Theses and Dissertations

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Open Access
A cinema of fatal attractions: viewing genre through borderline personality disorder
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Bylina, Lisabeth Ann, author; Diffrient, David S., advisor; Bradfield, Shelley-Jean, committee member; Thompson, Deborah, committee member
Genre study is often criticized for simply producing classificatory labels and focusing on a narrow group of films such as the Western and the musical. This thesis argues that the proper role of the critic is to move beyond such categorizing exercises and to bring relevance and renewed value to genre theories. In order to question the relatively rigid and canonical nature of film genre studies and the commonly assumed notion that one knows a genre when he or she sees it, this study looks at cinematic representations of borderline personality disorder (BPD). While work has been done on cinematic representations of mental illness, little research has focused on the portrayal of specific psychological disorders, particularly how such portrayals function generically. BPD was chosen for its high lifetime prevalence, which may be as high as 5.9 percent in the United States, as well as for its occurrence in feature-length motion pictures. Typically these films, including Fatal Attraction (1987) and Girl, Interrupted (1999), would be generically classified as dissimilar, but through this study a corpus of films portraying BPD is put forth as examples of the BPD genre. To accomplish this, this study follows Tom Gunning's assertion that the focus of analysis should not only be the corpus of films, but also the discourse surrounding those films. These external texts are referred to in this paper as paratexts, in keeping with Gérard Genette and Jonathan Grey's terminology. Therefore, the films' titles, title sequences, and posters were included in the analysis. The films were examined utilizing Rick Altman's semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to genre analysis. By viewing these films and their paratexts through a BPD genre lens, conventions and audience expectations characteristic of the BPD genre are explored. Like BPD, genre is recognized through the meeting of criteria, but not all instances meet all the same criteria or in the same way, and as such they need not relate to their genre in the same manner. Also, texts may be comorbid with other genres or exist in a continuum. Genre may be understood as functioning like BPD and its use in this study shows renewed application beyond traditional genre analysis.
Open Access
A dangerous message: the material effects of Enough
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2006) Richards, Joseph P., author; Holling, Michelle A., advisor; Bubar, Roe W., committee member; Dickinson, Greg, committee member
Domestic violence is a cultural epidemic in U.S. society. How we define, perceive, and treat domestic violence is a product of the material rhetorics about it. Since film is a prominent mode of rhetorical discourse, I examine how the issue of domestic violence is represented in the 2002 film Enough. I argue that the film presents a view of domestic violence that offers space for empowerment, but serves to potentially place real women in danger. I undertake a dual-methodological approach using a textual analysis of the film and a focus group discussion with female domestic violence professionals/providers to discern the negative material effects of Enough. In my concluding section, drawing from feedback from the focus group participants, I offer suggestions for improving portrayals of domestic violence that may lead to ending this problem.
Open Access
A is for audience: an examination of audience construction, focalization, and politicization in contemporary children's ABC books
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Campbell, Grant, author; Diffrient, David Scott, advisor; Griffin, Cindy, committee member; Coke, Pamela, committee member
This thesis explores the ways contemporary children's ABC books can politically shape or frame the way audiences interpret and conceptualize content within the books. Using the children's ABC books A is for Activist (2013) and America: A Patriotic Primer (2002), I examine how children's texts can construct audiences, create a unique site of focalization--known as a focalized dialogue--for those audiences, and utilize phenomenological metaphors to politically shape the focalized dialogues that occur between readers of the books. In doing so, contemporary children's ABC books can wield social and political power that can function to characterize contemporary understandings of cultural artifacts and even children themselves.
