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The current study examines the social structure of local street gangs in Glendale, Arizona. Literature on gang organization has come to different conclusions about gang organization, largely based on the methodology used. One consistent finding from qualitative gang research has been that understanding the social connections between gang members is

The current study examines the social structure of local street gangs in Glendale, Arizona. Literature on gang organization has come to different conclusions about gang organization, largely based on the methodology used. One consistent finding from qualitative gang research has been that understanding the social connections between gang members is important for understanding how gangs are organized. The current study examines gang social structure by recreating gang social networks using official police data. Data on documented gang members, arrest records, and field interview cards from a 5-year period from 2006 to 2010 were used. Yearly social networks were constructed going two steps out from documented gang members. The findings indicated that gang networks had high turnover and they consisted of small subgroups. Further, the position of the gang member or associate was a significant predictor of arrest, specifically for those who had high betweenness centrality. At the group level, density and measures of centralization were not predictive of group-level behavior; hybrid groups were more likely to be involved in criminal behavior, however. The implications of these findings for both theory and policy are discussed.
ContributorsFox, Andrew (Author) / Katz, Charles M. (Thesis advisor) / White, Michael D. (Committee member) / Sweeten, Gary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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From Frankenstein to District 9: Ecocritical Readings of Classic and Contemporary Fiction and Film demonstrates how American studies methodologies, ecological literary criticism, and environmental justice theory provide both time-tested and new analytical tools for reading texts from transnational perspectives. Recently, American literary scholars have been responding to calls for collective

From Frankenstein to District 9: Ecocritical Readings of Classic and Contemporary Fiction and Film demonstrates how American studies methodologies, ecological literary criticism, and environmental justice theory provide both time-tested and new analytical tools for reading texts from transnational perspectives. Recently, American literary scholars have been responding to calls for collective interdisciplinary response to widening social disparities and species collapses caused by climate change in the new epoch recently being termed "the anthropocene." In response, I analyze canonical texts, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in juxtaposition with Neill Blomkamp's South African science fiction thriller District 9 and contemporary US American novels such as Toni Morrison's Sula, William Faulkner's "The Bear" in Go Down, Moses and Richard Power's Generosity and The Echo Maker, to show how writers, filmmakers, and academics have been calling attention to dramatic climate events that consequently challenge the public to rethink the relationships among human beings to other species, and to ecological systems of low predictability, high variability, and frequent extremes. Rather than focusing solely on the "human," I examine how the relationships and livelihoods of multi-species communities shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. As a whole, this dissertation seeks to make abstract, often intangible global patterns and concepts accessible by providing models for what I call "readings in the anthropocene" or re-readings of classic and contemporary texts and film that offer insights into changing human behavior and suggesting alternative management practices of local and global commons as well as opportunities to imagine how to live in and beyond the anthropocene.
ContributorsTurner, Kyndra (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Scholars argue that masculinity and war are united because masculinity is best observed through male-dominated arenas, such as the military. Moreover, film can serve as a medium to not only establish what is socially acceptable, but play an active role in the creation of one’s identity. Filmmakers past and present

Scholars argue that masculinity and war are united because masculinity is best observed through male-dominated arenas, such as the military. Moreover, film can serve as a medium to not only establish what is socially acceptable, but play an active role in the creation of one’s identity. Filmmakers past and present have employed the motif of masculinity in their war films, which put it at the center of the social structure and creates an overall acceptable cultural ideology. These filmmakers have established the overall rules, themes, and methods used as part of the war film genre. These rules, themes, and methods served well for pre-1970 American war cinema, when women were not allowed in the military as soldiers. However, as of 2003, female soldiers have grown to comprise twenty percent of the active soldiers and officers in the military. Studies on masculinity construction are well documented in World War II, Vietnam, and Gulf War-era combat films; however, little has been studied on post-9/11 American war films involving the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Using literature on masculinity constructs, both inside and outside of film, as well as social construction theory, identity theory, genre theory, and auteur theory, this dissertation textually examines masculinity construction in six post-9/11 American war films. This dissertation finds that the contemporary war genre continues to construct masculinity similar to past eras of war film. Comradery, the warrior image, not showing emotion, having a violent demeanor, and the demonization of women and cowardice were all prevalent in one or more of the films analyzed in this study. However, there were many nontraditional masculine ideals that were implemented, such as women being present and taking an active role as soldiers, as well as women being portrayed in the warrior image. The films analyzed demonstrate that the war film genre is still depicting and therefore socially constructing masculinity in a way that was prevalent in pre-1970 war films. However, the genre is evolving and nontraditional masculinity constructs are starting to present themselves.

