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  • 1. Campbell, Maria Inking Over the Glass Ceiling: The Marginalization of Female Creators and Consumers in Comics

    MA, Kent State University, 2015, College of the Arts / School of Art

    In the United States, comic books have often been construed as a male medium and social sphere. In fact, comics have been created and enjoyed by artists of any gender since their inception and it was only after the 1950s that current perceptions of comics were formulated. Comics' history begins in the 1890s when men and women were submitting comics to newspapers, including outspoken suffragettes like Rose O'Neill. As comics took off in the early twentieth century, the iconic hero, Superman, kicked off the United States' most popular genre: superhero comics. Superhero comics were read and enjoyed by readers of all genders and ages, leading to the creation of characters like Wonder Woman. After World War II, comics fell victim to government scrutiny and censorship, creating the regulatory Comics Code. In response, during the counter culture of the 1960s, underground comics or comix appeared including feminist anthologies during feminism's second wave. These comics, in turn, led to alternate and indie comics and literary efforts called graphic novels. Graphic novels then influenced the mainstream comics and predominant superhero genre, particularly in the 1980s and forward. In the current era of comic books, more and more readers include young women who wish to see superheroes like themselves. These comics include the works of feminist writers like Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marjorie Liu, and Gail Simone. Japanese comics have also played a huge part in influencing this change for comics in the United States. With multiple genres and a different approach to production, Japanese comics (manga) have become popular, especially where male-oriented comics in the United States may not cater to readers. This has also led to an individualistic movement inspired by both manga and alternative comics: webcomics. These self-published Internet-based comics are often solo efforts in which the artist is in full control of the production. This is also a study of fan culture (fando (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Scillia Diane Ph. D. (Advisor); Medicus Gustav Ph. D. (Committee Member); Smith Fred Ph. D. (Committee Member); Stasiowski Kristin Ph. D. (Other) Subjects: Art History
  • 2. Jones, William Paper Tower: Aesthetics, Taste, and the Mind-Body Problem in American Independent Comics

    Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, Popular Culture

    Comics studies, as a relatively new field, is still building a canon. However, its criteria for canon-building has been modeled largely after modernist ideas about formal complexity and criteria for disinterested, detached, "objective" aesthetic judgment derived from one of the major philosophical debates in Western thought: the mind-body problem. This thesis analyzes two American independent comics in order to dissect the aspects of a comic work that allow it to be categorized as "art" in the canonical sense. Chris Ware's Building Stories is a sprawling, Byzantine comic that exhibits characteristically modernist ideas about the subordination of the body to the mind and art's relationship to mass culture. Rob Schrab's Scud: The Disposable Assassin provides a counterpoint to Building Stories in its action-heavy stylistic approach, developing ideas about the merging of the mind and the body and the artistic and the commercial. Ultimately, this thesis advocates for a re-evaluation of comics criticism that values the subjective, emotional, and the popular as much as the "objective" areas of formal complexity and logic.

    Committee: Jeremy Wallach Ph.D (Advisor); Esther Clinton Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Gender Studies; Literature
  • 3. Rubalcava, Rolando The Comics of COVID-19: A Narrative Medicine Reading of the Comics Produced During the Pre-Vaccine Period of COVID-19

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

    This dissertation project is focused on a narrative medicine approach to the comics written during the pre-vaccine period of COVID-19. By analyzing these texts from a narratological perspective, informed also by various approaches in comics studies, its aim is to identify the affordances of the comic medium in order to understand its efficacy when artists choose to utilize it. The selected narratives range from fictional narratives, autobiographical accounts from “frontline workers” at the height of the pandemic, and comics utilizing reportage and informative style of writing. The goal for this project is to learn as much from the selected stories as possible in order to identify its applications towards COVID-19 and pandemic discourse, potentially contributing insight into surviving a pandemic.

    Committee: James Phelan Dr. (Committee Chair); Julia Hawkins (Committee Member); Frederick Luis Aldama Dr. (Committee Member); Jared Gardner Dr. (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: American Literature; Medical Ethics
  • 4. Hejny, Elizabeth The Process of Making a Braided Comic Through Creative Inquiry

    Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Design

    Git Gud: A Braided Comic About the Good, Bad, and Ugly in the Video Games Community (2024) is a creative inquiry into presenting research in a comic format. Comics-based research refers to a broad set of practices that use the comics form to collect, analyze, and disseminate scholarly research. The unique design aspects of this project include the creation of a braided comic about harassment in video games, which adapts the principles of a braided essay into a visual braid of three strands: a narrative short story, research on harassment in video games, and my autoethnographic experiences with harassment as a video game player. This paper reviews the development of the braided comic as a format to present these three strands of harassment in video games. This paper then documents the process of creating this research-informed comic and reflects on creative inquiry and design discoveries from working within this comic-making process.

