Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-187).

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Syndey. / Title taken from title screen (viewed October 5, 2007). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-176). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Scott Romine; submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-72).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 292-304). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNR11613

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-213).

The aim of the study is to investigate preschool teachers’ experiences and perceptions of the phenomenon popular culture in preschool. The study includes eight preschool teachers. We have used three concepts from a phenomenological perspective as our research approach, which are life-world, meaning and essence. To gather the material for the study, we have used a qualitative semi-structured life-world interview technique that gives clarity of what should be investigated and also gives more profound answerers from the preschool teachers. In the analysis, we have had our point of departure in Giorgi’s phenomenological analysis to find the essence of the preschool teachers' perception and experience of popular culture in preschool. Our research questions are: How do preschool teachers perceive the concept of popular culture? How do preschool teachers experience the use of popular culture in preschool? What obstacles or opportunities do preschool teachers see in use of popular culture in their work? Our result shows ambivalence amongst the preschool teachers towards popular culture in preschool. This is manifested through preschool teachers’ resistance to popular culture in preschool as they feel that popular culture toys, violence and stereotypical characters are troubled. At the same time they experience there are potentials such as children’s interests and learning possibilities.

abstract: This dissertation examines the influential relationships between popular culture depictions of superheroes and the substantive, malleable, and real possibilities of human body transformation. Cultural discourses condition and constrain the ways in which identity and bodies are formed and expressed. This includes popular culture texts that, through their evocative narratives, provide guidance or solutions for dealing with real world problems. From the perspective of communication studies, this project involves examining ways people project and perform fantastic future versions of humanity in relation to popular culture artifacts, like superheroes, but also examines how such projections are borne out of and get expressed through our everyday, less than extraordinary experiences. Key theoretical tensions regarding identity and culture are elucidated. These tensions are then developed discursively into a genealogy of body transcendence that features the historicizing of social functions to determine from where such tensions and changes manifest, and how they ultimately affect us. Several key artifacts are introduced to help inform the investigation, including eight specific superhero body types that provide an ideal perspective through which transformative power can be observed. The superhero discourse is particularly relevant because it offers a utopian/dystopian tension regarding how the splendor and seduction of the discourse materializes in both liberating and problematic ways. Another aspect of this embodied approach involves adopting the alternate superhero persona of Ethnography Man. By undertaking my own identity transformations, I am better able to investigate spaces that encourage such identity slippage and play, such as the annual San Diego Comic Con International. The once strongly held perception that our bodies are fixed and stable is fast disappearing. In bridging the body with culture through a genealogy, it becomes much more apparent how body transformations will continue to manifest in the future. Therefore, from the experiences and analysis contained herein, implications regarding powerful discursive conditions and constraints that influence our ability to change take form in revealing, problematic, and sometimes unexpected ways. More specifically, implications of who has power, how it is exercised, and the effects of power will materialize and indicate whether or not everyday humans have the potential to become superheroes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication Studies 2012

180f. / Submitted by Oliveira Santos Dilzaná (dilznana@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-06-03T12:12:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação para colegiado!.pdf: 3757032 bytes, checksum: 550ea089e5c587e5c9fd4855828cccc0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Portela(anapoli@ufba.br) on 2013-06-04T18:41:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação para colegiado!.pdf: 3757032 bytes, checksum: 550ea089e5c587e5c9fd4855828cccc0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-06-04T18:41:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação para colegiado!.pdf: 3757032 bytes, checksum: 550ea089e5c587e5c9fd4855828cccc0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / A presente pesquisa analisa o contexto da virada modernista na Bahia, focalizando a atuação do grupo de artistas que girou em torno da revista Caderno da Bahia, publicada entre 1948 e 1951. Para tanto, problematiza as diferentes formas de apropriação da cultura popular baiana, que neste momento estava sendo representada não só por artistas, mas por antropólogos, jornalistas, intelectuais, agentes de turismo e setores do governo. The present research analyzes the context of modernist turn in Bahia, focusing on the performance of the group of artists who turned around the magazine Caderno da Bahia (Book of Bahia), published between 1948 and 1951. For this, discusses the different forms of appropriation of popular culture in Bahia, which was currently being represented not only by artists but by anthropologists, journalists, intellectuals, travel agents and government sectors. / Salvador

295 pages / My dissertation addresses two major issues in Chinese contemporary film and TV studies: the first is the proliferations of new forms of subjectivities and the state’s attempt to regulate them via the construction of an ideal citizenship on the film and TV screen; the second is to develop an approach to understand the political economy of screen culture (yingshi wenhua), as well as freedom and control in post-1989 China. My project investigates key contemporary state-sponsored (zhuxuanlü) and state-criticized/banned screen products as a way to explore socialist values advanced by the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the ways in which and the extent to which individuals are able to challenge them. The ways in which my project contributes to the fields of film and TV studies in China are fourfold. First, close readings of selected films and TV dramas inform us of three emergent forms of subjectivity that were previously theorized as a synthesized sublime subject. Second, I conceptualize qualities of the on-screen socialist spirit that the state uses to counteract the three new forms of subjectivity and maintain its superiority. Third, by discussing the state’s intervention and control on production and consumption of screen products, I reveal the state’s vested interests and individuals’ execution of agency in popular culture. This emphasis on state-individual interactions challenges the current focus on TV and film as merely a profit-oriented industry; it also unravels conflicted ideologies in screen products and questions the understanding of popular culture as mainstream culture. Fourth, by achieving the above tasks, my research exposes that the state’s tolerance of its citizens’ partial freedom is for the purpose of political stability.