This paper explores the intersection of female madness and Gothic space in four pieces of Gothic media: Jane Eyre written By Charlotte Brontë, "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Carrie (1976) directed by Brian De Palma, and Midsommar (2016) directed by Ari Aster. In these texts, female characters find themselves driven “mad,” either by their own design or from outside influences. While the madness presents itself differently in each text, they all share common elements, especially in terms of Gothic space. Each text sees its madwoman affected by the environment around them whether it is explicitly stated in-text or not. Gothic space acts as both a metanarrative on the characters’ lives and emotions, and as literal, physical spaces that the characters inhabit and interact with. Oftentimes, what the character cannot express is told through the environment around her. Feelings of suffocation, misery, entrapment, and repression are represented in and through haunted homes, quasi-asylums, closets, schools, attics, and sun-lit fields. In analyzing all four texts individually and in relation to one another, this paper also argues for the presence of a paradox inherent in the cultural formation of female madness. In each text, all written/created across 200+ years, a common theme emerges. Though the expression of madness for the women in each text is a freeing and liberating experience, they also meet tragic and often violent ends. The madness exhibited in each text is both a response to and an expression of trauma - resulting in either victimization or villainization for the women who succumb to it. The end result depicts women who have been physically, mentally, and emotionally destroyed from their own madness. In freeing themselves, they unknowingly and unintentionally subject themselves to further pain and misery.

This paper will analyze the two films Mississippi Burning and BlacKkKlansman, as well as some of the historical contexts surrounding them, in order to unpack the various aspects of police brutality, protest culture, and ideals of reform shown within. Furthermore, it will investigate the impact of diverging from history on the perception of policing units, and the importance of more accurate narratives like BlacKkKlansman in popular culture. <br/> To find evidence that BlacKkKlansman is a much more accurate narrative regarding law enforcement and the effects that sentiments seen in Mississippi Burning have on modern day events, a comprehensive research analysis was conducted. Both films were watched multiple times and analyzed thoroughly, and further research was done to understand not only the narrative elements of the plot, but how the visual aspects strengthen the arguments both films try to make. Scholarly articles on contexts surrounding the subjects of the film were also analyzed, including topics on the FBI, Martin Luther King Jr, and police brutality. Through this, it became evident that Mississippi Burning overlooked most of the reality of the events the film is loosely based upon in order to present a white savior story, whereas BlacKkKlansman addresses the existing prejudices head on while also showing the relation the events have to a more modern context, specifically surrounding the Trump administration.

Can You Hear Me is a short documentary which seeks to give voice to the experiences of trans and nonbinary students in ASU classrooms. What I present in this project are the direct spoken accounts of the feelings, thoughts and frustrations of transgender and nonbinary students as they navigate university classrooms at Arizona State University. Can You Hear Me serves as a representational platform for trans and nonbinary students to communicate their experiences to other students, staff and faculty in the hopes that it might help make classroom spaces more inclusive.

The recent films of both Spike Lee and Adam McKay have been explicitly political in their respective thematic focuses. The former’s Chi-Raq (2015) adapted an ancient Greek comedy into a commentary on the state of violence in America’s inner-cities and more recent BlacKkKlansman (2018) adapted the memoir of a black police officer’s infiltration into a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The latter’s The Big Short (2015) adapted Michael Lewis’ bestselling book on the 2008 Financial Crisis into a farcical satire of economic greed, while his next film, Vice (2018), took a similarly scathing approach in depicting the life of former vice president Dick Cheney. While both McKay and Lee have their own unique filmmaking styles, their approach in these four films reveals both filmmakers to be working in the ideological tradition of postmodernism. These directors’ revival of postmodern aesthetic strategies in the 21st century has resulted in sophisticated artistic statements that cut through the political apathy and nihilism of our day. Their fast-paced films, saturated with paradoxes, allusions, and meta-commentaries, manage to keep today’s media-savvy audiences on edge and in a state of unstable equilibrium. This project argues that while both directors are fascinated by the deconstructionist potential that postmodern aesthetic strategies present, a key difference emerges when analyzing their respective political projects: while Lee fully embodies the postmodern mindset in both his narrative structures and thematic insights, McKay’s desire to persuade the audience to take a passionate stand ultimately makes his art transcend the traditional postmodernist stance of neutral, non-judgmental, or ironic acceptance of multiple truths. By comparing Lee’s approach to one of the most popular filmmakers of the day in McKay, this project situates Lee’s canonical style in the modern, ultra-partisan moment.

This thesis evaluates how films from Western Europe portray the social, political and economic degradation that allows the American influence to rise leading up to the Cold War. Specifically, this thesis evaluates classic films from Weimar Germany, the Soviet Union, post-fascist Italy and post-Vichy France as historical and cultural artifacts that depict the harsh conditions of postwar life and how American influence revitalized daily European life. While the American influence (defined as the support of democracy, technological modernization and a capitalist economy) was supported by many struggling Europeans who looked to the United States as a standard to rebuild, critics from each country viewed American influence as a threat to the stability of national independence which they sought to maintain as recovery balanced postwar society.