This thesis is a short story collection revolving around the central theme of pop culture. The first story, "After the Win," follows the character Cecil, whose wife Rhonda has recently won The Great British Bake Off. Trouble ensues in Cecil and Rhonda's family as Rhonda starts to focus on her post-Bake Off fame instead of her relationships with her husband and daughter. "Making Friends with a Monster" is about Rick, a half-human, half-lake monster living on the shores of Bear Lake. Because of his existence in an in-between place between man and monster, Rick struggles to find companionship in life. That is, until Anna (AKA the Loch Ness Monster) arrives in his lake and presents him with an enticing offer: to return with her to Loch Ness. The story culminates in Rick's decision. The next story, "The Fourth Wall," is the story of Max and Abby, who are close to getting engaged. Max confronts Abby about her family, who she has never told him much about. Finally, she agrees to take him for a visit to meet her parents. As soon as Max arrives, it becomes apparent that Abby's parents believe they are Ricky and Lucy from the beloved sitcom I Love Lucy, and Max is soon sucked in to the illusion. The last story in the collection is "Feelin' Groovy in Point Pleasant, West Virginia,"which is the tale of a Simon and Garfunkel tribute band that encounters the legendary Mothman monster in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, who happens to be an avid Simon and Garfunkel fan.

This thesis is a short story collection revolving around the central theme of pop culture. The first story, "After the Win," follows the character Cecil, whose wife Rhonda has recently won The Great British Bake Off. Trouble ensues in Cecil and Rhonda's family as Rhonda starts to focus on her post-Bake Off fame instead of her relationships with her husband and daughter. "Making Friends with a Monster" is about Rick, a half-human, half-lake monster living on the shores of Bear Lake. Because of his existence in an in-between place between man and monster, Rick struggles to find companionship in life. That is, until Anna (AKA the Loch Ness Monster) arrives in his lake and presents him with an enticing offer: to return with her to Loch Ness. The story culminates in Rick's decision. The next story, "The Fourth Wall," is the story of Max and Abby, who are close to getting engaged. Max confronts Abby about her family, who she has never told him much about. Finally, she agrees to take him for a visit to meet her parents. As soon as Max arrives, it becomes apparent that Abby's parents believe they are Ricky and Lucy from the beloved sitcom I Love Lucy, and Max is soon sucked in to the illusion. The last story in the collection is "Feelin' Groovy in Point Pleasant, West Virginia,"which is the tale of a Simon and Garfunkel tribute band that encounters the legendary Mothman monster in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, who happens to be an avid Simon and Garfunkel fan.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the pop culture phenomenon of Twilight. Using a qualitative method of grounded theory, meanings and constructs were developed from the data. Data was gathered at three events centered around the release of the Twilight the film adaptation, and the release of the fourth and final book in the Twilight saga. A survey was administered to willing participants. After the surveys were gathered they were read and then coded. After the coding process a follow up interview was conducted with ten nominated and willing Twilight fans. The results had theoretical roots in uses and gratifications theory as well as parasocial theory.

This dissertation traces the history of punk rock and the birth and progression of the “punk ethos,” the principles and stylistic choices that characterized punk as a subculture and lifestyle of which music was a part. It argues that the punk ethos emerged as a result of two interrelated tensions within punk – the first between an inclusive vision of punk that welcomed new people and an exclusive vision that aimed, for various reasons, to limit the genre’s appeal to a select few. The second tension that defined the punk ethos related to the question of whether punk would be an ironic, satire-laden artistic movement or a sincere social movement with genuine goals. The early New York punk ethos expressed a mostly apolitical commitment to artistic freedom. It reveled in humor and sarcasm, and some punks dabbled in ironic usage of bigoted and fascistic language and symbolism. In the eighties, influential magazine editor Tim Yohannan hoped to convert punk into a left-wing political mass movement. He used his platform and resources to promote bands that adhered to his preferred message and aesthetic. His tactics produced a backlash in the nineties, as punk artists – many of whom had been friends of Yohannan’s – saw mainstream success. Fearing such exposure would dilute the genre’s political power, Yohannan turned against some of his friends. Yohannan’s influence waned, and punk’s nineties success drew new battle lines between supporters of an inclusive punk ethos seeking to expand punk’s audience and supporters of an exclusionary punk ethos that hoped to narrow punk’s appeal by alienating potential fans with racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Representative of the latter was Vice magazine, whose cofounder, Gavin McInnes, maintained for years that his bigoted statements were ironic, before revealing the sincerity of his views by founding the neo-fascist organization the Proud Boys in 2016. The trajectory of punk over the past five decades reveals much about irony and its risks in American society at large.

My thesis compares classic mythology of cultures like ancient Greece to the mythology that has risen from the popular culture of contemporary western civilizations like America. While there are some differences, the two use the same archetypes that humanity has used for generations. In my work I use sculpture and photography to show their similarities and differences in form and story.

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Blundered by the Borrower attempts to illustrate the potential loneliness and anxiety that is experienced by the individual, amidst the contemporary and panicked social climate, domestically and globally--using the mediated jetsam of everyday life, violent entertainment and the disarming characteristics of cartoons to better understand and possibly illuminate a chronic lack of empathy in American society and popular culture.

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The center of this thesis proposal is a translation of the first book of AUGUST Software’s Eustia of the Tarnished Wings 穢翌のユースティア, a 2011 dark fantasy visual novel. As visual novels are practically unknown in English or Japanese academic writing, this thesis will provide an introduction to the medium’s history, as well as common display and organizational formats of the medium; a literary overview of Eustia of the Tarnished Wings and its characters and themes of choice and sacrifice; and a discussion of translation methodology and goals pursued in the accompanying excerpts. The translation presented consists of selected excerpts from the Prologue of Eustia of the Tarnished Wings, introducing the main characters, the floating city-state of Novus Aether, and the uneasy social climate of the city. Presented scenes are selected on the basis of plot or thematic relevance or translational interest, as well as scenes that are necessary to contextualize plot or character developments discussed in the critical introduction. This thesis will serve as an introduction to a developing medium that has been overlooked by most academics in the field of Japanese popular culture, as well as a look at the utilization of choice mechanics and branching story structure to In addition, it will present a personal methodology of and approach to translation as related to Eustia’s many and varied characters, social strata and situations, and maintaining individual and consistent voices for different characters and a first-person narrator in fiction.

This master thesis deals with the phenomenon of Westernization of pop culture in mainland China on the example of the Chinese adapted version of the Talent Show China's Got Talent. (CHGT) In its theoretical part it outlines the overall globalizing and Westernizing tendencies and sets a theoretical framework of the main terminology of media studies. The research goal of the thesis was to analyze the audience reception of CHGT in China and their ideas and views on pop culture The research goal is included in the broader context of cultural imperialism theories and the specifics of talent and reality shows are elaborated. Furthermore a historical overview of the evolution of pop culture in mainland China is provided. In the practical part, the applied methodological approaches and their potential strengths and weaknesses are described. A basic thematic analysis of certain selected social media like Weibo, QQ and Baidu was conducted. The two versions of the adapted Got Talent format were compared as far as the formal features are concerned, the British version of Britain's Got Talent and the Chinese adaptation China's Got Talent. Moreover qualitative in-depth interviews with Chinese respondents in the PRC and the UK were performed. The group in the UK served as a control group for comparison and the...