Matching Items (376)
Filtering by
- Creators: Department of English
- Resource Type: Text
Description
There has been a recent push for queer fiction, especially in the young adult genre, whose focus is gay and lesbian relationships. This growth is much needed in terms of visibility and the furthering of acceptance, but there are still subjects within the LGBTQ+ community that need to be addressed, including bisexual, asexual, and non-binary erasure. There are many people who claim that these identities do not exist, are labels used as a stepping stone on one's journey to discovering that they are homosexual, or are invented excuses for overtly promiscuous or prudish behavior. The existence of negative stereotypes, particularly those of non-binary individuals, is largely due to a lack of visibility and respectful representation within media and popular culture. However, there is still a dearth of non-binary content in popular literature outside of young adult fiction. Can You See Me? aims to fill the gap in bisexual, asexual, and non-binary representation in adult literature. Each of the four stories that make up this collection deals with an aspect of gender and/or sexuality that has been erased, ignored, or denied visibility in American popular culture. The first story, "We'll Grow Lemon Trees," examines bisexual erasure through the lens of sociolinguistics. A bisexual Romanian woman emigrates to Los Angeles in 1989 and must navigate a new culture, learn new languages, and try to move on from her past life under a dictatorship where speaking up could mean imprisonment or death. The second story "Up, Down, All Around," is about a young genderqueer child and their parents dealing with microaggressions, examining gender norms, and exploring personal identity through imaginary scenarios, each involving an encounter with an unknown entity and a colander. The third story, "Aces High," follows two asexual characters from the day they're born to when they are 28 years old, as they find themselves in pop culture. The two endure identity crises, gender discrimination, erasure, individual obsessions, and prejudice as they learn to accept themselves and embrace who they are. In the fourth and final story, "Mile Marker 72," a gay Mexican man must hide in plain sight as he deals with the death of his partner and coming out to his best friend, whose brother is his partner's murderer.
ContributorsOchser, Jordyn M. (Author) / Bell, Matt (Thesis director) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The purpose of this essay is to explain how celebrities manage their brand, as an image and commodity, using social media. Merriam-Webster defines "celebrity" as the "state of being celebrated." This essay will continue to explain how this state of celebration is a manufactured idea by the individual and the media's portrayal. Celebrities are "well-known for their well-knowness" (Boorstin, 1961, p. 58). Boorstin (1961) explains celebrities achieve fame not for their achievements, but by creating a unique personality (as cited in Turner, 2004). Crowd culture, networks, and audience knowledge are tools celebrities must use to navigate digital nuances. They must manage performance of self, adhere to internet social norms, and the obsessive fame culture. Celebrities are often referred to have "star power" and have a certain "charisma." This cultural identity is "negotiated and formed" contrived by a team through promotion, publicity, and advertising (Turner, 2004). Celebrities market themselves through branded content, media used to promote a product, on their social media pages while targeting crowd cultures. Networks truly define how celebrities must brand themselves on social media. This person-to-person contact establishes fan and consumer connections that build the celebrity's base and following. Despite campaigning in a digital world, it goes back to people connecting with people, not accounts linking to accounts. Celebrities manufacture all of these strategies and tactics as they market themselves as a commodity to target crowd culture audiences. This is why targeting crowd cultures is vitally important for celebrities. This essay explores the techniques of select celebrities as they succeed and fail navigating digital nuances.
ContributorsPierce, Ellen (Author) / Jacoby, Jim (Thesis director) / Himberg, Julia (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
In an effort to combat the lack of diversity in Children's Literature, this project displays a piece of literature titled Stories & Stages: A Tale of Two Sisters, in the form of a children's chapter book for a middle grade audience. Focusing on characters of a Hispanic background without relying on stereotypes or false characterizations, the novel works to inspire young minds and reflect a true representation of the world children are living in. This is done using research on different aspects of Children's Literature, including: the definition of children's literature, diversity, girlhood, and sibling relationships. This research provides the basis for the project, as does personal experience and background. Following the novel is a recording of the background research involved and a documentations of the creative process. Keywords: Children's Literature, Diversity
ContributorsFlores, Abriana Lorraine (Author) / Elliott, Lisa (Thesis director) / Haddy, Lana (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The Way Home is a full-length young adult novel. The story is split between the perspectives of Theo and Ella, best friends from high school who are starting their freshman year in college. Neither is extremely excited about the start of the new phase of their lives; Theo struggles with severe anxiety and is just hoping to survive the four years; and dark memories in Ella's past don't seem to want to let her start over. A series of murders happening in town don't help their nerves at all, making it hard to focus on the "college experience." They were supposed to be there for each other... But then Ella goes missing, and Theo is left without a clue of where she went. While he searches for her desperately, she wakes up miles away from home, surrounded by strangers. In their efforts to find one another again, they instead find themselves presented with opportunities to study the impossible: magic. Things become stranger and stranger as murders, magic, police investigations, and ever-looming final exams begin to challenge Theo and Ella in ways they never expected. In writing this novel, I hoped to depict the transition from high school to college and the worries and wonders that come with it. The story is almost split directly in half, beginning with normal school life and shifting into the world of magic. The conflicts presented to the characters during the first half, such as grades, majors, and socializing, persist throughout the second half, but are also metaphorized once the characters begin studying magic. I chose to include a protagonist with an anxiety disorder because I believe mental disabilities are not represented enough in YA literature, though it is something that many high school and college students deal with. I wanted to create a character that could inform others and that students with similar mental disorders could relate to. Additional themes I deal with include newfound independence, individuality, growth, and friendship.
