Matching Items (22)
Description
Capstone project, I began developing an animated series called Legends of Gaia. The show follows a small group of people of mixed ages and backgrounds, as they travel across the world trying to stop the Galliean Empire, a technologically booming western power that has begun fighting a war for world domination. The purpose of this paper is to better explain the origins and inspirations of the mythology of my series, as well as the major two supernatural characters of my series, and the general geography (both physical and metaphysical) of the series. When first developing this series, I looked into the works of Joseph Campbell, as he wrote the book(s) on mythology in many ways. His most famous writings are probably the Hero's Journey and the Monomyth, the basic outline of the journey that most heroes go through, from the call ordinary world, to the call of the adventure, all the way to the hero returning (Campbell 211). Many classic examples of story telling follow the pattern Campbell outlined, and my work is no exception. However, I did not want my series to be a beat for beat retread of the Hero's Journey, and so some parts, such as the Refusal of the Call, when the hero rejects the adventure and befalls a tragedy, were skipped, while others, such as the resurrection, were realized in different ways. Using the Resurrection as an example, in my series the main female character, Diana is reborn twice throughout the series. Once in the final battle with the main villain into her true, goddess form, and the other when her battles are over, and she is reborn in her mortal form permanently.
ContributorsLopez, Richard (Author) / Collis, Adam (Thesis director) / Valenti, F. Miguel (Committee member) / Barzso, Tain (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
The purpose of this honors thesis project is to explore the origins of science fiction and fantasy in British literature and develop a unit for a high school Freshman English classroom. Focusing on science fiction and fantasy literature, technology, and literature circles, this is a complete unit in which all lesson plans, activities, and materials are derived from the PUHSD curriculum and support the AZ Career and College Readiness Standards. The design of this unit encourages analysis of literature and other medias as well as encouraging students to explore their own imaginations.
ContributorsJohnson, Taylor G. (Author) / Smudde, Christopher (Thesis director) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This paper analyzes the television show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine within the context of the other Trek series, especially the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, with a particular focus on multiculturalism. Previous Trek series present an image of the United Federation of Planets that has evolved into a peaceful, cooperative, post-scarcity, multicultural utopia, but gloss over the difficulties the Federation governments must have faced in creating this utopia and must still face in maintaining it. I argue that DS9’s shift in focus away from exploration and towards a postcolonial, multicultural, stationary setting allows the show to interrogate the nature of the Federation’s multicultural utopia and showcase the difficulties in living in and managing a space with a plurality of cultures. The series, much more than those that precede and follow it, both directly and indirectly criticizes the Federation and its policies, suggesting that its utopian identity is based more in assimilation than multiculturalism. Nonetheless, this criticism, which is frequently abandoned and even undermined, is inconsistent. By focusing on three of the show’s contested spaces/settings—the space station itself, the wormhole, and the demilitarized zone—I analyze the ways in which DS9’s ambivalent criticism of the success of multiculturalism challenges the confidence of the Trek tradition.
ContributorsPoterack, Vivien Eulalie (Author) / Free, Melissa (Thesis director) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This paper explores the complex, multifaceted relationship of science and science fiction. Because of our rapidly evolving, technology-driven world, the question of how science fiction changes, and is changed by, science is more relevant today than ever before. The nuanced relationship of science and science fiction can first be explored by analyzing the influence of science fiction on science with examples such as the XPRIZE Foundation. At the same time that science fiction influences science, changes in science will also resonate in the future of science fiction. New developments like the open-source movement and the success of platforms like Kickstarter, which allow science to be crowdsourced at unprecedented levels, are changing the landscape of scientific development. These changes are causing increased public engagement with science. Based on these changes in the way science and technology are developed, the science fiction genre seems on the cusp of a dramatic shift. Science fiction has long been dominated by dystopian and apocalyptic visions for the future, frequently the result of some catastrophe of our own making. However, because of the changes in science and technology and the public's engagement with those changes, the next generation of science fiction writers and filmmakers is likely to see a more positive outlook for humanity. Based on the interlocked past of science and science fiction, this paper argues that the changing landscape of science and technology will cause a change for the positive in the tonality of popular science fiction.
