Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2024, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

Kurdish cinema represents a vital transnational and global art form that bridges the Kurdish community, uniting a stateless people through cultural expression. This dissertation explores common narrative threads of Kurdish cinema relating to identity, statelessness, trauma, and women's issues, despite the differences between Kurds of various nationalities in both the ancestral Kurdistan region and the diaspora. The first chapter examines how these artworks confront issues of identity, exile, and homeland. The second interrogates depictions of individual and collective trauma in Kurdish cinema, especially generational trauma resulting from racism, conflict, and displacement. Chapter 3 analyzes Kurdish cinema from a comparative perspective through the lens of Indigenous studies, examining how Kurdish cinema confronts settler-colonial oppression. The fourth and final chapter addresses the portrayal of Kurdish women's issues in Kurdish cinema, contrasting how male and female directors represent these issues and emphasizing the vital contributions of Kurdish women filmmakers especially with regard to telling Kurdish women's stories. Ultimately this work positions Kurdish cinema as a powerful artistic movement spanning national and international boundaries driven by the efforts of a distinct filmmaking community united in the desire to represent Kurdish identity and culture through cinematic storytelling.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2012, Film (Fine Arts)

This thesis, with the particular focus on Taiwanese films set in Taipei, investigates how the Taiwanese cinema, through its diverse treatments of history and memory, enacts its role as a cinematic interpretation of the envisioning of Taiwanese national identity within the transnational context. The first chapter centers on the Taiwanese New Cinema's portrayal of “The Taiwanese Experience,” which refigures Taipei as a site of cultural hybridization, and further contends against the Kuomintang's configuration of Taipei as a site coherent to the nationalist One-Chinese narrative. The second chapter examines the instability of recollection, and the artificial and invented quality of history and historiography through the emerging Post Taiwan New Cinema's utilization of collage of fragmentary shots that shuttle between Taiwan's past and present. The third chapter explores the Post Taiwan New Cinema's depiction of “The Taipei Experience,” which transfigures Taipei as a postcolonial city of layers of historical inscriptions, and therefore suggests an alternative route to locate Taiwan and the Taiwanese identity within the transnational context. With the concentration on the context of postcolonialism and the awareness of what Taiwan is and has been, this thesis discovers that the cinematic layerings of different phases of Taiwan's past and present can illustrate the emergence of “The Taipei Experience” through the erasure of “The Taiwanese Experience.” This thesis therefore reevaluates “The Taipei Experience” as an alternative embodiment of “The Taiwanese Experience,” which in consequence paves a way for an innovative perspective to (re)imagine and (re)negotiate the Taiwanese sense of self.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation offers a close examination of the treatment and influence of mandatory hijab in contemporary Transnational Iranian Cinema. Through a detailed analysis of three Iranian films, this project investigates how Iranian filmmakers address the social ramifications of mandatory hijab laws in their work. In addition, this dissertation seeks to analyze the impact of abiding by said laws on film production and narrative cinematic storytelling in Iran. These films are: Hush! Girls Don't Scream (Derakhshandeh, 2013), Offside (Panahi, 2006), and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour, 2013)

Bachelor of Science of Media Arts and Studies (BSC), Ohio University, 2017, Media Arts and Studies

This thesis explores the relationship between non-linear cinema and the psyche through a Jungian lens. Non-linear cinema is argued as distinct from all other linear cinema, and divided taxonomically into various `imperfect' loops as well as `perfect' loops. Perfect loops are such that one cannot distinguish a beginning or end point, so one automatically applies the spatial metaphor of a circle rather than that of a line to the visual experience at hand. Therefore, perfectly looped animation projects the image of a circle into the subconscious, where it cannot be seen but can be experienced as a feeling, contributing greatly to the psychic phenomenon of mesmerization. I believe that the feeling arising from this mesmerization is due to the temporal image of the circle evoking the archetype of the mandala, which creates a sensation of psychic wholeness, related to an inner `god-image', narrowing the focus of the viewer into the present moment. This thesis also details the planning and exhibition of 'Circulation of the Light', a video art gallery designed to address and explore these themes through stop motion, computer, and direct cinema animation.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2013, Industrial, Interior Visual Communication Design

