Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Title from PDF of title page. Document formatted into pages; contains pages. Includes bibliographical references.

I define the youth respondent method as a process by which artists and/or producers involve children and/or young adults through planned theatre activities or discussions with the objective of answering specific questions about the development of the work and collect feedback to improve the text or further the production. This pluralistic practice grants agency for the target audience, while informing the creators of the possibilities of the play and answering challenging questions regarding the work. Considering a continuum that places creative dramatics and children’s theatre at its poles, the youth respondent method demonstrates a merger of the two genres affiliated with youth, theatre, and play. My dissertation documents the youth respondent method’s application in a number of mid-twentieth century and contemporary case studies from the U.S., all of which received national attention through festivals and professional productions at regional theatres throughout the country. These case studies include: Playwright Charlotte Chorpenning’s work with the Goodman Theatre (1940s), Deni Kruger’s play MUDDY BOOTS (2005), Jason Tremblay’s play KATRINA: THE GIRL WHO WANTED HER NAME BACK (2009), Lydia Diamond’s play HARRIET JACOBS (2008), and Duncan Sheik and Stephen Sater’s musical SPRING AWAKENING (2006). This diverse group of plays and musicals relied on variations of the youth respondent method at different stages of their development and production processes, in which youth took the reins to serve as collaborative creators. The child is another essential collaborator in determining how their generation can make a better future through the practice and art of theatre. I examine the dialectics between artists, scholars, producers, and children, applying the youth respondent method. This model strengthens Theatre for Young Audience (TYA) plays while it gives children the agency to learn, exchange ideas, and address subjects that are important to them. TYA is a continually expanding field, although there is a significant lack of scholarship documenting its growth and such important practices as this method. By documenting various forms of the best of this practice, I hope to educate other scholars and practitioners about its vitality. / text

In 2006, the merger of the WB and UPN broadcast networks created a new network, the CW. As the fifth major broadcast network, the CW occupies an interesting, hybrid space within the television industry. The CW behaves like a cable channel, yet it usually receives the coverage of a broadcast network. Its target audience is women ages 18 to 34, an extremely small target demographic by any standards. Despite its unique status with the television industry, the CW remains woefully under-studied. This project aims first to provide a context for the CW moment and compare the network's trajectory with that of its predecessors in order to illuminate the myriad of changes that have occurred in the media industries. This project considers how the CW's branding strategies shape perceptions of the network, how the CW brand is produced and how the network's branding practices demonstrate an investment in postfeminism. In order to analyze the CW's branding, this paper examines the network's promotional materials and other paratexts, focusing primarily on print ads, since they are the most circulated. This project also asks how the CW constructs its audience in this age of postfeminism. In order to expose the contradictions and assumptions that underpin the network's project of audience construction, this paper considers both statements from network executives and the network's penchant for reviving 1990s programs with nostalgic appeal. Finally, this paper considers how the category of the "CW show" functions as a genre, and, through textual and narrative analysis, how that genre works to limit the possibilities for female representation on the network. This analysis draws attention to the complicated ways that postfeminist ideas are integrated into young women's programming today, and how conversations about female audiences have changed in the last twenty years. This project draws attention to an as-yet-unstudied site dominated by what Rosalind Gill calls the "postfeminist sensibility" (148). / text

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Some recent work of Suvin (indebted to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenologie de la perception) asserts that two fundamental aspects of the praxis of theatre spectatorship--the non-tactile, inactive physicality of the spectator, and her/his imaginative cognitive participation in the apperception of the performance text--might better be understood when examined with regard to the "apraxias," neurological disorders of purposive physical movement. This thesis follows up this line of thought in examining clinical material on apraxia, both temporally previous and subsequent to Merleau-Ponty's discussion. Additionally, it is contended that various paradigms in Bergson and within modern cognitive science (Edelman, Schacter) may be applied with some utility to the praxis of theatre spectatorship. This may lead to a better understanding of the mental participation of the spectator in the performance text as a modulation of present perception and past subjective experience. Such an understanding is compatible with a semiotic "encyclopedia" (Eco), possibly buttressing it with arguments extrapolated from neurology.

This study looked at how different formats of online news story can affect the way users read and understand it.The researcher formatted one story taken off the wire into two different ways: simple text story and a story customized for Web presentation. As an example the researcher used the style of MSNBC.com, one of nation's leading providers of original online news content.One hundred and sixty subjects who participated in the study were split into two different groups reflecting their online reading habits: the users who read news in full (or slow readers) and the users who scan and/or skim online information (fast readers). Both groups were exposed to each type of online story presentation.With the help of an online instrument created for the purpose of this study the researcher monitored subjects' reading speeds and recall of different types of story.The data collected in the experiment were analyzed through two-way Analysis of Variance, or ANOVA, with equal sample sizes.Initial analysis of the data revealed no significant difference between the way both types of readers recalled the two stories. Further analysis, however, showed that the type of story presentation had an effect on the speed with which certain categories of subjects read the stories. Subsequent analysis revealed that it was fast readers who took statistically significant less amounts of time to read the story formatted for online presentation. / Department of Journalism

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Thesis (PhD) - Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, 2004. / Typescript. Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Life and Social Science, Swinburne University of Technology, 2004. Bibliography: p. 275-284. Also available on cd-rom.

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2007.

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2008. / The full-text of this Submission is currently under embargo. It will be available for download on Thu Sep 17 2009. Includes bibliographical references.