Great Film Studies Theses from Texas Universities

Image from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). You can read about this film in Chi Hyun Park's 2008 PhD thesis: Orientalism in U.S. cyberpunk cinema from Blade Runner to the Matrix

Film Studies For Free brings you one of its regular reports from eRepositories. This time it's the turn of the institutes of higher learning located in the largest state of the contiguous U.S.A., the online theses of which are kindly and neatly hosted by the wonderful folks at the Texas Digital Repository.

Seek, and ye shall find, and FSFF did indeed seek and find some graduate work of excellent quality, and on an incredibly wide range of topics. Ye can find it linked to below.

The PhD theses, in particular, will shortly be added to FSFF's permanent listing of Online Film and Moving Image Studies PhD and MPhil Theses.

Ye all come back now! 

• Identity, place, and subversion in contemporary Mizrahi cinema in Israel by Yaron Shemer, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, August 2008
• The rhetoric of postcolonialism : Indian middle cinema and the middle class in the 1990s by Radharani Ray, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, April 2011
• Globalization and hybridity of Korean cinema : critical analysis of Korean blockbuster films by Se Hee Han, MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Re-charting French space : transnationalism, travel and identity from the postcolonial banlieue to post-Wall Europe by Michael Robert Gott, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• DEFA and East European cinemas : co-productions, transnational exchange and artistic collaborations by Mariana Zaharieva Ivanova, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• The children are always watching : violence, distressed children, and signs of hope in the cinema of Michael Haneke by Adam Wyatt Tate, MA, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Orientalism in U.S. cyberpunk cinema from Blade Runner to the Matrix by Chi Hyun Park, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, August 2008
• Challenging European borders : Fatih Akın's filmic visions of Europe by Berna Gueneli, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• The second wave of Chinese art film : film system, film style, and alternative film culture of the 1990s by Li Yang, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, August 2010
• Cine-animé: adaptations of realistic lighting styles by Ellen Man Ngoc Trinh, M. S. Thesis, Texas AM University, November 2005
• Prestige and prurience : the decline of the American art house and the emergence of sexploitation, 1957-1972 by Daniel Curran Metz, MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Cold cuts : visions of refrigerators in United States media, 1942-1968 by Paul Alton Gansky, MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Once upon a time in South Central Los Angeles : race, gender and narrative in John Singleton's Hood trilogy by Mark Douglas Cunningham, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2010
• Sensational genres : experiencing science fiction, fantasy and horror by Lisa Marie Schmidt, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, October 2010
• Teen films of the 1980s : genre, new Hollywood, and generation X by Elissa Helen Nelson, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011

Young and Undead: On Child and Teen Vampire Movies

Images from Låt den rätte komma in/Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008 - above) and Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010)

Film Studies For Free loves a good vampire movie, like the two relatively unconventional examples of the genre pictured above. 

In fact, FSFF doesn't turn its nose up at bad vampire movies, either. Let's face it: this blog is just not that fussy when it comes to vampire movies.

Both kinds of films are represented below, in a fairly short, but terrifyingly good, list of scholarly and other online studies of the recent flourishing of teen and pre-teen varieties of undead cinema (along with their literary sources). 

Please note that the list does not dabble in studies of the televisual versions of the genre. For those, you could no better than to visit the complete archive of Slayage articles on, inter alia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly.

• Stacey Abbott, 'Urban Vampires in American Films of the Eighties and Nineties, in Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Conference Proceedings Budapest, Hungary May 22-24 2003, ed. by Carla T. Kungl (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.Net, 2003) scroll to p. 133 
• Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, ' Contemplating the Franchise, the Fandom and the Celebrity Juggernaut of the Twilight Saga', In Media Res, July 2, 2010 
• Simon J. Bacon, 'Fangs for the memory': can the American cinematic vampire be equated with Pierre Nora's idea of the 'lieux de memoire' ? Masters thesis, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, 2009
• Courtney Brannon Donoghue, ' "Twilight is a license to print money": Selling the Female Film Franchise', June 30, 2010 
• Glennis Byron, '©Branding and Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture: the case of Twilight', The Gothic Imagination, December 31, 2010
• Melissa Click, '“Rabid”, “obsessed”, and “frenzied”: Understanding Twilight Fangirls and the Gendered Politics of Fando', FlowTV, December 18, 2009
• Martin Fradley, 'Review of Contemporary Gothic, by Catherine Spooner', Journal of Transformative Works, Vol. 4, 2010
• Rebecca Housel, ' Eclipsing the "Real": Twilight & Simulacra', In Media Res, July 1, 2010
  