    Committee: Maria Palazzi (Advisor); Kyoung Swearingen (Committee Member); Dr. Jesse Fox (Committee Member) Subjects: Design
  • 5. Sweeney, Katlin Social Mediated Latinas: Creating and Contouring Digital Latina Looks in the Twenty-First Century

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

    Social Mediated Latinas: Creating and Contouring Digital Latina Looks in the Twenty-First Century documents how new forms of Latina celebrity, media viewership, and cultural critique emerged in the twenty-first century with the onset of entertainment streaming platforms, online subcultures, and the social media influencer industry on the internet. Latinas with internet access used their social media presence to create original content and to participate in conversations related to media representation's impacts on Latina identity in the United States. They utilize the participatory affordances of various digital platforms—such as hashtags, direct messaging, and video editor studios—to post to their personal social media accounts and interact with other users' content online. In doing so, Latinas act as cultural producers whose online activity builds on existing mass media depictions of Latinas while simultaneously interrogating the star marketing strategies, beauty standards, and stereotyped narratives that U.S. legacy media industries have projected onto them. This project uses a combined approach of content, reception, production, and star persona analysis to examine the social media posts related to Latina representation that are produced, viewed, and responded to by U.S.-based Latina cultural producers on the internet. I recognize the 2010s to be the decade when many Latinas utilized the media production and social networking capabilities of sites like YouTube and TikTok to transform themselves into what I define as Social Mediated Latinas: creators of digital content who, in their self-reflexive posts and public discourse, emphasize their ethnoracial identity as an integral part of how they make, view, and critique Latina representation. I survey how three types of Social Mediated Latinas—Internet celebrities, traditional celebrities, and comics creators—foreground their ethnoracial identity on the internet in ways that complicate the legacies of Latina star (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Frederick Aldama (Committee Co-Chair); Jian Chen (Committee Co-Chair); Paloma Martinez-Cruz (Committee Member); Guisela Latorre (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Hispanic American Studies; Hispanic Americans; Literature; Mass Media; Web Studies; Womens Studies
  • 6. Hines, Christian #THEKIDSAREALRIGHT: Interrogating and enacting youth empowerment via comics pedagogies in a high school book club

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Teaching and Learning

    This qualitative study was used to investigate whether creating opportunities for students to read and discuss superhero narratives in a high school book club, could position them to think critically about race and socio-political issues. It also examined whether those visual texts could provide models of empowerment to motivate youth towards social action and civic engagement within their communities. I utilized Critical Race Theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012) and Critical Youth Empowerment (Jennings et al., 2006) to analyze critical conversations around diverse comics, empowerment, and social issues. Access to diverse and representative visual texts that center young superheroes of color encouraged meaningful analysis amongst the student participants. The comics provided them the opportunity to learn and develop their critical and global consciousness and engage in curricular materials that center civic engagement. The book club as a non-traditional learning space can be utilized as a platform for analysis for teachers and teacher educators to consider the impacts and benefits of co-constructing curriculum and student-centered spaces via the use of comics pedagogy, youth empowerment, and culturally relevant texts within educational spaces.

    Committee: Mollie V. Blackburn (Advisor); James L. Moore III (Advisor); Michiko Hikida (Committee Member); Henry "Cody" Miller (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Literacy; Secondary Education; Teacher Education
  • 7. Jourdan, Jessica Research on the Development Potential of Chinese Webcomic Platforms: The Transformation of the Comic Format and Overseas Expansion

    Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, East Asian Languages and Literatures