Open Access
A listening theory story: an analysis of key themes, traditions, and actors in a community of practice of international listening theory scholars, 1987-2021
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Shanks, Brandon, author; Parks, Elizabeth S., advisor; Williams, Elizabeth, committee member; Humphrey, Michael, committee member
In any field of research, specific theory drives discovery, inquiry, and production of knowledge. Looking at the field of listening research, listening theory can be seen to impact how scholars view results of their studies. Additionally, listening theory is summarized to be an unorganized and undefined field of listening research. To begin to remedy this disorganization, I aim to create both a broad outline of listening theory as well as a spark to ignite dialogue and discourse surrounding listening theory. To accomplish the goal of creating broad understanding of listening theory, I use a tried and true method of conveying information that has been used for centuries, I tell a story. Predominantly, I tell a story of listening theory located in the International Journal of Listening (IJL). This story is made up of genres (metatheoretical traditions), tropes (themes and topics), and main characters (authors). To understand these three aspects, I utilize a mixed method approach of both a qualitative thematic analysis and a descriptive quantitative semantic analysis to analyze a corpus of 42 IJL articles published from 1987-2021 related to listening theory. Finally, I use the story that is woven from the results as a jumping off point for future research and scholars to join the production and discussion of listening theory. In my thesis I conceptualize IJL as a community of practice, or a group of people that all pursue a similar goal. This goal is to create knowledge, discussion, and practical application of listening research. Each aspect of the story will indicate how the community of practice advances research. It will also reveal potentially where specific traditions might be more prominent than others. These traditions that I analyze come from the widely cited work of Craig (1999) who provides a metamodel for both understanding how different approaches to theory support and contradict each other. The primary goal of his metamodel is to create discourse surrounding the practices and methods of research surrounding communication theory. I adopt this metamodel to serve both those functions in my analysis of listening theory in the community of practice of IJL. I use the metamodel to describe which traditions are present within listening theory work, but also to serve as an encouragement for future research and continuation of discourse. To uncover themes in the story of listening theory, I utilize a semantic analysis as utilized by Arasaratnam and Doerfel (2005). Using the textual analysis software Wordstat conducts a frequency, cooccurrence, and topical analysis of all text in the 42 articles. This reveals themes surrounding the development of listening theory and research within the community of practice. Lastly, in combination of the two methods I draw out key moments and actors to indicate where scholars have perpetuated listening theory and the discourse surrounding its development. Understanding all these story elements (traditions, themes, actors) I construct a review of how listening theory has been established in IJL. Then, to fulfill the goals of creating a story of listening theory and continuation of the conversation, I tell a story of listening theory from 1987-2021 in the community of practice of IJL: in my own words.
Open Access
A queer perspective: gay themes in the film Interview with the Vampire
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Bendel, Jared A., author; Burgchardt, Carl R., advisor; Aoki, Eric, committee member; Sloane, Sarah, committee member
There are a growing number of mainstream films and television shows which include gay characters or same-sex families as central figures: A Single Man, The Kids Are Alright, Will & Grace, Mad Men, Two and a Half Men, and Modern Family. This thesis sets out to determine if the film Interview with the Vampire, which preceded the above named films and television shows by more than five years, is a cite of queer cinema that focuses on gay themes while proposing a same-sex family. In coupling Seymour Chatman's rhetorical theory of narrative in fiction - literature and film with Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin's theory of Queer Cinema, the study focuses on locating and citing specific instances where gay themes of identity and identification along with the theme of the same-sex family emerge. The study utilizes the novel Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice as a critical touchstone and draws from Roland Barthes' concept of "Rhetoric of the Image" to evaluate the strength of the themes found within the adapted film Interview with the Vampire. The research finds several examples of the re-presentation of individual gay lives and uncovers evidence of a cinematic representation of a same-sex family. The researcher concludes that while the film Interview with the Vampire is certainly an example of queer cinema, it also presents a same-sex family unit that may be the first of its kind.