• Erich Kuersten, 'Someone to Fight Over Me: Feminism, SandM, and the Daemonic in Twilight', Bright Light Film Journal, 68, May 2010
• Stephanie Leach, 'Vampires Go to University: Academic Fads and the (Non)Future of the Humanities in the Neoliberal Academy', Graduate Student Essay, McMaster University, 2010 (Word Document) (published by Dr David L. Clarke)
• Benny LeMaster, 'Queer Imag(in)ing: Liminality as Resistance in Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In', Summer 2009
• Anders Marklund, 'Old fangs into new viewers: the American poster to Let the Right One In', Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 1.1, 2010
• Pramod Nayar, 'How to Domesticate a Vampire: Gender, Blood Relations and Sexuality in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight', Nebula, 7.3, September 2010
• Maggie Park, 'Twilight: The Multi-Media Marketing Machine', In Media Res, June 28, 2010
• Julia Pearlman, 'Happily (For)ever After: Constructing Conservative Youth Ideology in the Twilight Series', Senior Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2010
• Leonie Margaret Rutherford, 'Industries, Artsists, Friends and Fans: Marketing Young Adult Fictions Online', First Monday, Volume 14, Number 4 - 6 April 2009
• Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Scene of the Year: Let Me In', Salon.com, December 31, 2010
• Kirsten Stevens,'Meet the Cullens: Family, Romance, and Female Agency in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight', Slayage, 29, 8.1, Spring 2010
• Catherine Strong, '“...it sucked because it was written for teenage girls” — Twilight, anti-fans and symbolic violence', Papers of The Australian Sociological Association 2009 Annual Conference
• Natalie Wilson, ' Twilight Fandom: Taking a Bite Out of Gendered Backlash', In Media Res, June 29, 2010 
• Michael Wood, 'At the Movies: Let the Right One In', London Review of Books, 31.9, 2009 
• Rochelle Wright, 'Vampire in the Stockholm suburbs: Let the Right One In and genre hybridity', Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 1.1, 2010

Immaturity Abides! On Teen, "Gross Out" and Dumbass Comedy

Jonah Hill and Michael Cera in Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007)

Film Studies For Free is two years old today. You go, blog!

In honour of its tentative entry into digital post-toddlerdom (and hopefully not the terrible twos), it wanted to celebrate online and openly accessible studies of what FSFF likes to think of (in its über-scholarly way) as those liminal film genres and cycles of comic immaturity, awkwardness, stupidity, and tastelessness -- that is to say, all varieties of the teen (or arrested development) comedy (including the "teen sex comedy", the "gross-out" comedy, comic "dude flicks" and "bromances"), as well as studies of related issues.

Today's scattershot links list is partly an offshoot of FSFF's recent entry on the romantic comedy, and partly its first experiment in "crowdsourcing" via its blossoming Facebook page. Thanks so much to those who suggested items there.

If anyone else has any bright ideas for further additions, do please 'fess up. FSFF earnestly promises that you won't be ritually humiliated, or mercilessly laughed at, at all  :o)

• Joseph Aisenberg, 'Here Come the Bromides: Living in the Era of the Bromantic Comedy', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, August 2009

• Peter Alilunas, 'Male Masculinity as the Celebration of Failure: the Frat Pack, Women, and the Trauma of "Victimization" in the "Dude Flick"', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Steven W. Bender, 'Knocked Down Again: An East L.A. Story on the Geography of Color and Colors', Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 12, 2009

• Nick Burns, 'Heathers: Scent of dominance', from Jump Cut, no. 36, May 1991, pp. 32-36

• Zachary Campbell, ‘"Sorry About All the Gravity!" Anna Faris, Serious Respect for the Unserious', Rouge, 13, 2009

• Isabel Sterling Clark, 'The Challenge of Being Yourself: Adaptation, Adolescence, and Disguise in Teenage Romantic Comedy Films of the Late 1990s and Early 2000s', Senior Thesis, Haverford College, 2009

• Evan Elkins, 'Great Job?: Tim and Eric’s Comedy of Failure', FlowTV, August 8, 2008

• Caroline Haggod, 'Bruno and Bromances: Modern Masculinity Goes to the Movies', The Huffington Post, March 10, 2010

• Peter Hutchings , 'Welcome to Royston Vasey: Grotesque bodies and the horror of comedy in The League of Gentlemen', Intensities 4, December 2007

• Carmen Induráin Eraso, 'Riding on divergent but similar roads: Airbag or the Spanish experience of the American Road Movie', Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2005, vol. 13, 107-121

• Ewan Kirkland, 'Romantic Comedy and the Construction of Heterosexuality', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Barbara Klinger, 'Say It Again, Sam: Movie Quotation, Performance and Masculinity', Particip@tions Volume 5, Issue 2 (November 2008)

• Zachary Lamm, 'The Cinematic Shrews of Teen Comedy: Gendering Shakespeare in Twentieth-Century Film', Genders On-Line, Issue 49, 2009

• Christina Lee, Beyond the Pink: (Post) Youth Iconography in Cinema, PhD Thesis, Murdoch University, 2005

• Christian Lorentzen, 'Dicking Around', N1FR Issue 1, August 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Notes on Quirky', MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism, 1.1, 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Knocked Up', Alternate Takes, November 14, 2007