This thesis explores the use of real time motion capture technologies in the animation process and how they can create a more interactive and participatory approach to creating an animated film. By utilizing real time capture for both virtual camera and actor performance, I hope to create a unique atmosphere in which both character and camera operator have the ability to influence action and actively participate in an evolving narrative. Observational films are known for their intimacy. Achieved by immersing the filmmaker into the lives of the subjects, these films give the audience the ability to more actively participate in generating the films meaning and to forge close, personal relationships with the subject matter. Animation has inherent obstacles that limit that level of personal interaction and spontaneity. By looking to both direct cinema and cinema verite, this thesis explores how live action documentary techniques translate into an animated film. In this paper, I study and discuss several animated documentaries and the tendencies and challenges the films face when approaching claims of truth and authenticity. I also analyze three well known observational films, Primary, Salesman and Titicut Follies and the transformation of ordinary people into ‘social actors'. It is this assumed roll, the everyday presentation of self that audiences relate to and perceive as truthful and authentic and is the backbone of my thesis research. Through the creation of two separate short films, Grandpa and Wade, I explore both virtual characters as social actors and my own role as a filmmaker in the animation process.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, American Culture Studies

This dissertation utilizes the videographic essay method to visually analyze the queer aesthetic that distinguishes certain American film and television programs in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The salient features of the queer aesthetic, which includes strategies ranging from lighthearted farcical camp to intense graphic violence, emerged as a critical response to homophobic depictions in mainstream Hollywood horror films of the 1980s and early 1990s and as an aesthetic expression of social protests by queer activists of the time. The empowerment of proudly claiming queer identity led to the development of the independent New Queer Cinema movement. I examine the visual techniques utilized in this politicized film movement to illustrate how queer filmmakers incorporated visual tropes from the horror film genre to convey the terror of the AIDS epidemic as well as ongoing political repression and violent homophobia. To illuminate the notable features of the aesthetic that coalesced in New Queer Cinema films, I analyze the films of gay filmmaker Gregg Araki, who is known for combining stylized camp and violence with tropes of the horror genre. This study shows how queer filmmakers subsequently began to incorporate the queer aesthetic into contemporary horror films and television productions. I closely examine Ryan Murphy's application of the queer aesthetic in his television series American Horror Story following the queering of the horror tropes in the New Queer Cinema films. Mobilizing moving images and sound in analyses makes it possible to demonstrate aesthetic choices in ways that are not possible in a traditional written dissertation, even one featuring still images. By using videographic essays, the dissertation concretely illustrates the evolution of the queer aesthetic and how it has merged in some instances with horror genre conventions. This dissertation also illuminates the increasingly nuanced depiction of queer identities wi (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2022, Film Studies (Fine Arts)

The thesis considers the transnationalism of cinema's last thirty years and its disruption of the previous ways for conceiving of isolated national cinemas. The work of filmmakers Olivier Assayas and Tsai Ming-liang are examined for their dealings with national identity, both of whom resist the label of national filmmaker and instead embrace the international cultural exchanges that reflect the 21st century's globalization. I argue that by confronting cinema's past and its relationship to nation, these filmmakers posit a cinematic identity unbounded by borders. Specifically, I analyze Assayas's work as an instrument to capture the crisis of both national cinema and national identity, while for Tsai a cinematic lineage dating back to mid-century art cinema supplants identity for the transnational filmmaker.

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2021, Film

The paper will explore the means by which horror films are broken down into specific subcategories (such as The Gothic, Witchcraft and Folklore, and The Chiller) by probing differences in narrative intention and structure rather than what mean of horror are portrayed in the film or what the setting is. These aspects are important, but as cinema is predominantly fundamentally a narrative form, I seek to classify genre with the storytelling basis as more significant than imagery and setting.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation aims to analyze contemporary Brazilian comedies (1998-2020) and their commercial success in the domestic market. I argue that this success is linked both to changes in the film industry itself (in production, distribution, and exhibition) and to social, political, economic, and cultural transformations in Brazil in the last two decades. For these transformations, one of the main aspects was the social ascension of millions of Brazilians during the government of President Lula (2003-2011), when a “new middle class” emerged in the country. With greater purchasing power, these Brazilians began to consume more goods and services, in addition to spending more on leisure activities such as cinema. As a result, comedies have become the most consumed national genre, accumulating millions of viewers every year. In addition to the historical connection that audiences have with humor in Brazilian cinema, comedies currently enjoy more financial and artistic resources for their production and distribution, which puts them ahead of other cinematographic genres. On the one hand, new public funding laws emerged in 2006, which privileged the financing of commercial film projects. On the other hand, comedies have developed a very close partnership with television through Globo, the largest media conglomerate in Latin America. All of this was fundamental for the advancement of the national cinema industry, a process in which comedies had a great impact.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