Open Access
A reason to believe: a rhetorical analysis of Mormon missionary films
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Anderson, Sky L., author; Burgchardt, Carl, advisor; Aoki, Eric, committee member; Kiefer, Kathleen, committee member
In this analysis, I examine Mormon cinema and how it functions on a rhetorical level. I specifically focus on missionary films, or movies that are framed by LDS missionary narratives. Through an analysis of two LDS missionary films, namely Richard Dutcher's God's Army (2000) and Mitch Davis' The Other Side of Heaven (2001), I uncover two rhetorical approaches to fostering spirituality. In my first analysis, I argue that God's Army presents two pathways to spirituality: one which produces positive consequences for the characters, and the other which produces negative consequences. I call these pathways, respectively, ascending and descending spirituality, and I explore the rhetorical implications of this framing. In my second analysis, I contend that The Other Side of Heaven creates a rhetorical space wherein the audience may transform. Specifically, the film constructs a "Zion," or a heaven on earth, with three necessary components, which coincide perfectly with established LDS teachings: God, people, and place. These three elements invite the audience to accept that they are imperfect, yet they can improve if they so desire. Ultimately, by comparing my findings from both films, I argue that the films' rhetorical strategies are well constructed to potentially reinforce beliefs for Mormon audiences, and they also may invite non-Mormons to think more positively about LDS teachings.
Open Access
A rhetoric of blood: cinematically depicting the duel
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Fischer, Christopher J., author; Diffrient, David S., advisor; Burgchardt, Carl, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member
This thesis examines the duel as a pivotal narrative event in three case studies: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Barry Lyndon (1975), and The Duellists (1977). I begin by introducing the duel historically and rhetorically. I argue for its importance as a cornerstone of each narrative that lends it strength to stand. In my subsequent analysis, I break the duel into its parts: the insult and challenge, role of seconds, and, finally, the combat. Analysis of the insult and challenge offers insight into the structure of narrative equilibrium and the type of transformation at work, while also delivering keen visual metaphors for various states of narrative. Subsequently, I turn to the seconds of each film as rhetorical proxies. The seconds elaborate a unique deliberative and metaphorical rhetoric that argues for the acceptance of the narrative's form. Lastly, I examine the phenomenological implications of the combat as it frames the filmic body's interaction with a viewing subject, typically referred to as the audience. I argue that this relationship forms a consubstantial bond through identification of viewing subjects. In the end, I offer the duel as a substantive way of understanding the narratives of each film and the experience offered by each film.
Open Access
A socio-spatial rhetorical analysis of The ruins of Detroit
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Stricker, Sarah Teresa, author; Dickinson, Greg, advisor; Dunn, Thomas, committee member; MacDonald, Bradley, committee member
The Ruins of Detroit is a bound collection of recent photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre of decaying architecture and infrastructure in Detroit, Michigan. This thesis finds that the experience of reading The Ruins of Detroit constitutes the reader as a post-Fordist colonist, and in turn constitutes Detroit as a post-Fordist frontier. Informed by Foucauldian historical understanding and Edward Soja's argument for the foregrounding of critical spatial studies, I first discuss the history of Detroit to demonstrate how spatial practices in Detroit have influenced the enabling or disabling of human bodies in the city. These events are characterized within definitions of Fordism and post-Fordism. Secondly, I detail the relationship between ruins and the body within Western art history. I find that ruins in art echo human understandings of our bodies in relation to materials. Looking at art pieces as diverse as Andrea Mantegna's Saint Sebastian (1480) and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970), ruins prove to be places of dissection. Contemporary representations significantly merge the body with ruins, and ruins with the body. Thirdly, I point out symbols in the text that construct the reader as a post-Fordist colonist of Detroit. Using Richard Slotkin's critiques of the frontier myth as a model, I find that the interaction between reader and Ruins recycles the myth of the frontier in several ways. By acknowledging some of the failures of capitalist development, such as the prevalence of waste, the spaces within The Ruins critique the legitimacy of formerly organized institutions. Yet The Ruins simultaneously gives entitled access to resources within Detroit, encouraging adaptive use and re-use. The privilege and expressed availability produces an anxiety in the midst of the bodily presence of the indigenous population. This thesis enhances several perspectives for rhetorical studies. It argues that the frontier myth still holds rhetorical significance in the late capitalist era. The exploration serves as an example of a rhetorical analysis that accounts for the interrelatedness of subject and text. Within this understanding, it follows, and is used as a method in this study, that modes of production influence dwelling practices, a partly rhetorical action. Additionally, this thesis has political and philosophical implications concerning the nature of dwelling practices in the twenty-first century. For instance, this thesis suggests that the violence of imperialism continues to influence a post-Fordist era. In sum, this study seeks to infuse a rhetorical analysis with critical geography, inspired by Thomas Rickert, Jane Bennett, and Debra Hawhee, among others, who point out that rhetoric is intertwined with spatial and bodily practices of dwelling and an ecological relationship with materials.