• Gabrielle Moss, ' From the Valley to the Hellmouth: “Buffy”’s Transition from Film to Television', Slayage: A journal of Buffy Studies, 1.2 [2], 2001 

• Joshua Louis Moss, 'Historiography of the World Part 1: The Jewish Body, Historical Crisis and The Comedic Farce', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Scott Murray, '“Cameron Fry, this one’s for you.” Or: Why the Sausage King of Chicago Doesn’t Turn Up for Lunch at Chez Quis', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Diane Negra, "Where The Boys Are: Postfeminism and the New Single Man", FlowTV April 14, 2006

• Jakob Isak Nielsen, 'There's something about comedy theory', P.O.V. No.26, 2008

• Sharyn Pearce, 'Sex and the cinema: What American pie teaches the young', Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 6 (4) 2006: pp. 367-376

• Sina Rahmani, 'Hollywood and Diversity: Subversion, Apologetic, or Both? Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Dir. Danny Leiner. New Line Cinema, 2004', Colloquy, 9, 2005

• Michael Joshua Rowin, 'I Love You, Man and the Apatow Comedy Factory', Reverse Shot, Issue 24, 2009

• Philip Scepanski, 'Out of the Mouths of Babes: Animated Sitcoms and Political Incorrectness', Mediascape, Fall 2008

• Ethan de Seife, 'Gremlins in the Mix', 16:9, 6.25, 2008

• Carter Soles, Falling Out of the Closet: Kevin Smith, Queerness, and Contemporary Independent Film. PhD Thesis, University of Oregon, September 2008

• Carter Soles, 'A Stalker's Odyssey: Arrested Development, Gay Desire, and Queer Comedy in Chuck and Buck', Jump Cut 49, Spring 2007

• Lesley Speed, 'A World Ruled by Hilarity: Gender and Low Comedy in the Films of Amy Heckerling', Senses of Cinema, Vol. 22, 2002

• Scott F. Stoddart, 'Love and Death on Long Island (Dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1998)', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Donato Totaro, 'Screwballs: Teen Comedy Canadian Style', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 8, 2009

• Lisa Trahair, 'Comedy and Beyond: Geoff King's Film Comedy', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 15, 2004
  

• Eric King Watts and Mark P. Orbe , 'The Spectacular Consumption of “True” African American Culture: “Whassup” with the Budweiser Guys?', Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2002, pp. 1–20

• Cynthia Weber, '"Oi, Dancing Boy!" Masculinity, Sexuality, and Youth in Billy Elliot', Gender 37, 2003

• Jessica Winter, 'Knocked Up', Cinemascope, 31, 2008

Video Essay on The Big Lebowski, Kevin. B. Lee with Karina Longworth, March 2010

Tune in to Antenna

[Film Studies For Free will be sorry to say goodbye to Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker/Spider-Man...]

Film Studies For Free wanted to let its readers know about Antenna, a very stimulating blog from graduate students and faculty in the Media and Cultural Studies area of the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Here's what this relatively new site says about itself:

Antenna is a collectively authored media and cultural studies blog committed to timely yet careful analysis of texts, news, and events from across the popular culture spectrum. The site regularly responds to new works and developments in television, film, music, gaming, digital video, the Internet, print, and the media industries.

Antenna is intended to address a broad public inside and outside the university walls. Within those walls, though, it further intends to bridge the gap between scholarly journals, which remain the paradigm for scholarly discourse but too often lack the ability to reply to issues and events in media with any immediacy, and single-author media scholar blogs, which support swift commentary but are limited in their reliance upon the effort and perspectives of individuals. Coordinated by a group of writers who draw on a variety of approaches and methodologies, Antenna, therefore, exists as a means to analyze media news and texts, both as they happen and from multiple perspectives.

Antenna is currently operated and edited by graduate students and faculty in the Media and Cultural Studies area of the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Although, while in its current stage, the content published on the site is written largely by members of that program, Antenna is currently in the process of expanding our author team, and we hope eventually to include contributions and comments from a diverse collection of writers.

Antenna’s goal is to create a forum in which readers and contributors participate in active, open, and thoughtful debate about media and culture.

Antenna is designed to respond quickly to events, and thus rather than be published on a set, periodic schedule, Antenna updates its content continually. Because Antenna is interested in timely responses, we encourage short entries. Extensive presentation of evidence is not required, though supplementary links are encouraged.

With its extremely lively house style, and wide-ranging topics, FSFF thinks Antenna has a great future ahead of it. For examples of some good film-related posts, it recommends you check out the following to start with:  

• 'Smells Like an Ethnically Divided Teen Star System' by Mary Beltrán  

• 'THWIP!+CTRL+DEL (on the rebooting of the Spider-Man franchise)' by Derek Johnson    

• 'Egregious Product Placement: The Invention of Lying' By Erin Copple Smith

You can also follow Antenna's updates on Twitter.