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

Master of Fine Arts, University of Akron, 2023, Creative Writing

The poetry presented herein is more than half of a collection-in-progress that grapples with the cross-cultural condemnation of the unfeminine aspects of womanhood into the monstrous. The succubus, the guiding voice of the central narrative, is a female demon that is said to seduce men and eat their souls. As her story unfolds, she is accompanied by the voices of other female monsters and non-monstrous women as they navigate the inherent violence of love. This collection aims to explore and refute what is and is not monstrous, how monstrosity is created, and the ways in which what some see as monstrous is only responsive to the cultural rhetoric and surrounding displays of outright femininity and female power.

Committee: Mary Biddinger (Advisor); Caryl Pagel (Committee Member); Christopher Barzak (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Creative Writing/Fiction

The Adirondack Monsters Guide is a collection of short stories that fill a hole in American literature. In other mountainous regions throughout the United States, monsters roam and their stories fill the local lore. Regional lore saturates the cultures and the reach of their stories spread across the continent. Bigfoot roams the Rockies and Appalachia hosts ghosts and monsters alike. This collection gives the same attention and care to the oddness within the Adirondacks that other mountainous regions receive. The Adirondack Monsters Guide was inspired both by local historical sources and collections of other speculative fiction. The Adirondack Monsters Guide takes interest in genres like fabulism, gothic, and the uncanny. The stories within this collection are reminiscent of other speculative authors including Shirley Jackson, Steven Millhauser, Kelly Link, and George Saunders. Like its predecessors, this collection wields the speculative genre for thematic importance and as a means of social commentary. The Adirondack Monsters Guide uses genre conventions of ghosts and monsters to discuss societal issues like class, gender, and grief while also examining the human condition. In this collection, the weight of gender expectations are a burning ghost ship and grief is a monstrous moose. The Adirondack Monsters Guide is a collection that embraces oddness across multiple speculative genres and invites readers to imagine what other creatures might exist up in those mountains.

Committee: Lawrence Coates Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Reema Rajbanshi Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Popular Culture

Monstrous urban legends (or cryptids) from the Appalachian state of West Virginia, specifically Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, and the Grafton Monster, have gone from local tales of horror to international popular culture icons known and loved around the world. While the stories of these creatures have long been familiar to cryptid enthusiasts, more recently these legends have had an impact on the communities surrounding them and entire cultures abroad. Using models from dark tourism studies, first-hand interviews, on-location observations, translated documents, and various folkloric and monster study sources, the effects of these cryptids upon the areas from which they hail are observed and compared as well as the impact they have made upon popular culture both in the United States and in other countries such as Japan. This thesis will explore how the towns of Point Pleasant, Flatwoods, and Grafton, West Virginia use these legends as a means of financial income and how they are integral parts of their cultural identities.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Advisor); Esther Clinton PhD (Advisor); Montana Miller PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Asian Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Folklore; Sociology

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2021, English

Gold is a central figure in early medieval northern European literature. In early English and Icelandic cultures, it theoretically served as a system stabilizer and maintained social bonds. In practice, however, as seen in Volsunga Saga and Beowulf, gold is clearly a volatile substance that serves only to sow discord and create violence. In its truest form of the hoard, gold operates as a site of both psychological and physical transformation. It is a threat to the very societies it is meant to protect. Ultimately, its use shows the inevitability of the decline of the societies that heavily relied upon it.

Committee: Mary Kate Hurley (Advisor) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Icelandic and Scandinavian Literature; Literature; Medieval Literature; Middle Ages

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, Art

Monsters are powerful symbols of transformative agency, heavily ingrained in Western culture. With transmutating creatures living rent-free in our collective imagination, I have to wonder: why is it taboo for queer people to transform? Tracing a historical line from biblical angels, Greek mythology, the gothic novel, and contemporary horror cinema, I create a framework for understanding monsters as revered, transformative figures in important texts throughout the centuries. Just as LGBTQ+ activists reclaimed `queer' as a radical identifier, I reclaim `monster' as an uncompromising symbol of bodily agency, engaging with Queer readings and critical media theory along the way. Using my MFA Thesis artwork God Made Me (And They Love Me), I weave my soft sculpture beasties through historical imagery, religious text, folklore, and media pieces depicting `monster' and `monstrosity'.