Open Access
A uses and gratification study of public radio audiences
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1982) Bluebond, Scott D., author; Phillips, Dennis D., advisor; Bruner, Howard D., committee member; Pendell, Sue D., committee member
This thesis sought to find out why people listen to public radio. The uses and gratifications data gathering approach was implemented for public radio audiences. Questionnaires were sent out to 389 listener/contributors of public radio in northern Colorado. KCSU-FM in Fort Collins and KUNC-FM in Greeley agreed to provide such lists of listener/contributors. One hundred ninety-two completed questionnaires were returned and provided the sample base for the study. The respondents indicated they used public radio primarily for its news, its special programming, and/or because it is entertaining. Her/his least likely reasons for using public radio are for diversion and/or to transmit culture from one generation to the next. The remaining uses and gratifications categories included in the study indicate moderate reasons for using public radio. Various limitations of the study possibly tempered the results. These included the sample used and the method used to analyze the data. Conducting the research necessary for completion of this study made evident the fact that more research needs to be done to improve the uses and gratifications approach to audience analysis. The identification of the uses and non-uses of public radio have helped lay a foundation for future research in this area.
Open Access
A vision of ourselves: regional rhetoric's impact upon public policy relating to individuals experiencing homelessness
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Anderson, Garrison Michael, author; Dunn, Thomas, advisor; Prasch, Allison, committee member; Scott, Ryan, committee member
Public policy at all levels, local, state, and national, has a profound, yet seldom, recognized impact upon the lives of citizens unless the policy directly impacts them. In the following thesis, I explore the discourse and debate that a local-level public policy can have upon the construction of space, impact upon already marginalized populations, and the use of regional identity to justify said policy. More specifically, I explore the consideration of a "appropriate-use of public space ordinance" in a mid-sized city, Fort Collins, Colorado. I argue that visions of Fort Collins regional identity are used to justify certain aspects of the ordinance that criminalize individuals experiencing homelessness. In my analysis, I make use of theories of communication and space including critical regionalism, juxtaposition, and spatial trajectories. In application of these theories to understand my text I am performing an analysis of critical rhetoric to reveal potential power struggles at play and the possibility for change.
Open Access
A woman's place is in the (digital) resistance: politics and power in online communitie
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Phipps, E. Brooke, author; Prasch, Allison, advisor; Anderson, Karrin Vasby, committee member; Martey, Rosa, committee member
The 2017 Women's March on Washington marked a significant moment in contemporary U.S. political history as hundreds of thousands of women gathered on the National Mall in an expression of embodied dissent. Key women's movement groups, Pantsuit Nation and the Pussyhat Project, operated as powerful collectives in the time leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the subsequent 2017 Women's March. Their transition from sites of rhetorical secrecy to embracing the strategic publicity of the 2017 Women's March illuminates how ego-function, reversed symbolism, and consciousness raising impact social movements in our digital age. To understand how social movement groups navigate rhetorical secrecy and strategic publicity, this thesis explores how the ego-functional responses of Pantsuit Nation and the Pussyhat Project led to the deployment of specific rhetorical tactics to cultivate collective identities. I argue that the transitionary process from rhetorical secrecy to rhetorical publicity allows collectives to legitimate and orient themselves as key political actors. This thesis also calls scholars to mindfully attend to the ramifications digital technologies have on our understandings of rhetorical strategies and structures, particularly as they pertain to contemporary social movements.
