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American entertainment often presents heroines who still conform to the confining stereotypes of passivity, docility, sexual objectification, and ultimate dependence on the hero, offering patriarchal narratives in popular culture. This thesis investigates American girlhood entertainment - a subset of popular culture - in comparison to the newly popular genre of Japanese comics, shojo manga, which also targets a girl audience. By focusing on gender issues - power distribution, agency, and gender roles - and utilizing a mixed methodology of rhetorical and quantitative analysis, my research explores the rhetorical devices and narrative structures that empower or constrain heroines, structure power distributions, and assign gender roles. To better understand shojo's recent popularity among teenage girls, this research provides 1) a close critical analysis of shojo texts to examine the messages and rhetorical devices featured in these narratives, and 2) an analysis of audience reception through a participant survey and an analysis of audience-generated message boards. This research participates in Girlhood Studies, Intercultural Studies, and Narrative Criticism as I analyze narratives that target an American girl audience and enact entertainment globalization. My analysis suggests that shojo develops from feminist motives, encourages a pro-feminist reality, and successfully markets itself to an audience of American girls, who form parasocial relationships and wishfully identify with the heroines because of their empowered characteristics and the portrayal of equality within romantic relationships.

<p>Sammanfattning: The Lord of The Rings-trilogin slog världen med storm då första filmen kom ut år 2001. J.R.R Tolkiens böcker var väldigt omtyckta och framförallt omtalade men det hade aldrig funnits icke-animerade filmer på dem. Peter Jackson tog på sig att skapa filmerna och klarade detta åtagande väldigt bra.</p><p>Däremot var kvinnorollerna, precis som i böckerna, väldigt små och inaktiva. Detta är därför någonting jag valt att ta upp i min uppsats. Kvinnornas roller i jämförelse med männens. Uppsatsen jämför de olika rollfigurerna mot varandra och deras roller överlag i specialversionerna av filmerna.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-208).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves : [50]-54).

Thesis (M.A.R.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-90).

Texte remanié de : Dissertation : neuphilologische Fakultät : Universität Heidelberg : 1984. / Résumé en français. Bibliogr. des oeuvres de M. Brion p. 425-441. Bibliogr. p. 413-424. Index.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves : [79]-82).

This thesis endeavors to examine the imagery and rhetoric surrounding the portrayal of President Barack Obama during the national debate over health care reform from the summer of 2009 into the spring of 2010. It is argued that the critics of the health care reform legislation used images to portray the president as Adolf Hitler, Che Guevara, The Joker, as well as other images such as the swastika and the Wehrmacht symbol as stand-in euphemisms for race to discredit Barack Obama. A number of exemplar images have been selected from various websites and publications specifically addressing the portrayal of Barack Obama not only in starkly menacing tones, but also in images suggesting the president is a villainous black man attempting to pass for white in order to accomplish his tyrannical goals. The images used in this thesis speak to the power of fantasy themes and the use of fear in rhetorical imagery inasmuch as they attempt to stoke a narrative seizing upon the anxieties of an American public caught in the grip of difficult financial times, finding themselves being led by the nation’s first African-American president. This thesis complements earlier research exploring the role of race in politics and public policy debates. And it is hoped this work will contribute to a better understanding of the growing influence of talk radio, as well as perhaps the need for greater civics literacy.

Children use many cues to differentiate reality from fantasy, including context, testimony from others, and physical evidence in the world around them. However, due to individual differences, some children hold strong reality status biases that interfere with their ability to infer reality status from these cues correctly. This research identified two general cognitive skills, inhibitory control and a metacognitive understanding of certainty, which serve as mechanisms for overcoming biases to infer reality status. In general, children with a high interest in fantastical play and older children with poorer developed inhibitory control skills are more likely to display a reality status bias. Additionally, children with reality status biases are more likely to overcome them to infer reality status correctly when they have a better metacognitive understanding of certainty and better developed inhibitory control. This research informs both the fantasy/reality literature and the scientific reasoning literature in demonstrating how biases can affect children's judgments. / text