Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2006. / Document formatted into pages; contains v, 152 p. Includes bibliographical references.

As popular culture has an increasing presence in America, so do its various sub-cultures. One of such sub-cultures is the world of comic book fans known as cosplayers. Cosplayers dress-up and emulate characters at comic book conventions throughout the United States and the world—a practice known as cosplay, also described as costume-play. Despite the growing popularity of cosplay, little is known about this population. In this research, I set out to answer the following research question: why are women choosing to dress-up and embody these characters (the Gotham City Sirens) when they are often viewed as oversexualized. In order to answer my research question, I focused on women who chose to cosplay characters from the Gotham City Sirens – Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy – who are frequently depicted in “glamorized” or hypersexualized illustrations. My data collection included participant observation, literature review, and semi-structured interviews. Recruiting participants from local Central Florida comic book conventions, I conducted 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the women cosplayers about their perspectives on the characters and their cosplays. My findings derived from the analysis of the interview narratives identified three emerging dominant themes – sexuality, body image, and personal identity. Based on this research, there is a concluding realization that empowerment and self-reflection are prevalent in women cosplayers. These are important findings because they are essential to the understanding of how gender identity is perceived in cosplay. When cosplayers connect with their characters on a personal level, often empowerment and self-reflection are the outcomes; due to the connection they foster with the character for the sake of performance.

Founded as Educational Comics in 1944 and rebranding itself as Entertaining Comics a few years later, EC Comics would publish several comic book titles, such as Tales from the Crypt, and the magazine, Mad. While the success of these publications can be measured by a legacy of directors, writers, comedians, and others in the entertainment industry who describe EC's properties as an early inspiration for them, the company itself cannot be seen as equally successful in the business world. Though its publications have left permanent fingerprints on American popular culture, the company represents an interesting example of a company that never became 'big.' In short, EC provides an interesting contrast to standard narratives about entertainment companies and properties. With scholarship in this field typically analyzing how a company started off small and grew into a larger corporation, EC is an example of a company that started small and remained small as a subsidiary of a larger corporation. In addition to this dissertation functioning as a critical corporate biography of EC's evolution, it also examines how U.S. entertainment has changed as mass audiences have become increasingly fractured as new forms of entertainment technologies have emerged. Overall, this dissertation aims to show how standard humanities approaches to analyzing popular culture can be augmented by also investigating the business practices and work cultures that shaped an entertainment property.

Denna uppsats undersöker superhjältefilmers syn på rättskipning, lag och rätt och därigenom representation av relationen mellan legalitet, legitimitet och etik. De två superhjältefilmerna jag utgår från är Batman v Superman och Captain America: Civil War. Båda filmerna är väldigt lika varandra, till exempel genom att båda har uttryck för krig och att slåss mot varandra i filmtitlar. Metoden som har använts i uppsatsen är en tematisk analys av dialogerna i båda filmerna. Dialogerna som tagits upp i uppsatsen handlar om brott, rättvisa och ansvar. Det finns intressanta aspekter på rättvisa som också redovisas genom karaktärerna runt om hjälten också. Sådana karaktärer kan vara journalister, författare, flickvänner, betjänter, till och med skurkar. Alla dessa karaktärer har var sin åsikt om hur hjälten ska handla och det är slående hur de skapar en diskussion som visar hur komplexa filmerna gör frågorna som tas upp.

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At just under thirty years the serious academic study of American comic books is relatively young. Over the course of three decades most historians familiar with the medium have recognized that American comics, since becoming a mass-cultural product in 1939, have matured beyond their humble beginnings as a monthly publication for children. However, historians are not yet in agreement as to when the medium became mature. This thesis proposes that the medium’s maturity was cemented between 1985 and 2000, a much later point in time than existing texts postulate. The project involves the analysis of how an American mass medium, in this case the comic book, matured in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The goal is to show the interconnected relationships and factors that facilitated the maturation of the American sequential art, specifically a focus on a group of British writers working at DC Comics and Vertigo, an alternative imprint under the financial control of DC. The project consulted the major works of British comic scriptwriters, Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, and Garth Ennis. These works include Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Shade: the Changing Man, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Animal Man, Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Preacher and several other important works. Following a chronological organization, the work tracks major changes taking place in the American comic book industry in the commercial, corporate, and creative sectors to show the processes through which the medium matured in this time period. This is accomplished by combining textual analysis of the comics with industry specific records and a focus on major cultural shifts in US society and culture

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