Open Access
An indie hype cycle built for two: a case study of the Pitchfork album reviews of Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Ernst, Samuel R., author; Lupo, Jonathan, advisor; Diffrient, David Scott, committee member; Thompson, Deborah, committee member
This thesis investigates the whims of critical reception in the indie rock world and its effects upon the hype cycle. I define the indie hype cycle as a naturalized communicative process governing the flow of critical favor within the indie music community and identify its four primary phases as entrance on to the scene, hype generation, backlash, and obscurity/visibility. To understand the interaction between the hype cycle and critical reception, the project focuses on Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (CYHSY) as two bands emblematic of the critical divergence possible after initial success. It compares the reviews of the bands' debut and sophomore albums by Pitchfork, a prominent indie music website, and identifies genre, elitism, and authenticity as key constructs in the way the site frames the bands as indie, and thus, worthy of praise. I argue that an economy of authenticity--featuring emotional, economic, and talent-based forms--affects the indie hype cycle in a variety of ways. The thesis concludes that the mechanics of indie music criticism have extensive influence upon the indie hype cycle. The initial framing of band authenticity that accompanies debut releases can have years-long ramifications on the way that band is received and covered in the indie press. To inform its analysis, the thesis draws upon a wide variety of scholars including Ryan Hibbet, Michael Albrecht, and Devon Powers, along with commentators from the popular music press including Carl Wilson and Nitsuh Abebe.
Open Access
Anxieties and artificial women: disassembling the pop culture gynoid
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Fabian, Carly, author; Gibson, Katie L., advisor; Hughes, Kit, committee member; Quynn, Kristina, committee member
This thesis analyzes the cultural meanings of the feminine-presenting robot, or gynoid, in three popular sci-fi texts: The Stepford Wives (1975), Ex Machina (2013), and Westworld (2017). Centralizing a critical feminist rhetorical approach, this thesis outlines the symbolic meaning of gynoids as representing cultural anxieties about women and technology historically and in each case study. This thesis draws from rhetorical analyses of media, sci-fi studies, and previously articulated meanings of the gynoid in order to discern how each text interacts with the gendered and technological concerns it presents. The author assesses how the text equips—or fails to equip—the public audience with motives for addressing those concerns. Prior to analysis, each chapter synthesizes popular and scholarly criticisms of the film or series and interacts with their temporal contexts. Each chapter unearths a unique interaction with the meanings of gynoid: The Stepford Wives performs necrophilic fetishism to alleviate anxieties about the Women's Liberation Movement; Ex Machina redirects technological anxieties towards the surveilling practices of tech industries, simultaneously punishing exploitive masculine fantasies; Westworld utilizes fantasies and anxieties cyclically in order to maximize its serial potential and appeal to impulses of its viewership, ultimately prescribing a rhetorical placebo. The conclusion synthesizes each chapter topically and ruminates on real-world implications. Overall, this thesis urges critical attention toward the gynoids' role in oppressive hierarchies onscreen and in reality.
Open Access
"Are you feeling what I'm feeling?": an analysis of communication and emotional work of Korean social workers
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Kim, Min Kyung, author; Williams, Elizabeth A., advisor; Long, Ziyu, committee member; Timpson, William, committee member
This study investigates how Korean social workers experience and communicate emotional work in their organizational experience. Using a qualitative interview approach, I explore the emotional experiences of Korean social workers. Korean social workers experience wide array of different types of emotional work, however, expresses them implicitly and indirectly due to contemplative and considerate communication tactics in order to save others’ face and avoid burdening others with their emotions. Furthermore, the emotional work experience leads Korean social workers to develop a sense of pride, responsibility, and compassion toward their clients which were not inherent from the beginning of their professional experience due to lack of autonomy when choosing their profession. Korean social workers also communicate their emotional work through in-group association, strongly relying on connections through their alma mater, others who are their age, their position, and their tenure in the organization. However, a notable challenge to the original theory of emotional work is that for Korean social workers they also experience emotional labor and emotional dissonance due to organizational constraints that generate a clash of inner feeling with what organizations expect them to present. The study provides evidence of how different cultural expectations influence emotional work experiences as well as the communication of emotion. The findings not only support the different cultural norms and constraints that influence Korean social workers’ emotional work but also contribute to further the understanding of the role of organizations in providing proper outlets for emotional work experiences.