    The United States and Japan have established widely successful comic industries, which has led to cross-industry expansion and the creation of numerous derivative products with immense economic value. The large scale of American and Japanese comic exports has made it challenging for other countries to compete in the global comic market. However, in recent years, South Korea has begun to use online publishing platforms as an innovative way to share original Korean comic works with a large number of consumers domestically and overseas. Although China has one of the largest global economies and an enormous consumer population, the restrictions of traditional comic publishing methods has previously limited the creation and commercialization of China's own original comic content. Originally, the majority of China's domestic comic industry was comprised of comic imports from the United States and Japan. However, the past several years has witnessed the significant expansion of China's domestic comic market and original work production with the utilization of webcomic platform innovations such as the ones used in South Korea. While the domestic market is growing rapidly, there is still room for overseas penetration. This research analyzes existing global webcomic platforms created by Korean companies, that have been relatively successful in the American and European markets, to establish guidelines for the potential development of similar global webcomic platforms for Chinese made comics. This research also surveys overseas consumers and analyzes their consumption habits and awareness of East Asian comic works, aiming to understand the market potential for Chinese comics in American and European markets. With the overseas expansion of Chinese popular culture such as webcomics, a potential is emerging to bridge cultural gaps and stimulate a wider understanding for Chinese culture and Chinese creators.

    Committee: Jianqi Wang (Advisor); Galal Walker (Committee Member); Xiao-Bin Jian (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies
  • 8. O'Connor, Lauren Trusty Teens: Reading American Adolescence through the Superhero Sidekick

    Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, American Culture Studies

    Though the field of comics studies has seen rapid expansion in recent decades, and numerous characters from this subset of American literature have received pointed attention, the field has largely ignored the portrayal of adolescent figures. Yet the portrayal of teenagers in comic books reflects the primary readership of the medium, especially in the popular genre of superhero comics, teaching important if informal lessons to consumers about their present and future roles in society. This dissertation analyzes the most enduring adolescent figure in American comics and one of the most widely-known adolescent figures in all of American literature: Robin, sidekick to Batman. Through close reading and textual analysis of comics featuring Robin, I find that depictions of Robin reinforce an image of idealized maturity inextricably linked to white heterosexual masculinity, while simultaneously shoring up the youthful or childish connotations of queerness, non-whiteness, and femininity. The ways in which comic creators have depicted adolescence intersecting with other social identities reveals an investment in establishing a sense of heroic inheritance for white male teen characters and a pattern of exclusion for non-white or female adolescent characters. This dissertation marks an intervention in the field of comics studies, which often focuses on adult-oriented comics and adult figures while ignoring or eschewing the largely juvenile roots of the medium. Instead, I lean into the youthful associations of superhero comics in order to make the case that these depictions provide insight into what mainstream adult culture believes adolescence is and ought to be, and in turn what adulthood is and who is granted its rights and privileges.

    Committee: Jeffrey Brown PhD (Advisor); Jong-Kwan Lee PhD (Other); William Albertini PhD (Committee Member); Jolie Sheffer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Gender; Literature
  • 9. Phillips, Katelynn Breaking Through Panels: Examining Growth and Trauma in Bechdel's Fun Home and Labelle's Assigned Male Comics

    Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, English/Literature

    Comics featuring LGBTQ children have the burden of challenging cis/heteronormative versions of childhood. Such examples of childhood, according to author Katherine Bond Stockton, are false and restrict children to a vision of innocence that leaves no room for queer children to experience their own versions of childhood. Furthermore, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community has taken a “progressive”-based approach to time, assuming that newer generations have avoided the trauma of the past because ideas about sexual orientation and gender have advanced with time. Newer generations of the LGBTQ community forget that many have struggled for change to occur, instead choosing to forget the wounds of the past. By analyzing two comic works—Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home and Sophie Labelle's web comic series Assigned Male—I argue that we must let go of our suspicion towards LGBTQ child characters and open ourselves up to what can be learned from them. I also argue that both the past (with its wounds and trauma) and the future must be accepted into the present in order to give children the childhood they desire, rather than the childhood we recall. Both Fun Home and Assigned Male demonstrate that childhood is far from the simplistic happy time of life and can be just as fraught with complication as adulthood. Rather than try to protect children from this, these authors argue that we should empower children to locate their own sense of authenticity, in terms of both gender and sexuality. I argue that children are full of possibility and wisdom to guide current populations and change the future for the better through their struggles.

