Recent hhpthesis_24theses items

Domicide: The Destruction of Home in The Hunger Games and Around the Globe

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020) released in November of 2023, creating buzz among The Hunger Games fans, new and old. The novel and film detail the life of tyrannical dictator President Coriolanus Snow and his rise to power in Panem, a nation that rose from the ashes of North America after a series of natural disasters and political turmoil. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes acts as a prequel to the events of The Hunger Games trilogy, and it demonstrates the development of the Hunger Games as a central part of everyday life in Panem. The novel begins in the Capitol, where Snow and other elite citizens reside, are planning the 10th annual Hunger Games. However, this year is special, students of the Academy, like Snow, are expected to participate in the Games as mentors for the selected District tributes; this is an event that will change the course of Panem and the Games forever. A total of 24...

Avengers Disassembled: Examining the Decline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has become the most popular film franchise in the world, setting box office records that are unlikely to ever be beaten. Due to the ongoing nature of the MCU, the superhero franchise has left an irreversible mark on society due to its transmedia storytelling abilities. Research has shown that the MCU’s depictions of race, gender, violence, and morality reveal something about the real world in terms of the social constructs that govern people’s way of life. Although the characters and events in the MCU are nothing more than speculative fiction, the influence these films have had on society couldn’t be any more real. In recent years, the MCU has seen a decline in popularity and Marvel Studios has made various efforts to reignite the excitement surrounding superhero culture. However, Marvel’s studio crisis may reveal something about the world that at first glance many might not recognize as a direct correlation between the societal issues today...

A Patch of Her Own: Contemporary Women in Experimental Electronic Music

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

While there’s significant and well-deserved coverage of electronic music’s older female pioneers, there isn’t yet sufficient academic or professional energy devoted to understanding the achievements of young women working today.

Starting in 2012, USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has since reported that 2023 was the year with the highest recorded percentage of female producers at 6.5%.1 This is still a remarkably low, disappointing amount. For that reason (and more), I’m excited to highlight three important female producers working today who, despite not reaching arbitrary standards of musical success (charting, for instance), have indeed managed to cultivate a formidable discography, release critically-acclaimed or well-received albums, establish themselves in a burgeoning music industry, have achieved name recognition, have signed to reputable recording labels, and regularly perform their music on tour.

I’m specifically focusing on three young female producers...

Visualizing and Vocalizing Shakespeare: Approaches to Teaching Romeo and Juliet

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Shakespeare: the greatest mind in English literature, the worst for the classroom. He’s been our pop culture for centuries, but it’s a struggle teaching his work.

I remember being a freshman in high school reading Romeo and Juliet. I’ve been captivated by Shakespeare’s vivid language and ideas since. As much as I loved the story, and Shakespeare, I knew my classmates were frustrated with it and didn’t like it.

As a fourth-year college student, I still think about my experience with Shakespeare in freshman year. My teacher summarized scenes and had us (the students) read the text out loud. Everyone was confused and our teacher’s succinct summaries were not enough for us to grasp his language. Although I was animated as we read the play, I couldn’t understand it.

I’ve realized that simply summarizing the happenings of a Shakespeare play is not useful because it’s the same as reading an online book summary in lieu of reading the entire book. Hence, teachers must...

Exploration of Derivative Works: The Appeal of Fanfiction to Creative Minds Within Fan Communities

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Derivative fiction is a genre of fiction that involves writing or reading about or within the worlds of previously established works. People often do not realize it, but many works of classic literature are, in their own ways, derivative fiction of other stories entirely. Dante’s Inferno is a derivative work based on The Bible, for example, but in addition to that, much of Arthurian legend—including all of Sir Lancelot’s legends, and the existence of Sir Lancelot in the first place—comes from derivative works, sometimes even from other countries such as France (which is where Sir Lancelot’s stories all come from). Even Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is based on an Italian play called The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, but while the original play framed the deaths of the main characters as caused by their not listening to their parents, Shakespeare changed the ending and other parts of the story to focus on tragic love (Spencer et al.). Even nowadays, derivative works are...

"What Might Be Lurking:” Wish Fulfillment and the Violence of Cuteness in Whipped Cream

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Whipped Cream is a two Act ballet performed by the American Ballet Theatre, with choreography by Alexei Ratmansky and sets and costumes designed by pop-surrealist, Mark Ryden. The story follows the protagonist, The Boy, after he overindulges on whipped cream following his First Communion. As a result, he has a series of dreams that become progressively more bizarre as The Boy descends into a fantasy world. The emphasis on subconscious combined with the 1920s Viennese setting of Whipped Cream immediately recalls Sigmund Freud and his Dream Theory. By using Freud’s Dream Theory as a point of departure, the paper argues that the main ‘want’ of The Boy lies in a craving for control and a need to escape the confines of reality in favor of a fantastical world. He conjures up an alternative life for himself, a future in which he has power and resources otherwise unavailable to him. Buffered by Mark Ryden’s grotesquely cute set, props, and costumes, and reinforced by the cuteness theories...

“A Sisterhood of Reforms:” The Subversive and Reformative Power of Spiritualism and the Female Medium in Women’s Supernatural Fiction in Victorian England

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this thesis I argue that the influx of female writers of sensationalized Victorian supernatural fiction overlap with the female mediums and participants of the supernaturalist movement, for the ultimate dissemination of the separate spheres ideology, thorough transgressive boundary crossing, ultimately seeking to bolster women’s entrance into the professional sphere, ushering in the “New Woman.” Both movements converge to undermine the Victorian female condition and respective ideals of femininity and womanhood (True Womanhood, Real Womanhood, Public Womanhood, and New Womanhood) through periodicals, short stories, Spiritualist forums, and the séance, women became the catalysts for the “New Woman” of the twentieth century. Thus, the dead become the medium for silenced and oppressed women, a means through which they can transgress social boundaries. Through these figures of transgression, women were able to highlight the failings of various societal institutions and common narratives...

Une Résistance Égale: The Gendering of Resistance in World War II France

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This thesis explores resistance work in Nazi-occupied France and Vichy France during World War II. The research uses paramilitary acts of resistance as a foil to political resistance, intelligence gathering and evasive resistance, and the home front as a site of resistance to spotlight women’s contributions to the French resistance. By exploring several types of resistance work and women’s participation (or lack thereof) in various resistance organizations, this thesis seeks to not only establish the extent of women’s participation in the French resistance but also explore their challenge to the established gender roles within the resistance. This thesis explores the extent of women’s resistance activities across World War II France through internal organizations, such as the French Communist Party and the French Resistance, and external organizations like the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action (BCRA), British Special Operatives Executive’s F (French) Section (SOE),...