ContributorsBowen, James (Author) / Russell, Dennis (Thesis advisor) / Thornton, Leslie-Jean (Committee member) / Craft, John (Committee member) / Giron, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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By focusing on photojournalists for LIFE and Ladies’ Home Journal, I investigate mental health care in state institutions located in America during the Great Depression and World War II immediately prior to the great deinstitutionalization that began in the 1950s. Relying upon scholars of medical humanities, social theory, disability

By focusing on photojournalists for LIFE and Ladies’ Home Journal, I investigate mental health care in state institutions located in America during the Great Depression and World War II immediately prior to the great deinstitutionalization that began in the 1950s. Relying upon scholars of medical humanities, social theory, disability studies, feminist studies, the history of psychiatry, and the history of art, I consider the iconography used to represent mental illness in photography during the first half of the twentieth century to explore the ways mentally ill individuals were presented as disordered and lacking humanity. I explore the didactic nature of both photography and film, emphasizing how the artists and directors imbued their mediums with medical credibility and authority. The photographs of Alfred Eisenstaedt, Jerry Cooke, and Esther Bubley from the 1930-40s reveal the state of mental health care in America during the Great Depression and World War II. I will investigate the stereotypes seen in representations of mental illness in photographs and how these depictions shaped and were in dialogue with popular films like Spellbound (1945), The Snake Pit (1948), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), and Marnie (1964). As a point of contrast to the images and films representing mental illness, I examine depictions of healthy people in mental health clinics during this time. Finally, I offer four examples of public, contemporary art, including House for a Gordian Knot (2013), Bloom (2013), 1000 Shadows (2013), and Faces of Mental Health Recovery (2013), that explore mental illness to illustrate the enduring legacy of the iconography and stereotypes represented in the photography and films explored in the first half of this dissertation.
ContributorsTaggart, Vriean Diether (Author) / Fahlman, Betsy (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Moore, Sarah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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Research and theory in social psychology and related fields indicates that people simultaneously hold many cultural identities. And it is well evidenced across relevant fields (e.g., sociology, marketing, economics) that salient identities are instrumental in a variety of cognitive and behavioral processes, including decision-making. It is not, however, well understood

Research and theory in social psychology and related fields indicates that people simultaneously hold many cultural identities. And it is well evidenced across relevant fields (e.g., sociology, marketing, economics) that salient identities are instrumental in a variety of cognitive and behavioral processes, including decision-making. It is not, however, well understood how the relative salience of various cultural identities factors into the process of making identity-relevant choices, particularly ones that require an actor to choose between conflicting sets of cultural values or beliefs. It is also unclear whether the source of that salience (e.g., chronic or situational) is meaningful in this regard. The current research makes novel predictions concerning the roles of cultural identity centrality and cultural identity situational salience in three distinct aspects of the decision-making process: Direction of decision, speed of decision, and emotion related to decision. In doing so, the research highlights two under-researched forms of culture (i.e., political and religious) and uses as the focal dependent variable a decision-making scenario that forces participants to choose between the values of their religious and political cultures and, to some degree, behave in an identity-inconsistent manner. Results indicate main effects of Christian identity centrality and democrat identity centrality on preference for traditional versus gender-neutral (i.e., non-traditional/progressive) restrooms after statistically controlling for covariates. Additionally, results show a significant main effect of democrat identity centrality and a significant interaction effect of Christian and democrat identity centrality on positive emotion linked to the decision. Post hoc analyses further reveal a significant quadratic relationship between Christian identity centrality and emotion related to the decision. There was no effect of situational strength of democrat identity salience on the decision. Neither centrality or situational strength had any effect on the speed with which participants made their decisions. This research theoretically and empirically advances the study of cultural psychology and carries important implications for identity research and judgment and decision-making across a variety of fields, including management, behavioral economics, and marketing.
ContributorsBarbour, Joseph Eugene (Author) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Mackinnon, David P (Committee member) / Mandel, Naomi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the history of emotions has engaged much scholarly interest. This project draws from the historical, sociological and philosophical research on emotions to analyze the representation of emotions in narratives from Argentina and Chile. This historical investigation posits that socio-political, cultural and economic forces, which are

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the history of emotions has engaged much scholarly interest. This project draws from the historical, sociological and philosophical research on emotions to analyze the representation of emotions in narratives from Argentina and Chile. This historical investigation posits that socio-political, cultural and economic forces, which are represented in literature and film, shape emotions and emotional standards. The analysis of Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar and Raúl Ruiz’s Tres Tristes Tigres (1968) is centered on the impact of Existentialism, capitalism and modernity on the construction of emotional standards in urban societies. The impact of militant groups in the shaping of collective emotions in Latin America during the 1960s and 70s is examined in Reina Roffé’s novel Monte de Venus (1973) and Aldo Francia’s film Ya no basta con rezar (1972). The analysis of Alberto Fuguet’s Las películas de mi vida (2002) and Pablo Larraín’s No (2012) sheds light on the paradigmatic shift in the construction of emotional standards resulting from the implementation of neoliberalism through dictatorships as well as the insertion into the globalized consumerist culture by way of technology and media. Finally, this project encourages future research of the emotions in literary and cultural studies of Latin America.
ContributorsBondi, Erika (Author) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Gil-Osle, Juan Pablo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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With the fast pace of globalization and the rise of encounters in digital spaces, CALL scholars have become increasingly interested in how digital tools mediate intercultural encounters. However, despite their evident success in connecting students from around the world, current online intercultural exchanges continue to present problems such a promotion