Origin Stories traces the emergence and political potential of a slow aesthetic in contemporary transnational cinemas of the hemispheric Americas in the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Starting from the vantage point of the global South, this dissertation examines five major filmmakers associated with slowness: Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), Alfonso Cuaron (Hollywood/Mexico), Natalia Almada (US/Mexico), Kelly Reichardt (US), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand). Slowness in cinema has popularly and academically been theorized from an aesthetic or national perspective since Matthew Flanagan first coined the term “slow cinema.” However, to theorize slowness as a global aesthetic flattens the political textures of cinemas that arise from marginalized markets with their own film histories. The recent steady growth in international co-production, as well as historical movement of film within and between markets, also indicate that national definitions are increasingly inapplicable to transnational cinemas. Latin American cinema is an example of historical and current transnational production as films circulate between nations in the home market and internationally on the film festival circuit, as well as cultivating a unique character outside Hollywood's cultural dominance. Looking at slow cinema from its geopolitical context reveals the critique of current and past global systems that contribute to iniquity including the erasure of Black and Indigenous peoples from Latinx histories and identities, entrenched racial hierarchies of coloniality, and how these structures inflect and reflect attitudes toward the natural world. Expanding the hemispheric Americas to the Asia Pacific, another site of conquest and US imperial ideation, experimental film translates the personal to the political in an intimate portraiture of human and natural ecologies. Bringing together cinema studies, decolonial, and Indigenous studies approaches, this dissertation charts the intersect (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2021, Film Studies (Fine Arts)

Scholarship regarding mythic narrative structures use predominately male-centered narratives to analyze male-centered heteronormative films in American popular cinema. In such mythic narratives, women are usually a destination for nurture, or a trophy for the male conqueror. This, in turn, condenses scholarship to analyze films within the structures of male-centered, heteronormative, mythic narratives. Consequently, this leaves women-centered mythic structures vastly understudied and underutilized when analyzing films that pertain to women's cinema and queer cinema. The objective of my thesis is to infuse women-centered mythology with cinematic discourse. In particular, my thesis seeks to reclaim and reshape the myth of Lilith to be used as a narrative structure to analyze women-centered films in queer cinema in ways that examine both the sexual oppression and sexual pleasure of lesbian sexuality.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Germanic Languages and Literatures

Wim Wenders creates films that make a virtue of cinema`s encounter with reality, insisting that cinema`s referential quality imbues it with a unique relationship to our encounter with the world over and against other art forms. This idea frequently serves as a point of departure for his narratives. His characters—often photographers, writers, or filmmakers—share a common desire to experience the world and to represent it in their own media. Nevertheless, their mediation is not without difficulty; these characters misunderstand the relationships between media, time, art, the world, and themselves. In this dissertation, I show that their seemingly innocuous activities belie an overarching theme of melancholy in Wenders` films. Through this thematic and formal engagement with melancholy—understood as a combination of social isolation and self-estrangement that cyclically perpetuates itself—Wenders enters into a discussion about photographic mediation that spans the twentieth century. While Bela Balazs, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Rudolf Arnheim contribute to this discourse, I root my understanding of melancholy primarily in the film theory with which Wenders is most familiar, in particular, Siegfried Kracauer`s Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality and his subsequent work, which expands on film`s relationship to time, History: The Last Things Before the Last. This theoretical perspective that I call the -redemptive realist tradition‖ emphasizes film`s documentary capability to mediate an encounter with phenomena that would otherwise elude perception, thereby -redeeming‖ them in Kracauer`s vocabulary through what I call his -photo-historical approach.‖ I find that this approach and the process of resolving melancholy parallel one another, thereby offering Wender`s characters the chance to redeem the phenomena of their perception while overcoming their estrangement and isolation. In order to investigate the development of melancholy in Wenders` wor (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, French and Italian