Committee: Amy Youngs (Advisor); Caitlin McGurk (Committee Member); Gina Osterloh (Committee Member); Scott Deb (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Fine Arts; Gender Studies; Glbt Studies; Mass Media

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2021, English

Reading Dracula, you are given characters who show personalities which a modern reader would deem strong and agentic qualities, but the men in Dracula and perhaps Stoker himself, do not seem to think that way. The venom of the vampire is like a parasite, making these women more “masculine” but also sickly and animalistic. They are turned into monsters which in the end must die, as with Lucy, or be cleansed like Mina, likely out of commentary on the types of equality desired by the New Woman and the stereotypes created for these women. Dracula made the vampire popular and created a character which is memorialized even today, but it is flawed in more ways than one, the villainization and victimization being such a flaw. As a response, Elizabeth Kostova commented on these flaws. The Historian is a completely different story, but the villain is mostly the same. He has the same origins and the name at least, but this Dracula doesn't care about who he hunts and really, he is more of an intellectual monster than an animalistic one. The women are not the ones being attacked by the author for their mixed masculinity and femininity; they are free to be just people living in their own times and reaping the benefits of the feminist progression they are existing with. The Historian uses adaptation to let these women act in such a way while connecting to a story of old that worked against persons such as the new woman. The thesis discusses how adaptations, such as The Historian, have the power to progress classic stories into a contemporary frame, vampire stories having an increased opportunity due to the immortality of the characters at hand, and demonstrate the shift in society and feminism through the generations. Through The Historian, such a progressive inter-textual conversation is shown: it progresses Dracula into a contemporary context that speaks to a westernized concept of feminist progression allowing for the women to be further removed from villainization.

Committee: Michael Mattison (Advisor); Scot Hinson (Committee Member); Brooke Wagner (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; British and Irish Literature; Folklore; Gender Studies; Literature; Modern Literature; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, American Culture Studies

The archetypal dragon, a composite of different living animals, has been popular for centuries, and we still tell stories about it today. One other monster seems to match the dragon in popularity, though it is not among the ranks of the traditional or legendary. Since their discovery in the late 18th century, dinosaurs have been wildly popular in both science and mass culture. The scientific status of dinosaurs as animals has not prevented people from viewing them as monsters, and in some cases, treating these prehistoric reptiles like dragons. This thesis investigates the relationship between the dragon and the dinosaur and the interplay between dragon iconography and dinosaur imagery in five dinosaur monster films from the mid-20th century: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Gojira (1954), Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Gorgo (1961), and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964). In addressing the arguments other critics have made against equating the dragon with the dinosaur, I will show that the two monstrous categories are treated as similar entities in specific instances, such as in monster-slaying narratives. The five films analyzed in this thesis are monster-slaying narratives that use the dinosaur in place of the dragon, thus “draconifying” the dinosaur. The dinosaur, as symbol of prehistory and evolution, renders the monster-slaying narrative concerned with evolutionary theory and humanity's place in nature, with each film interacting with culturally specific ideologies related to Darwin's theory of evolution. I show how there are two different types of dino-monster narrative that use the dinosaur either as an evil dragon that must be destroyed or as a dragon that can save humanity from internal or external threats. This thesis concludes with an examination of the ideology that surrounds the dragon-slaying myth, ideas about human-animal relations, and an analysis of recent monster movies that continue the discourse involving evolutionary theory.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Advisor); Esther Clinton PhD (Committee Member); Erin Labbie PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Asian Studies; Film Studies

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Creative Writing/Fiction

The stories in these four chapbooks examine borders, limitations, and the mechanisms of exclusion by which society operates, as well as the mechanisms of inclusion through which it might become kinder and better. The tales trot the globe and zip through time from a darkly dreamed-up, dystopic version of western Ohio to the Bucharest of the 1930s to the Podunk Fairgrounds of contemporary Central California. These stories examine tensions between agency and authority, freedom and self-destruction, and engagement and withdrawal, as the characters in them reckon with the possibility and peril of acceptance—of themselves, others, and the sadder inevitabilities of life—and interrogate notions of what it means to love and accept someone in a world where people are constantly denying others the same treatment. Many stories began as ethical questions the author couldn't answer; rather than prescribe solutions, the stories observe at length the attempts of characters to find light in what is morally murky, and to justify to themselves and their community why they've let their light guide them thus. The collection of twenty-four stories was split into fourths in a concession to the attractive nature of the chapbook form and arranged according to natural cycles to approximate four seasons of weather, four times of the day, and four approximate stages of human life. “In an Ohio Dreamscape” has a wintry, midnight feel, and operates by the twilit illogic of dreams, childhood whimsy, and magic. “The Journalist is Here” springs the reader into a busy morning of work, travel, and praxis in the outer world; its pieces stem from autobiography, history, and facts gathered in pen-scrawled journals. “Lovelorn: Five Blues,” the noontime, summer section, examines mid-life heartache and the costs of living with and without love. “Grasses like Flayed Lion Hides,” the autumnal, California-set section, follows the sun to the Golden State and dips us West towards evening, night and death; its ch (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Wendell Mayo (Advisor); Lawrence Coates (Committee Member); Theresa Williams (Committee Member) Subjects: Animals; Comparative Literature; Cultural Anthropology; Experiments; Fine Arts; Folklore; Limnology; Literature; Modern Literature; Personality; Social Structure; Spirituality