Open Access
Barstool consequences: college students' risk perceptions when interacting with Barstool Sports' modeling of the college experience through Instagram
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Coviello, Jenna, author; Faw, Meara, advisor; Marx, Nicholas, committee member; Barone, Ryan, committee member
This study focuses on how college students engage with the various Instagram accounts run by Barstool Sports (e.g., @chicks, @barstoolsports, @5thyear, and college-affiliated Barstool Instagrams) and how engagement influences their perceptions of risk and risky behavior decision-making. Through this study, I review the literature surrounding Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and risk communication. I also give an overview of Barstool Sports and how they present college students in the previously mentioned Instagram accounts. I looked to answer two research questions: RQ1: How does Barstool's affiliated Instagram accounts showcasing college-student-produced videos model destructive and risky behaviors? RQ2: How do Barstool Sports' Instagram accounts influence college-aged consumers' perceptions of risk and decision making in the college experience? I conducted fifteen interviews with recent college graduates of universities who have previously consumed and/or currently consume media with Barstool Sports' affiliation. My goal was to understand how participants' consumption of this media specifically affects their cognitive development, risk perceptions, and, ultimately, the culture of their college institution. I coded the interviews through thematic analysis and discovered three, key themes in RQ1: Glorifying college stereotypes as the "norm," imitation and "one upping" to be featured, and college life as opportunity for Barstool content causes a need to be vigilant of one's actions. Five, key themes were uncovered in RQ2: Being featured on Barstool and consuming Barstool for "coolness," popularity, and social clout; dissonance from personal morals; cringy and risky images provide entertainment, but to a certain extent; recognition of the unexpected (and sometimes expected) negatives of Barstool features and a student's selective disengagement and its association to a college's mission and conduct expectation. Because college is a time when students run the risk of developing negative habits that can damage their academic standing, negatively impact their health, and result in struggles with university student conduct codes, this research can provide clarity on why students choose to partake in the behaviors and actions like those portrayed on these Instagram accounts.
Open Access
Beautiful transgressions: subversion and visibility in YouTube's beauty community
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Marshall-McKelvey, Kira, author; Elkins, Evan, advisor; Hughes, Kit, committee member; Anderson, Karrin, committee member; Arthur, Tori, committee member
YouTube influencers must navigate the platform's capricious algorithm in order to achieve and maintain visibility online. The attention economy necessitates visibility labor for YouTubers to succeed in digital content creation. In particular, YouTubers must consider advertiser guidelines so that their content gets monetized (and subsequently rendered more visible). Content on YouTube that achieves high visibility tends to reinforce hegemonic logics of self-branding and gender. The beauty community, which produces feminized cultural outputs, is a highly commercial space on YouTube that rewards capitalist-affirming logics of gender and women's empowerment. Working in conversation with scholarship that explores the resistive possibilities of "LeftTube" (leftist YouTube), I highlight subversive tactics that women beauty gurus use without sacrificing their visibility online. Threading in discourse of play and fun, I argue that women beauty gurus can subvert postfeminist, neoliberal norms that discipline and confine gender performance. I first identify the normative genre conventions of the contemporary YouTube beauty community. Then I argue that RawBeautyKristi challenges norms of new momism and the "always on" digital entrepreneur by performing negative affect as a symptom of alienation, decentering western and masculine temporal structures, and complicating aesthetic labor in relation to neoliberal motherhood. Next, I argue that Nappyheadedjojoba performs platform-specific-intimacy to activate an ostensibly apolitical audience. Specifically, on YouTube, her incongruous references to makeup relieve tension, she utilizes beauty-specific terminology to familiarize her politics, she engages respectability politics, and she incorporates self-promotion as relational labor. On Patreon, she positions audience support as promoting creative liberty, she employs self-disclosure in relation to her politics, and she engages ratchetry as resistance. These strategies cultivate a sort of political authenticity. Lastly, Jenna Marbles's playful performance of failure to be part of YouTube's beauty community lluminates the inaccessibility of a seemingly open, democratizing space. By positioning herself as a YouTube viewer who unsuccessfully attempts tutorials, framing excess in contrast to the quest for natural beauty, exaggerating her status as an aging 32-33 year old lady, and flouting YouTube's self-branding conventions, Mourey reveals an attention economy in the beauty community that privileges postfeminist norms of age, beauty, and femininity. Ultimately, my dissertation aims to provide those in precarious positions with tactics to challenge dominant structures in ways that are invisible to those in power.