    Committee: William Albertini Dr. (Advisor); Erin Labbie Dr. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; Literature
  • 10. Owen, Benedict Cartoon Conceptualism: Periodical Comics and Modernism in the United States

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, English

    Cartoons and modern art have been mutually defined by their engagement in representing and codifying experiences of modernity. Despite this, there has been little sustained work on the reciprocal connections between cartoons and modern art in the period prior to 1960. Cartoon Conceptualism traces these neglected connections, focusing on avant-garde art and cartoons produced in New York during the twentieth century, with an emphasis on how the discourses of modern art illuminate the conceptual nature of cartooning. Contrary to the idea of cartoons as straightforwardly communicative, my work demonstrates a way of looking at comic strips and periodical cartoons that emphasizes their hermetic density, and their reflexivity about that density—the ways that cartoons tend to explore their own processes of compression and repetition. Dada, Surrealism, and their inheritors are the most useful refractive lens by which to view cartoons because their conceptual strain of modernism emphasizes how treacherous representational pictures can be. Moreover, there are discontinuous points of direct formal exchange between conceptual artists and cartoonists, which I track through specific works in the 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1970s, and 1980s. My first chapter explains the conceptual nature of cartooning from the mid-nineteenth century on, and shows the importance of caricature and single-panel cartooning to the New York Dada artists. I then explore the significance of Rube Goldberg's cartoons to Dada and Surrealism, and consider how Goldberg's cartoons establish a way of reading industrial capitalism's frustrations for contemplative pleasure. My second chapter focuses on George Herriman's Krazy Kat and its innovative reworking of comics page layout, which amounts to a form of visual syncopation. Syncopated design aids in Herriman's critique of fixed identity, making character and story contingent on shifting paths of reading. Moreover, it suggests a melancholic form for the comics page (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Jared Gardner (Advisor); Elizabeth Hewitt (Committee Member); Thomas Davis (Committee Member); Ryan Friedman (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; American History; American Literature; American Studies; Art History; Fine Arts; Literature; Mass Media
  • 11. Porter, Whitney Monstrous Reproduction: The Power of the Monstered Maternal in Graphic Form

    MA, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

    Patriarchal anxieties about and resistance to women's embodied power has pushed women into the margins with the monsters. Through psychoanalytic perspectives on womb envy (Catherine Silver; Sigmund Freud) and abjection (Julia Kristeva) we can delve into the dark space of the monstrous maternal. This space is illuminated in a number of comics and other modes of visual narrative from the 20th and 21st century. These beings unveil the longstanding rhetoric of control that patriarchal social structures depend upon in order to police the possibilities of not only women's bodies in terms of personal agency, but also of sexuality and reproduction of nonhuman bodies. I investigate how this connection to and identification with monstrosity influences cultural discourses about reproduction, identity, and agency in both. Not all of the stories I investigate are explicitly about women. However, the presence of what Barbara Creed aptly defines as the “monstrous feminine” and explicit images of reproduction and the womb are present and essential in each of the texts I discuss. Ultimately, when viewed from a psychoanalytic feminist perspective, monstrous representations of the maternal and of the womb offer generative spaces to rethink and resist structures of control over bodies.

    Committee: Vera Camden (Advisor); Tammy Clewell (Committee Member); Sara Newman (Committee Member) Subjects: Ecology; Literature; Psychology; Womens Studies
  • 12. Bliss, Courtney Reframing Normal: The Inclusion of Deaf Culture in the X-Men Comic Books

    Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Popular Culture

    During the over fifty-year history of The X-Men comic books and the numerous stories told within the various series, the mutants have been intentionally written as metaphors for how ethnic, racial, sexual, religious, and cultural minorities are treated in the United States. During that same time, the writers also unintentionally mirror deaf individuals and Deaf Culture in their portrayal of mutants and X-Men. Considering the vast number of stories in existence, I focus on the early works of Stan Lee, Grant Morrison's time as author of New X-Men, Joss Whedon's time as author of Astonishing X-Men, and Matt Fraction's time as author of Uncanny X-Men. In this thesis, I perform a close reading of these four authors' works and compare them to the history of the deaf and Deaf in America. In this close reading, I found three recurring themes within The X-Men comics that paralleled Deaf Culture: Geography, Colonization, and Culture. Both groups' origins lie in the residential schools that were founded to provide a supportive educational environment. From this environment, a culture developed and spread as students graduated. These same schools and cultures came under similar attacks from the dominant culture. They survived the attacks and have grown stronger since. Throughout, I use theorists such as Gramsci and Althusser alongside Deaf Studies scholars such as Lennard Davis and Douglas Baynton to analyze these themes, parallels, and events. These parallels potentially allow readers to be more accepting and understanding of Deaf Culture because they introduce Deaf Culture to the reader in the familiar setting of the superhero comic narrative.