Over the last decade, the production of horror films in Italy has surged. Oscar-nominated director Luca Guadagnino recently contributed to the genre's revival with his 2018 film Suspiria—a remake of Dario Argento's world-renowned 1977 slasher. However, the extensive contemporary corpus of Italian horror cinema remains largely unexplored even though, according to Guadagnino, “the most transgressive work in cinema right now is being done in horror” (Roxborough, 5). While much Italian horror cinema scholarship has focused on past waves of the genre, few studies assess the contemporary era (Baschiera and Hunter, 2016). As such, this project showcases a popular movie genre, revived with a new urgency in recent years, as a privileged site for socio-cultural work and nonnormative imagination. My dissertation, “Female Leads: Negotiating Minority Identities in Contemporary Italian Horror Cinema,” analyzes eight key films released between 2006-2018 that feature women who are `othered' because of their pregnancy status (Ch 1), their LGBTQ+ identity (Ch 2), their status as migrants (Ch 3) disabled persons (Ch 4), or their religious beliefs (Conclusion). Using textual and socio-historical analysis, I situate my project in the fields of Film Studies, Italian Studies, and Feminist Cultural Studies. This dissertation expands and develops horror scholar Carol Clover's theorization of the `final girl,' or, the protagonist and survivor in slasher films of the 1970s and 80s. As Clover contends, the qualities of the final girl “enable her, of all the characters, to survive what has come to seem unsurvivable” (85). While elements such as gender, sexual promiscuity, race, or sexual orientation would have ensured death for a character in a 1970s slasher movie, the social prejudices that warrant death in the films of this dissertation have evolved to manifest differently. This project registers not only anxieties about gender (as Clover originally argued) but also reveals anxieties about (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation is a historiographic intervention in the prevailing canon of experimental cinema, and more specifically the history of Iranian cinema. I utilize expanded cinema as an inclusive term that reconciles critical discourses about avant-garde and expanded art practice with experimental and underground film. By investigating the emergence and evolution of expanded cinema in Iran, I posit it as a counter-force to the patriarchal traditions of hierarchy and exclusion that dominate cinema and other cultural spheres in the Islamic Republic. Additionally, I argue that the subjective agency of contemporary Iranian artists, particularly women like Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981) and Nastaran Safaei (b. 1984), has initiated a new feminist discourse that boldly tackles issues related to gender, identity, and body politics.

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, English

Coming out is widely understood as a crucial, repeated scene of a queer person making their queerness known to others. Rather than consider coming out in film as one specific cinematic moment, I argue that the means by which queerness is made legible to the spectator constitutes coming out, even if that coming out is preceded by an outing or occurs non-verbally. Engaging with the speech act theories of J.L. Austin and queer theories of Judith Butler, I trace the performative differences between coming out and outing speech acts in the films The Children's Hour (1961) and Love, Simon (2018), arguing that outing creates an instable queer subject that must be made coherent through coming out. I also examine how the cinematic apparatus can either construct a closet or allow for non-verbal coming out in Brokeback Mountain (2005) and God's Own Country (2017), creating a uniquely non-identitarian approach to coming out. The divergent endings met by queer characters in these four films further demonstrate how the process and aftermath of coming out play a role in narrative conclusion, establishing coming out as one of the most critically important aspects of a queer film.

Master of Arts in Spanish, Cleveland State University, 2019, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Tras la nominacion de El abrazo de la serpiente de Ciro Guerra a mejor pelicula extranjera en los premios Oscar en 2016, muchos criticos periodistas colombianos celebraron el filme, a menudo enfatizando el cuidado con el que el director retrato a los pueblos indigenas de la Amazonia. Es cierto que la obra plasma un dialogo muchas veces didactico entre personajes arquetipicos—dos cientificos de Occidente y un chaman indigena—y que Guerra retrata en la diegesis, asi como provoca en el publico, un evento politicamente productivo, lo que el estudioso Boaventura de Sousa Santos denomina una “ruptura epistemica”. Por otro lado, el foco recurrente del filme en el consumo de medicina ritual y vegetal por parte de los visitantes de la Amazonia siembra semillas de fetichismo y exotismo, ademas de fomentar un extractivismo cultural y material. Al articular, visibilizar y valorar lo indigena, la pelicula desafia modos hegemonicos del conocimiento a traves de las representaciones de: a) ontologias relacionales prevalentes en la Amazonia colombiana, b) modos orales y rituales de transmision del conocimiento, y c) concepciones temporales no lineales. Con apoyo de pensadores poscoloniales, posestructuralistas y ecocriticos (i.e. Said, Haraway, Morton), esta tesis elabora sobre como el cine podria revelar lo incompleto de paradigmas hegemonicos del razonamiento. Asimismo, El abrazo sigue una tendencia historica a romantizar y consumir lo indigena (especialmente al otorgar permisos para la participacion en rituales amazonicos los de afuera de la comunidad indigena). Estas tendencias se exploran a traves del pensamiento (tambien) poscolonial, ademas de apoyo antropologo y sociologo (i.e. Pratt, Fotiou, Ulloa). Al fin, esta tesis subraya la urgencia y la importancia de esa ruptura epistemica mencionada anteriormente y reconoce que la forma en que los espectadores interpreten e interioricen la pelicula decidira la calidad del impacto social duradero de la obra.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation studies the discourse of “Todo es ETA” which frames Spain's fight against terrorism as a need to eradicate the surrounding environment (the so-called "entorno de ETA") of the Basque terrorist group. In my view, this discourse which became hegemonic after 1996 with the advent to power of Partido Popular's Jose Maria Aznar and which judge Baltasar Garzon judicialized, trespasses the debate on terrorism and the victims themselves. Focusing not only on Aznar's political stagecraft but mainly on fiction and documentary films about ETA and the Basque conflict produced since 1996 until 2018, I argue that the “Todo es ETA” discourse is melodramatic. Melodrama is deployed by conservative agendas in Spain as a pervasive political and cultural mode that allows articulating Spain's rhetoric of nationalism while reifying national myths of unity and cohesion through the creation of the national enemy: ETA and Basque nationalism. The analysis of this particular discourse on terrorism in cinema allows tracing the rise of a conservative nationalist ideology in Spain since 1996 and unveils how the nationalist ideology of the state needs differences and subaltern positions in order to articulate a new national hegemony. Thus I ponder upon the consequences of such discourse in order to re-consider how internal differences (in particular for this dissertation the Basque other) are represented, discussed, and ultimately repressed/marginalized in contemporary Spain. Ultimately, I contend that the melodramatic discourse of “Todo es ETA” is intended to produce and legitimate a re-writing of the foundational fiction of the Spanish nation by restoring the conservative postimperialist masculine order. In this sense, melodramatic conventions prove to be effective in interpellating spectators and citizens in order to produce a new dominant subject structure (the conservative Spanish subject) while sensorially re-wiring them to the community and establishing a different relation (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2018, Political Science