Open Access
Black like it never left: Black women and representation in contemporary broadcast television
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Taylor, Kirstin, author; Marx, Nick, advisor; Chung, Hye Seung, committee member; Arthur, Tori, committee member
It is imperative that we recognize that broadcast television is not dead, despite echoing declarations to the contrary, and that it can be a viable platform for presenting Black-led programs telling complex stories. In this project, I argue that current broadcast television shows are harnessing their industrial position and staple generic conventions to reorient depictions of Blackness on broadcast to more complexly and resonantly reflect lived Black experiences. It seems that these stories are being told not just on niche or fringe platforms catering to Black audiences, but also on long established and popular broadcast channels. This project is a limited survey of Black female representation on broadcast television comprised of three case studies: Fox's emergency procedural 9-1-1, The CW's HBCU set drama All American: Homecoming, and ABC's sitcom Abbott Elementary. Guiding this survey is a set of critical questions: First, how do these cases represent Black womanhood? Second, what are the industrial and creative contexts of these cases and how do they influence the texts? How do their creators, showrunners, writers, and actors work within the broadcast parameters and appropriate traditional conventions to display different iterations of Blackness? Finally, what new cultural meanings, if any, are the resulting representations generating?
Open Access
Black Lives Matter as "social movement": theorizing the materiality of movement of the social
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Clark, Jordin, author; Dunn, Thomas, advisor; Dickinson, Greg, committee member; Cespedes, Karina, committee member
Utilizing Michael Calvin McGee's notion of social movement as a set of meanings that move the social, this thesis builds upon and adjusts the discursive focus of McGee's rhetorical theory of social movement to include materiality, particularly material movement as influential in changing the social. To do so, I build upon theories of sociality, space, and movement to present movement and motion as material texts that hold rhetorical power to inflect and produce our cultural and social understandings of our sociality. Analyzing the Black Lives Matter's Black Friday protest at the Magnificent Mile in Chicago in 2015, this thesis argues that protests—in their material movements—remake public spaces and the societal, spatial, and individual social body to carve out an imaginary and thus sociality in which Black lives matter. The aptly named Black Lives Matter movement is a social movement that makes visible systemic racism that disciplines, endangers, and marginalizes Black lives, with the goal to reimagine a world where Black people are free to exist and live—where Black lives matter. Our current social and spatial imaginary constructs the Black body as a subject of exclusion and allows whiteness to ignore and disregard that Black lives matter. However, during the Black Friday protest at the Magnificent Mile in Chicago in 2015, as this thesis argues, the protesters disrupted the embodied and spatial rhythms of the Magnificent Mile to open a fissure within the shopper's social/spatial imaginary wherein the protesters compelled them to recognize Black lives while urging them to accede that they matter.