    Committee: Jeremy Wallach Ph. D. (Advisor); Jeffrey Brown Ph. D. (Committee Member); Katherine Meizel Ph. D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative
  • 13. Lewis, Chad Information Acquisition and Sequential Narratives

    MFA, Kent State University, 2016, College of Communication and Information / School of Visual Communication Design

    This thesis explores the comic's role in reading comprehension and information acquisition. The comic medium offers a potentially high level of effectiveness due to the visual narrative's many modalities of learning within it's constitution, both design and aesthetic. Specifically, this thesis explores the comic's inherent design elements to determine the effectiveness of the sequential visual narrative as a vehicle to tell substantive stories through the intersection of visual and textual storytelling. Secondary research was conducted to provide a brief summation of the comic's historical evolution and its expanding role as a modern information delivery system, as well as effective visual communication methods. Secondary research informed the design and creation of a nine-page comic centering on the writing of John Muir. To test this completed prototype's effectiveness as a narrative and knowledge transfer tool, an inductive, focus group centered research approach was utilized. Participants were selected through a “purposive” sampling method, and included 40 undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled in upper level Visual Communication & Design courses. Focus group feedback collected was then transcribed and reviewed. Broad patterns emerged from repeated phrases and keywords which, when grouped together, informed trends in user experiences of reading the comic and traditional text. Feedback from participants supports this prototype's ability to show a broad idea such as John Muir's nature connectivity through attention to detail, form and panel closure. Conversely, the comic medium's unique structure, if balanced incorrectly, pushes readers away with an improper equilibrium of the comic's various interrelated dimensions. These findings are equally important because they point to the relationships of the subtle, interconnected dimensions of the comic. In order for this medium to tell a dynamic narrative and effectively convey information, the foun (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Ken Visocky O'Grady MFA (Advisor) Subjects: Art Education; Communication; Design; Education
  • 14. Nader, Alexander "Infinite Earths": Crossmedia Adaptation and the Development of Continuity in the DC Animated Universe

    Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2015, Popular Culture

    This thesis examines the process of adapting comic book properties into other visual media. I focus on the DC Animated Universe, the popular adaptation of DC Comics characters and concepts into all-ages programming. This adapted universe started with Batman: The Animated Series and comprised several shows on multiple networks, all of which fit into a shared universe based on their comic book counterparts. The adaptation of these properties is heavily reliant to intertextuality across DC Comics media. The shared universe developed within the television medium acted as an early example of comic book media adapting the idea of shared universes, a process that has been replicated with extreme financial success by DC and Marvel (in various stages of fruition). I address the process of adapting DC Comics properties in television, dividing it into “strict” or “loose” adaptations, as well as derivative adaptations that add new material to the comic book canon. This process was initially slow, exploding after the first series (Batman: The Animated Series) changed networks and Saturday morning cartoons flourished, allowing for more opportunities for producers to create content. References, crossover episodes, and the later series Justice League Unlimited allowed producers to utilize this shared universe to develop otherwise impossible adaptations that often became lasting additions to DC Comics publishing. Concepts developed in this paratextual universe became popular enough to see recursive adaptation in DC Comics ongoing comic book universe and other media, emphasizing the importance of cross-media connections. The continued popularity and success of comic book media is reliant on cross-media synergy and shared universes.

    Committee: Jeffrey Brown PhD (Advisor); Becca Cragin PhD (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Comparative Literature; Fine Arts; Literature; Mass Media; Modern History; Modern Literature; Multimedia Communications
  • 15. Bermello Isusi, Mikel La autobiografia y el comic espanol: la de/formacion del yo a partir del genero, la sexualidad y la dis/capacidad

