Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: William H. Goetzmann. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

This dissertation explores the development of commercial entertainments and film exhibition in the urban South around the turn of the last century through the growth and decline of Jake Wells Enterprises. A former professional baseball player, Wells invested in a wide variety of public amusements, with the core of his early business centered on establishing and organizing a string of vaudeville, popularly priced, and legitimate theaters throughout the largest cities in the region, a network he later transitioned to showing exclusively motion pictures. A thorough analysis of period newspapers, trade journals, and some business records covering Wells’ career provides much-needed evidence for film and cultural historians wishing to understand the genesis and evolution of public amusements in the region, and its negotiation of traditional social and cultural institutions. In the 1890s, Wells played and managed several professional baseball teams in the South. The sport educated players and spectators alike to both the values and creed of New South progress, and to rising tensions confronting the intersection of modern and traditional forms of culture. Using his experiences and contacts gained in baseball, Wells helped foster a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation required for the progress of media industries in the region, establishing social networks of knowledge and improving distribution flows of entertainment. The dissertation explores how race and the genteel emerged as regional characteristics most influential to the success of this conversion in many urban areas. Protestants and evangelical culture served as the bulkhead supporting opposition to new amusements. Wells’ expansion plans and violations of Sabbath day laws evoked a “spatial” battle between commercialism and religion where political, social, and cultural power drawn from place and identity were challenged and reconfigured. Another chapter explores the exhibition and reception of early Civil War films in the region. Wells and other exhibitors were influential in their production and circulation nationwide, and positioned cinema as an alternative shrine to commemorate the Lost Cause in many communities. The last chapter shows how Wells failed to meet local demands and consumer desires in competition with the rise of national chain theaters and Hollywood’s vertical integration.

In 2001, after more than sixty years of independence, India came to be coined into the acronym, BRIC, recognizing India for her emerging economic development status. Liberalization of India¡¦s economy since 1991 from stringent state control has resulted in the opening up its markets to world participation in the form of lowered trade barriers, and invitation of foreign direct investments. Such changes in the economy have stirred up both external and internal imaginations of a globalized India no longer focused exclusively on her films, television, and literatures, but as an intricately woven entity of conglomerate spheres involving economics, demographics, histories, political science, and so on. This is to inspect the composites of each arena through historical surveys and position each arena¡¦s globality with their respective locality to suggest what they produced for the world, in addition to how globalization produced them. In doing so, the popular culture of the Indian cinema(s) and the Indian television are analyzed as dialogues between Indian nation state and the global rest, striving to differ from the unidirectional discourse of cultural imperialism/hegemony by the general West in the process of globalization. Extensive examples are drawn to map the contours of a globalized India, as well as other social issues are also addressed by introducing Arundhati Roy¡Ðwho has written extensively on various subjects linked to globalization¡Ðfor a comprehensive picture of the issues the nation is currently embroiled in in its encounter with globalization. Drawing on Arundhati Roy¡¦s criticism of corporate globalization, the suggestion of a morally and socially responsible globalization is evoked for an alternative global imagination to belonging.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 310-314).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 290-302).

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on January 19, 2010). Thesis advisor: Professor Michael Grinfeld. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 300-307). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Inaugural Dissertation (Ph. D.)--Universität Köln, 1976. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-171).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisor: Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 597-653).