Matching Items (131)
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In the 1930s, with the rise of Nazism, many artists in Europe had to flee their homelands and sought refuge in the United States. Austrian composer Hanns Eisler who had risen to prominence as a significant composer during the Weimar era was among them. A Jew, an ardent Marxist and

In the 1930s, with the rise of Nazism, many artists in Europe had to flee their homelands and sought refuge in the United States. Austrian composer Hanns Eisler who had risen to prominence as a significant composer during the Weimar era was among them. A Jew, an ardent Marxist and composer devoted to musical modernism, he had established himself as a writer of film music and Kampflieder, fighting songs, for the European workers' movement. After two visits of the United States in the mid-1930s, Eisler settled in America where he spent a decade (1938-1948), composed a considerable number of musical works, including important film scores, instrumental music and songs, and, in collaboration with Theodor W. Adorno, penned the influential treatise Composing for the Films. Yet despite his substantial contributions to American culture American scholarship on Eisler has remained sparse, perhaps due to his reputation as the "Karl Marx in Music." In this study I examine Eisler's American exile and argue that Eisler, through his roles as a musician and a teacher, actively sought to enrich American culture. I will present background for his exile years, a detailed overview of his American career as well as analyses and close readings of several of his American works, including three of his American film scores, Pete Roleum and His Cousins (1939), Hangmen Also Die (1943), and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), and the String Quartet (1940), Third Piano Sonata (1943), Woodbury Liederbüchlein (1941), and Hollywood Songbook (1942-7). This thesis builds upon unpublished correspondence and documents available only in special collections at the University of Southern California (USC), as well as film scores in archives at USC and the University of California, Los Angeles. It also draws on Eisler studies by such European scholars as Albrecht Betz, Jürgen Schebera, and Horst Weber, as well as on research of film music scholars Sally Bick and Claudia Gorbman. As there is little written on the particulars of Eisler's American years, this thesis presents new facts and new perspectives and aims at a better understanding of the artistic achievements of this composer.
ContributorsBoyd, Caleb (Author) / Feisst, Sabine (Thesis advisor) / Levy, Benjamin (Committee member) / Oldani, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Chris Miller's Souvenirs of Sleep is as serious as it is whimsical, if this is a possibility. The "Museum of the Zoo-real" may be an equally appropriate title as animals are often in performance. In this visual and spiritual investigation, childhood, dream, and the loss of a mother to suicide

Chris Miller's Souvenirs of Sleep is as serious as it is whimsical, if this is a possibility. The "Museum of the Zoo-real" may be an equally appropriate title as animals are often in performance. In this visual and spiritual investigation, childhood, dream, and the loss of a mother to suicide are the currents. Miller's work is informed by the cinema of Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson and beyond. Miller believes in the power of implication. The poems begin with intense focus, but are often in the business of expansion. Souvenirs of Sleep is a journey toward sense-making, a search for language that might allow it.
ContributorsMiller, Christopher (Author) / Dubie, Norman (Thesis advisor) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Ball, Sally (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The author explores the influences on the interiors of Hollywood films of the late 1920s and 30s. The Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris 1925 is examined in historical context and its influence on design trends internationally.

The Hollywood film industry is examined, in general, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and

The author explores the influences on the interiors of Hollywood films of the late 1920s and 30s. The Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris 1925 is examined in historical context and its influence on design trends internationally.

The Hollywood film industry is examined, in general, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and its longtime art director, Cedric Gibbons, in particular. Eight MGM films are discussed and their interiors analyzed for related influence from the 1925 Paris Exposition.

The thesis makes a case for the influence of the 1925 Paris Exposition on Cedric Gibbons and the interiors of the MGM films of the late 1920s and 30s.
ContributorsRishell, Ann (Author) / Brandt, Beverly (Thesis advisor) / Bender, Diane (Committee member) / Sweeney, Gray (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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This thesis explores the role of film industry boosterism in Arizona from 1911 to 2014; it argues that boosters consistently employed film as a promotional tool toward building state identity for Arizona. These boosters harnessed a variety of strategies catered specifically to a combination of personal interests and historical circumstances.

This thesis explores the role of film industry boosterism in Arizona from 1911 to 2014; it argues that boosters consistently employed film as a promotional tool toward building state identity for Arizona. These boosters harnessed a variety of strategies catered specifically to a combination of personal interests and historical circumstances. Consequently, their efforts produced a variety of identities for Arizona that changed over time as new generations of boosters addressed different concerns. These state identities that boosters wanted to build relied heavily on the power of perception, often attempting to overcome or reinforce stereotypical imagery and iconography associated with Arizona. Over time, boosters used the film industry to project Arizona as: a modern and progressive state that had outgrown its frontier past; an ideal setting to make films that relived the mythical Wild West; a film-friendly place of business ideally suited for Hollywood production; and a cultural haven for filmic sophistication. Textual analysis of primary sources comprises the methodology of this thesis. Primary sources include historical newspapers, such as the Arizona Republican, and archival records of Arizona's past governors, including Governors Jack R. Williams and Raul H. Castro. These sources constitute valuable documentation created by boosters in the course of their day-to-day activities promoting Arizona, providing a window into their aspirations, worldviews and strategies. Personal interviews with active and retired members of Arizona's film boosting community are also included as primary source material, intended to capture firsthand accounts of filmic activity in the state. Using these sources as its foundation, this thesis fills a gap in the historiography by analyzing the relationship between the film industry and Arizona's state identity. While a handful of scholarly works have discussed Arizona's film history to a minor extent, they tend to take a pure narrative approach, or offer a "behind-the-scenes" look that focuses on the production aspects of films shot in Arizona. No other work focuses explicitly on boosterism or explores the statewide meaning of Arizona's film history over such a comprehensive period of time. Thus, this thesis offers a previously neglected history of both film and Arizona.
ContributorsEhrfurth, Ryan (Author) / Thompson, Victoria (Thesis advisor) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Smith, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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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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Horror as a genre is often dismissed on the basis of its reliance on jump scares and adrenaline highs, but history would suggest that society is just as well reflected in horror films as in any other genre. We only truly know our own experiences in real life, but film