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Spanish and Portuguese

    This dissertation explores Spanish autobiographies in the form graphic narratives, together with my own autobiography. It addresses mental and physical health in three Spanish graphic novels through two queer autobiographies, Roberta Marrero's 2016 El bebe verde (The Green Baby, 2016) and Juan Naranjo's 2020 Mariquita (Sissy, 2020), and a “special needs' parents' memoir” entitled Una posibilidad (A Chance, 2016). While chapter 1 addresses the authors' experiences during childhood through early adulthood to come to terms with the incapacitating heteronormative ideal, chapter 2 tackles the difficulties in understanding and sharing the perspective of a three-year-old with a cognitive disability such as cerebral palsy. Eventually, my autobiography pays attention to, on the one hand, gender and sexuality, and illness and disability, on the other. As I approach my gender and sexual identities, I explore how these intersect with different diagnoses, including, but not limited to, depression and Cystic Fibrosis in COVID-19 times. This dissertation shows the importance of understanding how society influences how people identify themselves, in addition to proving that there is an expectation of being cis and heterosexual (Rich), and able-bodied (Ruer). In the analysis of these visual and verbal representations of gender, sexuality, and disability, as well as in the autobiography, I demonstrate that these given situations are worsened through the incapacitating society that rejects queer and disabled populations. As I address many instances of repudiation, I can exemplify how these lived experiences are dismissed and aggravated.

    Committee: Eugenia Romero (Advisor); Jorge Pérez (Committee Member); Ana del Sarto (Committee Member); Laura Podalsky (Advisor) Subjects: European Studies; Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Literature; Mental Health
  • 16. Mathews-Pett, Amelia Finding Televisual Folklore in the Supernatural Procedural

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

    The makers of commercial popular culture often incorporate folklore into their works. Although their definition of folklore is generally restricted to pre-modern narratives and beliefs that form only a small part of what folklore is, their works relate to traditional content in a more expansive way. This dissertation examines a contemporary television genre that not only incorporates traditional content but, I argue, functions as folklore in its own right by negotiating truth and belief, constructing social Others, and, at the meta-level, constituting an archive. Since the 1990s, serial narratives in which everyday people investigate and solve supernatural disturbances in a procedural format have become a mainstay of North American television and streaming media. Such programs, including The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, have generally lacked a cohesive genre designation. I argue for “supernatural procedural” as the genre's preferred term and trace its history from predecessors in Victorian-era occult detective fiction to early forms in 1970s television, through solidification in the 1990s into its current permutations. I outline conventions that include, among others, realistic worldbuilding, a blend of episodic and serial storytelling, and, notably, a tendency to engage with folklore. Employing an approach blending folkloristics and popular culture studies, I argue that specific characteristics of the supernatural procedural allow series to function as televisual folklore: folklore not just adapted by, but actually occurring within the television medium. This emphasis contributes to newer avenues in folklore studies, which has only recently begun seriously analyzing television, and popular culture studies, where folkloristic perspectives are often overlooked. This work considers the abovementioned series at length alongside subsequent programs like Supernatural and Grimm, using supporting analysis from Lucifer, Evil, SurrealEstate, and Wellington Pa (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Dorothy Noyes (Advisor); Angus Fletcher (Committee Member); Merrill Kaplan (Committee Member); Jared Gardner (Advisor) Subjects: Film Studies; Folklore; Mass Media
  • 17. Porter, Whitney Monster Love: The Truth-Telling and Reparative Power of Monsters in Visual Narratives and Fiction

    PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

    The monster, as I will argue, is a mirror and a truth-teller. Monsters offer ways for us to consider those parts of ourselves that we might rather keep hidden. In order to see monsters as such, the personal must not be avoided for the sake of a traditional academic approach. By understanding the truth-telling powers of monsters as I set out to do here, our attention to their stories can become opportunities to look inward and heal internal ruptures between our visible and monstrous selves.

    Committee: Vera Camden (Advisor) Subjects: Film Studies; Gender Studies; Literature; Pedagogy; Psychobiology; Womens Studies
  • 18. Stirek, Lindsey Manga Afterlives of Ogura hyakunin isshu: The Case of Chihayafuru

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, East Asian Languages and Literatures