This comparative study conducts research similar to that of Jack Shaheen and Noura Alalawi in order to analyze how terrorism is portrayed in film following September 11th. My research is specifically interested in analyzing how the United States and United Kingdom portray terrorists in film and how these depictions impact the citizenship and sense of belonging of groups portrayed as extremists. My thesis will contribute to the discipline of political science and media studies by providing a critical examination of the cinematic portrayal of terrorism and “suspect communities” (Hickman et al., 2011). So far in my research I have not found any articles that make the connection between portrayal in film, belonging and citizenship. Most of these articles simply state that American and British cinema portray groups like Muslims in a negative way and that this leads to the development of stereotypes. I have not yet seen a study that takes the next step and analyzes how these stereotypes directly impact an individual's claims to belonging or citizenship in a community. Therefore, my research will help scholars take the next step in understanding the power that cinema has over understandings of citizenship and belonging.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, History of Art

Nostalgic Media: Histories and Memories of Domestic Technology in the Moving Image investigates the history of four consumer technologies – slide projectors, Pixelvision toy cameras, home video, and video games – and their appropriation in experimental cinema and contemporary art. Considering the socio-cultural emergence of each technology alongside close analysis of films, videos, and gallery installations, I demonstrate how cinema artists harnessed these technologies' plural histories in their practice. Analyzing the work of numerous American experimental filmmakers and figures from the international art world, I argue that cinema artists have turned to ephemeral moving-image technologies as a part of what I call “nostalgic media.” Through an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon histories and theories of cinema studies, art history, psychoanalysis, and media archaeology, I contend that the practice of nostalgic media interweaves personal and cultural memory with technological history, displaying a longing for the past not yet experienced. In contrast to the postmodern condemnation of nostalgia as a sentimental and stereotypical return to the static, idyllic past, I illustrate how these artists use experimental cinematic forms to reveal nostalgia as a moving image, one that highlights how contingent memories of film and technology alter their form over the passage of time. Intervening in current debates concerning obsolescence and rapid technological development, my project embraces nostalgia as a time-based process that resists the determinism of technological progress and examines how artists intertwine the disappearing past into the fabric of an ever-changing, globalized present.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation argues that the alternative digital movies that emerged in the early 21st century Malaysia have become a part of the Malaysian national cinema. This group of movies includes independent feature-length films, documentaries, short and experimental films and videos. They closely engage with the unique conditions of Malaysia's economic development, ethnic relationships, and cultural practices, which together comprise significant parts of the nationhood of Malaysia. The analyses and discussions of the content and practices of these films allow us not only to recognize the economic, social, and historical circumstances of Malaysia, but we also find how these movies reread and rework the existed imagination of the nation, and then actively contribute in configuring the collective entity of Malaysia.