ContributorsMiller, Hillary Marie (Author) / Finn, Ed (Thesis director) / Swanner, Leandra (Committee member) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
In the future a Community struggles for survival on an uninhabitable Earth. A small faction of rebels, called Villains, put the lives of the entire Community at risk as they fight for domination of their home. Heroes and their Sidekicks rise up from the population to fight the Villains and win back their world. As they complete their training and begin to enter the world of Heroes and Villains, Alyssa begins to struggle with her identity as a Sidekick, her new role in the Community, and whether she can really preserve all that matters most to her. This excerpt from the larger novel, Sidekick, tells the story of Alyssa's struggles to remain true to herself, and her best friend Jeremy, all the while being called to serve the Community and eradicate the threat the Villains pose to her way of life. I conceived Sidekick as a work of speculative fiction because I believe the genre is one of the most powerful tools for education in the present time. By freeing one's mind to wonder, the dull becomes an exciting thought experiment that can (and does) influence how individuals see their world. Reading pieces like Ender's Game and 1984 I have found my ways of thinking challenged and stretched, and ideas from these works of fiction have stuck with and changed me. One major goal of the work was identifying and integrating major academic and life lessons I have learned into the overall work, providing it an intellectual and emotional grounding in reality. Having its foundations in the real world, the setting of Sidekick becomes a stage for a fantastical story as well as the reader's own imagination and introspection.
ContributorsWarren, Taylor Ann (Author) / Finn, Ed (Thesis director) / Bell, Matt (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
Some say that science fiction becomes science. If science fiction eventually becomes science and technology, then US-American science and technology surrounding robots are rooted in white supremacy. Scholarship has previously highlighted the way that films and stories about robots are exclusionary towards Black people and persons of color. These texts, while aptly making the connection between race, Blackness, and technology, do not sufficiently address the embedded design of anti-Blackness in cultural artifacts in the early twentieth century and the anti-Black logics that, to this day, continue to inform how stories about robots are told. Further, these analyses do not consider the connection between cultural artifacts and the material development of emerging technologies; how these embedded racist narratives drive and shape how the technologies are then constructed. In this dissertation, I aim to link how anti-Black scientific popular culture has informed academic scholarship and engineering related to robots in the United States. Stories are an inherently spatial project. Stories about robots are a spatial project intended to create “Cartographies of Subordination.” I contend from 1922 to 1942, US-American robots were mapped into and onto the world; in just twenty short years, I argue a Cartography of Subordination was established. I apply a spatial lens to critique the impact of embedding stories about robots with anti-Blackness. These stories would develop into narratives with material consequences and maintain lasting ties and allegiance to a world invested in white supremacy. I outline how popular culture and stories are transfigured into narratives that have a direct impact on how futures are built. I expose the loop between popular culture and scholarship to unmask how research and development in robotics are based on white-informed futures. My dissertation makes an original geographical contribution to the fields of Human and Cultural Geography by asserting that narrative and popular culture about robots serves to remake Cartographies of Subordination in both science fiction and science and technology broadly. If science fiction has the potential to become real scientific outcomes, I connect culture, geography, and legacies of power in an otherwise overlooked space.
ContributorsMayberry, Nicole K. (Author) / Maynard, Andrew (Thesis advisor) / Shabazz, Rashad (Thesis advisor) / Ore, Ersula (Committee member) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
A creative project seeking to incorporate rhetorical theory into speculative fiction. Tales From Beyond the Breach is a series of five stories set in a post climate apocalypse, all dealing in some way with rhetorical understandings of truth. Each chapter or story draws on a different philosopher, though there is some overlap and reflection of my own personal beliefs. The project is meant to entertain as well as provoke thought, taking what we know and imagining what could be.
ContributorsLee, Jasmine (Author) / Hannah, Mark (Thesis director) / Bell, Matthew (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Собачье сердце (Heart of a Dog) is a novella written in 1925 by author and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov in Moscow, USSR, later Russia. An early English translation was published in 1968. Heart of a Dog tells the story of a stray dog named Sharik, who is found by a surgeon, and undergoes extensive surgery for experimental purposes to create a New Soviet man, someone committed to the ideals of communism in the Soviet Union. In Heart of a Dog, Bulgakov satirizes the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and the concept of a New Soviet man, and criticizes the science and practice of eugenics.
ContributorsKim, Grace (Author) / Arizona State University. School of Life Sciences. Center for Biology and Society. Embryo Project Encyclopedia. (Publisher) / Arizona Board of Regents (Publisher)
Created2017-05-29
Description
Science fiction works can reflect the relationship between science and society by telling stories that are set in the future of ethical implications or social consequences of scientific advancements. This thesis investigates how the concept of reproduction is depicted in popular science fiction works.
ContributorsDayoung Kim, Grace (Author) / Tuoti, Whitney Alexandra (Editor) / Arizona State University. School of Life Sciences. Center for Biology and Society. Embryo Project Encyclopedia. (Publisher) / Arizona Board of Regents (Publisher)
Created2021-02-10
DescriptionAcademic interests combined into a speculative science fiction novel. Concepts from American Sign Language, mechanical engineering, and journalism studies were all utilized during development of the novel.
ContributorsGraziano, River (Author) / Irish, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Bell, Matt (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2024-05