    Classical literature does not live purely within the confines of its own pages, but lives on through its many afterlives, whether those are adaptations, parodies, allusions, etc., which become part of the history of the work and influence how readers interact with the text. At the present moment, manga about or containing classical literature are studied mainly as derivative adaptations or pedagogical tools rather than as texts in their own right contributing to the afterlife of the source text. Few scholars specialize in both classical literature and manga or comics, and as a result, there are very few studies that treat both the literary and visual aspects of the text with equal attention. Therefore, texts like Chihayafuru, a manga which incorporates classical Japanese poetry into its plot, have been overlooked despite their potential to contribute to the continuing legacy of the source text while also creating a separate and unique narrative. I aim to address this gap by providing a case study applying the techniques of close reading from classical literature and multimodal (visual and linguistic) analysis from comics studies to Chihayafuru; by combining the two, I examine the interplay of word and image and how it affects the reading of the manga itself as well as the interpretation of the source text. My findings indicate that through manga, poetry interpretation can be accessed through multiple modes, often working in tandem, and education about classical poetry is attainable without explicit instruction or even an educational aim. Readers do not learn only when they are cognizant of being taught, and indeed the ways in which Chihayafuru educates readers encourage an emotional connection to classical poetry over an academic one. Further, manga like Chihayafuru provide an important function that many other approaches to interpreting and engaging with classical literature do not: it provides a model for how readers can and should interact with the source tex (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Naomi Fukumori (Advisor); Charles Quinn (Committee Member); Frederick Aldama (Committee Member); Shelley Quinn (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Literature
  • 19. Williams, Gregory Cyborgs, Maturation, and Posthumanism in Young Adult Speculative Fiction and Comics

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

    This dissertation is an examination of maturation through the lens of adolescent cyborgs in young adult literature. I begin by asserting that adolescents are inherently posthuman because of their liminal, hybrid subjectivity. Humanism asks teenagers to suppress what it perceives as monstrous otherness so that they can become normative adult citizens. The cyborg is therefore an excellent analytical tool for examining how these adolescent identities are constrained to specific kinds of humanist conceptualizations of identity through the development that society promotes. I offer a complex matrix for understanding subjectivity that navigates humanist and posthumanist ideologies alongside conceptualizations of embodiment and socialization. In the body of the dissertation, I examine three cyborgian figures: the shapeshifter, the witch, and the virtual reality avatar. Shapeshifters embody adolescent change. Their developmental trajectories follow their navigation of the dogmatism and manipulations of humanist pursuits of science. The mutability of the shapeshifter symbolizes the adolescent's experience with changing bodies, which humanism seeks to control and posthumanism seeks to embrace. Witches must navigate access to power that exceeds that normally allowed to teenagers. The school story, a narrative regularly associated with this figure in young adult literature, restricts adolescents to particular identities by teaching them to control their powers. The virtual reality avatar signifies the adolescent's navigation of posthuman space. YAL normally privileges analog reality, asking teenagers to leave behind their virtual space in order to mature. In each of these three figures, I analyze narratives that follow the normative, humanist trajectory of growth alongside those that explore alternative, posthumanist maturations. I examine the figures across various visual and verbal formats, looking at film, comics, and prose adaptations of archetypal cyborg figures. The (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Michelle Abate (Advisor); Caroline Clark (Committee Member); Brian McHale (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature
  • 20. Tiako Djomatchoua, Murielle Sandra Sports et Routes Migratoires : entre Imaginaires (Post) Coloniaux et Experiences Individuelles dans Fais peter les basses, Bruno! et Le Chemin de L' Amerique de Baru

    Master of Arts, Miami University, 2021, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

    This thesis studies the relationships between sport and migration in Baru's comics. Examining sport as a pull factor of migration in these comics leads us to the close analysis of individual experiences, trajectories, and motivations. Respectively set in the colonial and the postcolonial era, Le Chemin de l'Amerique and Fais peter les basses, Bruno! reveal similar patterns used to account for Said Boudiaf's and Slimane's journeys from Africa to France, with America being the ultimate destination for Said. Analyzed comparatively, these two comics enable us not only to codify Baru's unique style, but also to unravel a tradition of discourses and imaginaries that make the connection between sport and migration trendy and complex. At the level of the form, this thesis seeks to analyze how Baru uses similar techniques, resources, and strategies in these two comics to account for individual migration narratives, with an emphasis on the aesthetics of the image over the text. At the level of content, this thesis will analyze how sport, in tracing migration roads, unveils political, economic, and social imaginaries that connect Africa to France.

    Committee: Mark McKinney (Advisor); Elisabeth Hodges (Committee Member); Jonathan Strauss (Committee Member) Subjects: African History; African Literature; African Studies; Art Criticism; Literature