to Madrid- promotes Internet access to rescue families torn apart by migration. Finally, we meet Carla, a journalist settled in Milan, who takes advantage of new technologies to report on the Ecuadorian community in Italy for readers far away. With a comparative and translocal approach -and theoretically based on Hall, Appadurai, Boym, Nichols and Portes among others-, this project explores multiple relationships with new technologies determined by gender, age, race, ethnicity, education, computer literacy, geographical situation, and socio-economic background. Through their differing and even contradictory discourses and practices, expressed and lived in geographical locations that coexist and overlap on the screen, the protagonists of this dissertation-documentary video show us to what extent they are inscribed in different places of enunciation that shape their experience of displacement and nostalgia in contrasting ways.Item Mapping Terrorism: Amorphous Nations, Transient Loyalties(2006-05-04) Saksena, Ritu; Ray, Sangeeta; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Terrorism has a predilection with nations and nationalism and it plays on the symbiotic relationship between nationalism and violence. But "forgetting" this violence and bloodshed was crucial to the perpetuation of the myth of civilized nations. While Postcolonial Studies has offered incisive justifications for anti-imperialist movements and the creation of new nations within the colonizer/colonized paradigm, there is now a need to critically examine terrorism with its demands for new nations with its narratives of violence. This dissertation, Mapping Terrorism: Amorphous Nations, Transient Loyalties is a comparative study of the narratives of terrorism in specific texts that invoke the re-imagining of the narratives of the nation and the re-configuration of national subjectivities. Furthermore, since globalization has extended the national imaginary beyond borders, it has forced us to engage with the implications of diasporic populations that have sometimes attributed to the formation of transnational communities of violence (both real and imagined). Through my analysis of fictional representations of terrorists, terrorism and terrorist acts in cinema and fiction and using the rubric of Postcolonial Studies, I locate these narratives within a discursive space framed by the interstices of dominant discourses, where nation and state do not collide. For my larger overarching argument in theorizing terrorism, I introduce a new category of (anti)nationalisms that includes all forms of variant nationalisms like sub-nationalisms, ethnonationalisms, counter-nationalisms, fundamentalisms, extremism, secessionism etc., each of which is uniquely different but all of which define themselves using the discourse of Nationalism as its oppositional 'Other'. Using this overarching category of (anti)nationalisms offers us a new space - an in-between space, to talk about variant nationalisms that are not necessarily congruent with terrorism. Doing so, offers us the opportunity to address each of these variant nationalisms in depth without having to engage with issues of ethical implications of these imaginings. It is my assertion that (anti)nationalisms are the geneses of all terrorist activities and conversely, terrorism can be argued as constituting the performative aspect of the political agenda of (anti)nationalisms. My dissertation thus addresses a broader need for theorizing terrorism through cultural representations within the framework of Postcolonial Studies.