Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item "Lovers on a Mission": Black Intimacies in Popular Culture and Digital Social Media Fandom(2022) Adams, Brienne Amaris; Lothian, Alexis; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social media provides a way to study Black people’s relationship to the raced and gendered ways that they contend with their intimate lives with friends, family, and their romantic partners through studying their relationship to contemporary cultural productions. Digital Black fandoms constitute Black digital intimacies through affective fandom engagements on social media. Guiding this dissertation are two research questions: How do Black fans grapple with the intimate aspects of their friendships, family, and romantic lives by engaging their fandom objects on social media? How does social media provide a platform to build community through creating new discourse about the romantic and intimate lives of Black people? Utilizing theories from Black Studies, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Fan Studies, and Digital Studies, this dissertation analyses web series, television, film, and music. Autoethnography, close reading, and participant observation guide the methods and methodologies for the dissertation. First, the fandom of the queer web series Between Women (2011-2017), which depicts Black lesbians in Atlanta and their romantic, friendship, and family relationships. Next, this dissertation chronicles the journey of the web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (2011- 2013) to Insecure (2016-2021), which features two Black women best friends and their rollercoaster romantic relationships in Los Angeles. Finally, Beyoncé’s album Lemonade (2016), her husband JAY-Z’s album 4:44 (2017), and her sister Solange’s album A Seat at the Table (2016) as they each explore themes of racial injustice, love, and family. Through this process, “affirmative transformative” fandom demonstrates how digital Black fandom works of Black cultural productions affirm and transform the interior ways Black fans reflect on their interpersonal relationships. “Affirmative transformative” fandom is an amalgamation of traditional definitions of affirmative fandom, where fans affirm that they like a cultural production, and transformative fandom when fans create a new work inspired by their fandom object. The combination of “affirmative transformative” fandom intervenes in how Black fans affirm their fandom objects and themselves while simultaneously creating new fandom works and explaining the ways their interpersonal lives are transformed. The artists’ production and fans’ relationship to these cultural productions demonstrate that the quotidian aspects of the intimate are necessary to keep in conversation with other forms of resistance to self and world-make for themselves as an act of agential labor for and by Black fans.Item HERE I AM: AN EXPLORATION OF VIRTUAL LIVE PERFORMANCE(2021) Bennett, Jeremy Donnell; Mezzocchi, Jared; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The following thesis is a series of observations and explorations documenting my experiences as both an artistic collaborator and contributor of the Davis Performing Arts Center at Georgetown University’s production of Here I Am. The production opened April 15th, 2021 as a virtual live performance streamed through YouTube. Here I Am was an original performance by Mélisande (Meli) Short-Colomb with direction by Derek Goldman and Nikkole Salter, music composition and vocal performance by Somi Kakoma, multimedia design by Jared Mezzocchi, sound design by Andre Pluess and lighting design by Alberto Segarra.Item ProjectION: Investigation Operative Networks(2016) Louie, Adam Wong; White, Brent D; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Corporations and enterprises have embraced the notion of shared experiences and collective workplaces by incorporating coworking places. A great deal of the methodology carries from the studio culture that architecture schools foster as well as think tank culture. Maker spaces and incubator spaces are prime examples of places that engender creative thought and products. This thesis seeks to explore the impact that architecture has on collaborative spaces with a focus on augmenting to their generated learning and design activities. The investigation explores the collaborative design process as a series of interactions between groups of individuals. This involves the impact of technology and its implications on those interactions. The goal of this thesis is not to further the use of a tool or systematic procedure, but to use architecture as a framing device to form places for collaborative processes.