Horror as a genre is often dismissed on the basis of its reliance on jump scares and adrenaline highs, but history would suggest that society is just as well reflected in horror films as in any other genre. We only truly know our own experiences in real life, but film grants us the opportunity to see the world through another’s eyes, and what a more powerful way than through the experience of fear. In order to contextualize materials for the creation of a short horror film, the first part of this paper explores horror as a genre and the roles women tend to play in horror, both in the past and the present. It also considers how society perceives threats to women and how women perceive threats to themselves. It is important to define the foundation of women in horror and understand their current role in the genre to achieve the overarching goal of making a short horror film depicting a real issue that women face. A script, a storyboard, a timeline, and other materials for such a production are included as well.
ContributorsPeterschmidt, Bailey Willow (Author) / Mack, Robert L. (Thesis director) / Cheyne, Rebekah (Committee member) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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The SolarSPELL is an offline, ruggedized, digital library, created by Dr. Laura Hosman for the U.S. Peace Corps. It has thousands of pieces of educational content that can be accessed through a self-contained Wi-Fi hotspot on the device itself. Currently, there are more than 200 deployed in several Pacific Island

The SolarSPELL is an offline, ruggedized, digital library, created by Dr. Laura Hosman for the U.S. Peace Corps. It has thousands of pieces of educational content that can be accessed through a self-contained Wi-Fi hotspot on the device itself. Currently, there are more than 200 deployed in several Pacific Island nations. After visiting one of these nations, Tonga, in December of 2016, I learned that almost all of the Peace Corps volunteers stationed around the Pacific Islands suffered from a lack of resources due to a variety of reasons. While the SolarSPELL helps to remedy that, the device is lacking classroom activities and resources for creative work and educational drama. Furthermore, for many students in these environments, schools are for learning information and producing high scores on exams, not for learning about creative strengths and identity. After researching curriculum development and the use of drama in an educational setting, I compiled over 50 pieces of content to include on the SolarSPELL involving art, drama, music, movement, and most importantly, imagination. These resources will allow Peace Corps volunteers to explore additional ways to teach English in their schools, while also creating a classroom environment that allows for creative expression. All the content is compiled into one folder as "Teaching Resources", and is then broken down into seven sub- categories. In the first sub-category, Art Projects, there is a collection of several hands-on projects, many of which involve recyclable or readily available materials. These projects will allow for a greater understanding of conservation and "green" living, concepts that are crucial to the stability of these island nations. The next 5 categories are Drama Readings, Music, Movement, and Video, Group Exercises, Creative Writing, and Worksheets. The second sub- category is a collection of beginner-level "Reader's Theater" scripts. The third sub-category involves music and video to engage students in movement activities. The fourth sub-category is a compilation of group games and activities to help students express themselves and learn social skills. The fifth sub-category includes a collection of activities such as fill-in-the-blank story worksheets and journal prompts which will aid in creative thinking and the practice of the English language. The sixth sub-category involves a collection of worksheets that mainly focus on self-reflection and identity. The seventh and final sub-category, Content Guide and Information, works to explain the benefits of using of drama and creative play in the classroom, as well as strategies teachers can implement in order to further engage their students in dramatic learning and play. Overall, these pieces of content are meant to be used as resources for the Peace Corps volunteers in order to provide alternative ways to practice reading, writing, and speaking the English language, a critical part of education in the Pacific Islands.
ContributorsTaylor, Amanda Nicole (Author) / Hosman, Laura (Thesis director) / McAvoy, Mary (Committee member) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School for the Future of Innovation in Society (Contributor)
Created2017-12
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My name is Adriana Becerra and I am a student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. In hoping to combine my two passions of journalism and film, for my Honors Undergraduate Thesis project I created my own film review website. My website

My name is Adriana Becerra and I am a student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. In hoping to combine my two passions of journalism and film, for my Honors Undergraduate Thesis project I created my own film review website. My website is a complete review of the films that were nominated for the 2015 Oscars in the following categories: Best Picture, Animated Feature, Documentary Feature, Foreign Language, and Short Film Live Action. In all, I watched and reviewed a total of twenty-eight films based on acting, lighting, music, cinematography, costume/makeup/set design, writing, and visual effects. Over the course of nine months, I have watched, reviewed, and talked extensively about each film that I have reviewed. Though tedious at times, I thoroughly enjoyed completing my Undergraduate Thesis Project. I hope to continue critically looking at films, and possibly even incorporating film in my journalistic career.
ContributorsBecerra, Adriana Justina (Author) / Dodge, Nancie (Thesis director) / Russell, Dennis (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05