Open Access
Broadening the lens: a pilot study of student cognitive flexibility and intercultural sensitivity in short-term study abroad experiences
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Gantt, Jessica, author; Aoki, Eric, advisor; Williams, Elizabeth, committee member; Macdonald, Bradley, committee member
Study abroad has emerged as an essential element in many U.S. students' college careers, as many degree programs have implemented study abroad as a degree requirement and globalization has fostered a flourishing globalized economy and society. Over half of these students are choosing to go abroad for short-term programs of six weeks or less, and thus this pilot study considered the effects short programs can have on participants. The study included a study abroad participant group who went abroad for one month or less and a control group of students who did not go abroad. The study utilized a pre-posttest design, and participants in both groups were sent online surveys before and after the one month study period. The study utilized Martin and Rubin's (1995) Cognitive Flexibility Scale and Chen and Starosta's (2000) Intercultural Sensitivity Scale to measure changes in participant intercultural personhood, to which both cognitive flexibility and intercultural sensitivity contribute. The study also used open-ended questions in the posttest to gather study abroad participant narratives and add qualitative depth to the findings. The data analysis found the study abroad students did exhibit an increase in cognitive flexibility after their trips abroad (M = 5.00, SD = 0.65) when compared with the longitudinal data for control group participants who stayed in country (M = 4.72, SD = 0.32); however, due to the size of the small pilot study, these findings were not statistically significant: F (1, 1) = 0.867, p > .05. The study encountered an unexpected trend when study abroad students exhibited lower intercultural sensitivity after their trips (M = 3.55, SD = 0.54) than control group students who stayed in country (M = 4.00, SD = 0.45), though also not a statistically significant finding: F (1, 1) = 1.14, p > .05. Interestingly, a data analysis considering changes in cognitive flexibility when controlling for second language fluency did approach significance: F (1, 1) = 13.262, p = .068. The difference in level of cognitive flexibility in study abroad participants (M = 4.92, SD = 0.65) and control group participants (M = 4.80, SD = 0.32) when controlling for second language fluency also continued to trend in the expected direction. While I provide insight into potential explanations for the three trends, the findings and conclusions from this pilot study are used to posit questions and ideas for future research. The findings of this pilot study not only contribute holistically to the field of study abroad research, but can also be applied to future short-term study abroad research and even to the actual design of study abroad program support structures.
Open Access
Building a Mile High City: theorizing rhetorical infrastructures in Denver's development
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Clark, Jordin, author; Dickinson, Greg, advisor; Dunn, Tom, committee member; Gibson, Katie, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
This dissertation utilizes multi-methodological practices to showcase rhetoric's role in directing, arranging, and negotiating urban development projects to sculpt a particular, and particularly power-laden urban identity. To this end, I theorize rhetoric as an influential urban infrastructure that guides how people construct and enact the built environment, everyday embodied practices, and community identity. Defined as the symbolic and material claims in and to urban spaces, rhetorical infrastructures, I contend, direct, arrange, and negotiate space's multiple trajectories into a practiced, everyday urban identity. Specifically, I theorize memory, imagination, and vernacular as rhetorical infrastructures through three different case studies across Denver's development. My first case study examines memory as a rhetorical infrastructure in Denver's first historic district, Larimer Square. Through spatial stories of frontier grit and exploration, I argue that Larimer Square directs Denver's trajectories toward white exceptionalism and unfettered expansion. My second case study analyzes the process of development through the rhetorical infrastructure of imagination in North Denver's ongoing project to redevelop the National Western Center and the surrounding neighborhoods of Globeville, Elyria-Swansea. Through mental mapping interviews, archival research, and spatial criticism, I analyze when and how varying spatial imaginaries collide to arrange the space's openness to multiple histories into place-making strategies that usher Denver into a global, yet homogenized, future. In the final case study, I pivot to vernacular infrastructures in a section 8 housing district in Denver, Sun Valley. Using photovoice methodology, this chapter showcases care, play, and growth as bottom-up, repair-oriented practices that (re)build community networks and relationalities during Denver's COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. Examining Denver's development across space and time, I argue that, through the rhetorical infrastructures of memory, imagination, and vernacular, Denverites and city officials sculpt an urban identity of white exceptionalism and unfettered expansion. As open and multiplicitous, however, these spaces come to be negotiated through everyday practices that, if only momentarily, reroute infrastructures towards roots and community care.