ContributorsWoner, Catherine Flynn (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis director) / Irish, Jennifer (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
"French Vanilla" is a collection of written narratives drawn from lived experiences which serve as the vehicle storytelling that I use to examine larger themes related to the intersections of race and gender. Themes include: binaries, legitimacy, intersectionality, biracial identity development (border identity construction), whiteness, shame, and crisis. While the narratives are situated within theoretical discourse, the narratives present a representation of the lived experience. These pieces engage members of my family as well as a number of figures, including Rachel Dolezal, President Barack Obama, Alicia Keys, and a stranger on a tram in an airport. My relationship with these people present the grounds for an interrogation of identity. This project asks the question: How does one negotiate biracial identity with herself and others through narrative performance? It engages theories, such as critical race theory, black feminist theory, and standpoint theory, which informed my understanding of the discourse of race and contextualized my commentary on race. These theories present a framework within which to situate my understanding and analysis of race through lived experience. Narrative performance, the formal methodology for this work, provides a structure for the performance itself: the ultimate end product. Note: This work of creative scholarship is rooted in collaboration between three female artist-scholars: Carly Bates, Raji Ganesan, and Allyson Yoder. Working from a common intersectional, feminist framework, we served as artistic co-directors of each other's solo pieces and co-producers of Negotiations, in which we share these pieces in relationship to each other. Thus, Negotiations is not a showcase of three individual works, but rather a conversation among three voices. As collaborators, we have been uncompromising in the pursuit of our own unique inquiries and voices, and each of our works of creative scholarship stand alone. However, we believe that all of the parts are best understood in relationship to each other and to the whole. For this reason, we have chosen to cross-reference our thesis documents: French Vanilla: An Exploration of Biracial Identity Through Narrative Performance by Carly Bates; Deep roots, shared fruits: Emergent creative process and the ecology of solo performance through "Dress in Something Plain and Dark" by Allyson Yoder; and Bhairavi: A Performance-Investigation of Belonging and Dis-Belonging in Diaspora Communities by Raji Ganesan.
ContributorsBates, Carly Christopher (Author) / Davis, Olga Idriss (Thesis director) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Committee member) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / School of Music (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
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
Description
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory proposes that the personality has three components, the id, superego, and ego. The id is concerned with pleasure and gain, the reason it is often identified as a human's animalistic side. Additionally, the id does not consider social rules as closely and is the uncensored portion of the personality. The superego is the id's opposite; the superego considers social expectations and pressures immensely, is more self-critical and moralizing. The ego mediates the id and superego, and is understood as the realistic expression of personality which considers both the "animal" and human. A Fractured Whole: A Collection of Short Stories, explores Freud's construction of human personality in both form and content. Within the collection are three sections, each with a different pair of characters. Within each section, the same scene is written in the three "modes" of the id, superego, and ego, as three separate stories. The fifteen stories comprising this collection address the substance of daily life: sexuality, body image, competition, among other topics, to consider how a single person can balance the desires for personal pleasure and to satisfy social expectations. Writing the same scene in three "modes" allows for the observation of how the characters attitudes and actions alter under the influence of different parts of their personalities.
ContributorsOtte, Aneka (Author) / Sturges, Robert (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The act of writing music criticism comes with numerous difficulties inherently involved in describing the ineffable qualities of audio in the medium of the written word. My music criticism podcast, Here and Now with Steve Jozef, offers a method of reviewing albums that sidesteps these problems by interweaving the criticism with clips of the songs discussed. This format holds the critic accountable to root their opinion in tangible components in the music, and makes clear the direct line between the qualities of the music at hand and the reviewer's verdict on that music. I wrote, recorded, edited, and distributed 13 episodes of the podcast over the course of six months; I've selected four of those episodes to represent my work for the purposes of the thesis. Their scripts, as well as links to the full episodes, are included with this paper. In addition, I thoroughly researched modern academic thought on the nature, purpose, and future of popular music criticism. This research helped me refine a conception of my ideal theoretical audience for the podcast, forced me to confront and assess my music evaluation criteria through various lenses, and develop the goal of creating a pattern of empathetic listening amongst my listeners. Over the course of developing the project, I ran into several obstacles in using copyrighted material on the show without permission from the copyright holders. Thus the podcast also became a case study in evaluating modern copyright law and its application, and demonstrating what needs to change about both for music criticism to sustain in this form.