With the fast pace of globalization and the rise of encounters in digital spaces, CALL scholars have become increasingly interested in how digital tools mediate intercultural encounters. However, despite their evident success in connecting students from around the world, current online intercultural exchanges continue to present problems such a promotion of positive experiences over deep intercultural learning and lack of real-life value (O’ Dowd, 2018). In addition, digitally-mediated intercultural learning research is based on the same theoretical approaches to learning that guide CALL research (Firth & Wagner, 1997; Lafford, 2017). Although such frameworks are successful in allowing researchers to conceive of digital tools as mediators for human interaction, they have yet to embrace the potential of digital artifacts themselves as intercultural interlocutors. Aiming to address this gap in the research, this investigation used Atkinson’s (2010, 2014) sociocognitive approach to language learning to understand the role that digital tools have in intercultural learning. Also integrating Dervin’s (2011) liquid approach to interculturality—which focuses on understanding intercultural learning as a co-constructed process—the research questions that guided this investigation asked: (a) does film annotation mediate intercultural learning? and, (b) in what ways does film annotation mediate intercultural learning? In answering these questions, the study looked at the intercultural learning process of five advanced learners of Spanish, as they interacted with annotated film clips, and engaged in peer discussion around the themes of colonialism and coloniality presented in the film clips. Data were collected through pre and post-tests, video recordings of peer discussions, and screen recordings of participants’ interaction with the annotated film clips. Findings showed that film annotation allowed participants to notice, retrieve and take notes on important cultural information, which they later incorporated in discussion with peers. Based on this evidence, and aligned with the aforementioned theoretical frameworks, this investigation poses that intercultural learning is a fluid, iterative process. The study also suggests that digital artifacts—as well as human interlocutors—play an important role in enabling learning processes, therefore, the role of such artifacts should be studied more in depth.
ContributorsOcando Finol, Maria Virginia (Author) / Lafford, Barbara (Thesis advisor) / Cuya Gavilano, Lorena (Thesis advisor) / Smith, David B. (Committee member) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This dissertation proposes a re-evaluation of the films of Caliwood—a close-knit group of film fanatics who produced socially-minded independent cinema in Cali, Colombia—and the group’s contribution towards a national film industry. Focusing primarily on the works of Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo during the period ranging between 1971 and 1991,

This dissertation proposes a re-evaluation of the films of Caliwood—a close-knit group of film fanatics who produced socially-minded independent cinema in Cali, Colombia—and the group’s contribution towards a national film industry. Focusing primarily on the works of Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo during the period ranging between 1971 and 1991, this study analyzes six key films—Oiga vea! (1972), Cali de Película (1973), Agarrando Pueblo (1977), Pura Sangre (1982), Carne de tu carne (1983)—which showcase the evolution of the group’s production from experimental documentaries to pseudo-documentaries and fictional films. Additionally, It All Started at the End (2015) is analyzed because it is the last film produced by Luis Ospina and it showcases the history of the group from his own perspective. In totality, these films represent a political stance derived from the tenets of the Third Cinema movement—a call for a revolutionary cinema which reverberated throughout Latin America—which denounces neocolonialism, the capitalist system, and the Hollywood model of cinema as mere entertainment for profit. Furthermore, this comprehensive analysis of Caliwood’s films covers a representative sample of their film legacy, as well as their critique of socio-political and cultural issues in Colombia. The reflections yielded from this study propose a reframing of Colombian film history and acknowledges the importance of Ospina’s and Mayolo’s contribution to the development of a “national” film tradition in Colombia.
ContributorsBonilla-Cirocco, Cindy Michelle (Author) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Bezerra, Ligia (Committee member) / García Fernández, Carlos J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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I center my analysis on Amazon’s recent foray into alternative history The Man in the High Castle premised on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel of the same name. Amazon Studio’s production The Man in the High Castle builds upon the premise of an alternative history where World War II ends

I center my analysis on Amazon’s recent foray into alternative history The Man in the High Castle premised on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel of the same name. Amazon Studio’s production The Man in the High Castle builds upon the premise of an alternative history where World War II ends differently. Here, the diegetic narrative depicts a United States split into three distinct regions: the east coast, now part of the German Reich; the Neutral Zone, or most of the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains; and the west coast, controlled by Japanese Empire. The film version debuted in 2015 as a series extending to four seasons of 10 episodes a piece by 2019. I argue that the show takes cues from modern political tensions, the rise of the alt-right and “post-truth” media manipulations, to intentionally destabilize viewers’ memories of the historical past. By blurring the boundaries between the diegetic reality of the show and our accepted version of history, The Man in the High Castle disrupts the facility in which the viewer assumes alignment with memory and past, opting instead for a complicated refiguring of the political present. Here I articulate how film as a medium tampers with the viewer’s ontological understanding of image by collapsing history and fiction together. Additionally, the capacity of film to provoke empathy from viewers complicates the universal condemnation of Nazism we are familiar with and permits viewers to see the banality of evil in this reimagined history. Finally, I discuss how film as a medium capitalizes on the incompleteness of memory and the loopholes of history to fabricate viewer memory.
ContributorsAbele, Kelsey Taylor (Author) / Brouwer, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, Adina (Committee member) / Hedberg Olenina, Ana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020