“From Brecht to Butler: An Analysis of Dirty Grrrls” is a production centered thesis focusing on the image of the mudflap girl. The study examines the graduate production Dirty Grrrls as a form of praxis intersecting the mudflap girl, the theory of gender performativity, and Brechtian methodology. As a common yet unexplored symbol of hypersexual visual culture in U.S. American society, the mudflap girl acts as a relevant subject matter for both the performance and written portion of the study. Through the production, mudflap girl materializes at the meeting point of the terms performance and performativity. The written portion of this project examines this intersection and discusses the productive cultural work accomplished on the page and on the stage via live embodiment of performativity.

This dissertation examines the interplay between gender ideology, women's actions, and automotive technology in the United States from the beginning of the automotive era through the 1920's. Looking at cultural ideology as a strong yet fragmented and malleable historical force, I have analyzed the effect of popular conceptions of masculinity and femininity on the design, marketing, and use of automobiles. At the same time, I have attempted to show how motorcars, often employed as vehicles of social ideals, promoted some reinterpretation of men's and women's proper roles and places. The auto indeed served as a focus for discourse about the contingent relation between social and political emancipation. While some observers expected the automobile to liberate women from domesticity and subordination, others insisted on the congruence between automobility and domestic life. Though some women would use cars as tools of social or political nonconformity, the auto ultimately transformed and extended women's spatial and temporal province, while preserving the home as the ideal hub of women's activities. Still, the car culture revision of gender ideology had profound consequences for the way the private family car would emerge as a primary transportation mode, facilitating new manners and morals, new commercial and political possibilities, and a revolution in urban development.

The unexpected comparison of a Supreme Court Justice with a popular culture icon demonstrates how politics and popular culture become entwined in the contemporary context; moreover, network culture provides a conduit for vernacular discourse about politics, which circulates in the style of popular culture. Through analysis of images of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as created, shared, and circulated in network culture, this project explores the alternative levels of discourse generated in network culture, examines the ways the public represents politics, and explains the ability of political subjects to affect meaning. The aim of this project is to document a conjunctural moment; as such, analysis of the images in aggregate provides a foundation to raise questions about how American political culture is manifested, attended to, and maintained through network culture and the parlance of popular culture. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Filmography : leaves 187-188. Vita. Advisor : Philip Rosen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-193).

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This dissertation investigates the development of mass communication research in the United States in the years between 1940 and 1972. Central to that investigation is the career of Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist whose interventions into debates about the effects of mass communication in the 1950s have remained largely overlooked in received histories of the discipline. By focussing on Wertham's contribution to the development of communications research a number of submerged tendencies are illuminated. A context for the development of the media effects research paradigm is suggested in the first three chapters, each of which highlights a different element which structured postwar communication research. The importance of elitist critiques of mass culture which dominated aesthetic discussions throughout the first half of the twentieth-century are assessed as a foundational factor in the development of communication research paradigms. Postwar concerns about the role of group-mindedness and collectivization are seen to contribute to a conservative political climate which shaped the development of the discipline. Differences between psychoanalysis and behavioral psychology are examined in order to demonstrate the ways in which communication research was consolidated around quantitative and scientistic methodologies. The remaining chapters present two specific case studies of media effects research. Wertham's 1954 anti-comics book, Seduction of the Innocent, is examined in detail in order to illustrate an approach to the study of the mass media that was not pursued by communications researchers. The development of a conservative and individualistic media effects paradigm stemming from research on the impact of television on children is presented as the culmination of postwar tendencies in communication studies. This dissertation argues that because the study of mass communication has been largely defined in the United States through reference to research into me

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Iowa, 1999. / Supervisor: MacCann, Donnarae. Title-page, preliminaries, Certificate of approval, Table of contents, text and appendices issued in paper (ii, 17 leaves, bound ; 28 cm.). Includes bibliographical references. Also issued on CD-ROM (46 files, 3.29 megabytes).

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the themes and values represented in lyrics of progressive country music are significantly different from those of traditional country music. Content analytical techniques were used to determine, first, themes and, second, attitudes reflected in those themes in each type of song. The chi square test of independence was u-ilized, and a difference significant to the .05 level was found between themes and attitudes of lyrics in the two song types.

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This study argues that the interfaith symbolism present in the works of American author Jean Toomer undermines dominant Christian justifications for racism in the United States. It also discusses the ways in which Toomer's interfaith symbolism promotes the establishment of a race Toomer called the "American" race, a group of interracial, interreligious people whom Toomer hoped would change the way race was viewed in the United States. The multireligious references in Toomer's works challenge constricted definitions of both religion and race by highlighting interchangeable religious ideals from several world religions. / by Laura Gayle Fallon. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.