ContributorsJozef, Steven James (Author) / Wells, Christopher (Thesis director) / Duerden, Sarah (Committee member) / Tinapple, David (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) ion channels are a diverse family of nonselective, polymodal sensors in uni- and multicellular eukaryotes that are implicated in an assortment of biological contexts and human disease. The cold-activated TRP Melastatin-8 (TRPM8) channel, also recognized as the human body's primary cold sensor, is among the few TRP channels responsible for thermosensing. Despite sustained interest in the channel, the mechanisms underlying TRPM8 activation, modulation, and gating have proved challenging to study and remain poorly understood. In this thesis, I offer data collected on various expression, extraction, and purification conditions tested in E. Coli expression systems with the aim to optimize the generation of a structurally stable and functional human TRPM8 pore domain (S5 and S6) construct for application in structural biology studies. These studies, including the biophysical technique nuclear magnetic spectroscopy (NMR), among others, will be essential for elucidating the role of the TRPM8 pore domain in in regulating ligand binding, channel gating, ion selectively, and thermal sensitivity. Moreover, in the second half of this thesis, I discuss the ligation-independent megaprimer PCR of whole-plasmids (MEGAWHOP PCR) cloning technique, and how it was used to generate chimeras between TRPM8 and its nearest analog TRPM2. I review steps taken to optimize the efficiency of MEGAWHOP PCR and the implications and unique applications of this novel methodology for advancing recombinant DNA technology. I lastly present preliminary electrophysiological data on the chimeras, employed to isolate and study the functional contributions of each individual transmembrane helix (S1-S6) to TRPM8 menthol activation. These studies show the utility of the TRPM8\u2014TRPM2 chimeras for dissecting function of TRP channels. The average current traces analyzed thus far indicate that the S2 and S3 helices appear to play an important role in TRPM8 menthol modulation because the TRPM8[M2S2] and TRPM8[M2S3] chimeras significantly reduce channel conductance in the presence of menthol. The TRPM8[M2S4] chimera, oppositely, increases channel conductance, implying that the S4 helix in native TRPM8 may suppress menthol modulation. Overall, these findings show that there is promise in the techniques chosen to identify specific regions of TRPM8 crucial to menthol activation, though the methods chosen to study the TRPM8 pore independent from the whole channel may need to be reevaluated. Further experiments will be necessary to refine TRPM8 pore solubilization and purification before structural studies can proceed, and the electrophysiology traces observed for the chimeras will need to be further verified and evaluated for consistency and physiological significance.
ContributorsWaris, Maryam Siddika (Author) / Van Horn, Wade (Thesis director) / Redding, Kevin (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Netflix has positioned itself at the forefront of the future of television with its original programming, which has been rolled out in greater and more frequent amounts just in the last couple of years. The streaming service has already experimented with creativity in ways most other shows and creators haven't, playing with the pacing of overall seasons as well as the length of episodes. So, too, Netflix has been at the forefront of increasing visibility for minority characters on television. Many of its shows incorporate racially diverse casts and depict lots of LGBTQ characters, a refreshingly realistic view of the world that many of its viewers have always lived in but haven't yet witnessed on television. Visibility and representation are critical concepts for analyzing minority characters on television. It is important for diverse characters to be seen, first and foremost, but also to be seen in positive or at least realistic lights. Care must be taken to avoid fulfilling stereotypes or tropes, and attention must be paid to what has happened to other characters who have come before. However, many of Netflix's portrayals of these characters, particularly bisexual characters, leave much to be desired. With the original dramas House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, Orange is the New Black, and Sense8, all of which include characters who identify as or behave bisexually, Netflix has been reluctant to use the specific word bisexual to describe characters, and many don't even identify their sexuality with a synonym for the term. Many of the bisexual characters that I identified died or were killed on the shows, and nearly all of them fulfilled stereotypes or tropes in some way. There were multiple scenes of threesomes or other distinctly kinky sexual encounters, which served to exoticize bisexuality and distance it from the more normatively viewed identities of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Ultimately, while Netflix's original programming has offered increased visibility to bisexual characters, it has yet to reflect the real community it seeks to portray. In particular, Netflix's refusal to label characters as bisexual is frustrating and limiting. It can be argued that this is a progressive move toward more ideas of sexual fluidity and a post-modern lack of sexual labels, but there are not enough depictions of identified bisexual characters on television yet for this to make sense. Until bisexual characters and their identities are not invisibilized or stigmatized, more work has to be done to ensure that bisexual people are represented fairly and accurately on television and in all media.
ContributorsKoerth, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Himberg, Julia (Thesis director) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / College of Public Service and Community Solutions (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05