M.A. (Master of Arts in English), Ohio Dominican University, 2017, English

The horror genre has a long-standing tradition of being sexually charged. There could be a simple explanation for this: horror encompasses an array of content that has historically been considered mature, such as violence and terror, and, since sexuality has also been considered mature, horror has made an appropriate vehicle for dealing with sexual themes. Horror has also been described as a genre which allows humans to exorcise their fears and anxieties by giving them form through literary representation, allowing scholars to gauge the fears of a society by examining its horror fiction. In this essay, I will argue that the evolution of sexually-charged monsters follows the evolution of sexual attitudes of a culture, and can, by analyzing works from the Victorian period and post-Great War period, reveal the sexual anxieties of said culture. The two, sexuality and fear, are linked in horror, and that relationship manifests itself through fictional monsters. By analyzing select horror fiction from England and America with psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer criticism, there is indication of not only what sexual anxieties were bubbling just beneath the surface of the overall cultural consciousness, but how those anxieties shifted between time period and regions. These shifts will reveal themselves through the monsters and other entities in the works: Frankenstein's monster reveals the unspoken anxieties of motherhood; Jonathan Harker from Dracula feels emasculated in his imprisonment and the novel presents some of the hidden horrors of domestic life; the monsters of H.P. Lovecraft become something beyond nature and larger than life, as sexuality becomes more open and the world is rocked by World War I. The horror, it would seem, between the Victorian and post-Great War periods becomes literally larger and less intimate.

Committee: Jeremy Glazier M.F.A. (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2013, English

This collection of poems is interested in the tensions between childhood and adulthood, especially surrounding themes of fear, family, and mortality. In three narrative verse sequences, these themes are engaged using specific characters and references from history and literature (including the lives and works of A. A. and Christopher Robin Milne and Maurice Sendak) as well as fictional and autobiographical elements of my own experience and design. The guiding belief threaded into the project is that neither childhood nor adulthood is characterized by freedom from fear, sadness, or hardship.

Committee: Keith Tuma Dr. (Committee Chair); cris cheek Dr. (Committee Member); Margaret Luongo (Committee Member) Subjects: Aging; American Literature; Language Arts; Literature; Modern Literature

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2010, English

This thesis analyzes Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, Choke, and Invisible Monsters through the lens of postmodern theory as unconventional romance novels. Jean Baudrillard's simulacra, what have come to simulate reality, have replaced the real and eradicated meaning in postmodern society. According to Louis Althusser, institutions known as Ideological State Apparatuses, or ISAs, promote the ideology of the bourgeoisie to reproduce the balance of power between the ruling class and the proletariat. Because of the dehumanizing effects of the simulacra and the ISAs, the characters of Palahniuk's novels struggle to make human connections. Their realization of their subjugated position in a capitalist society breaks them free of the influence of the ISAs, and they subsequently revolt in order to pursue what they truly desire – just one person to connect with. The conclusion of the novels coincides with the resolution between the protagonists and their counterparts, resulting in a "happy ending."

Committee: Dr. Robert Miklitsch (Advisor) Subjects: American History; Gender; Romance Literature

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Music Ethnomusicology

This thesis is a discussion of the role popular musicians play in forming and informing the identities of fans. I specifically look at the ways in which Lady Gaga as an individual, as well as her body of work, provides a framework for fans to craft their own identities. I view popular music and Lady Gaga's career through a feminist lens, analyzing how Gaga's texts, music, videos, performances, and other public appearances are presented to project ideas that coincide with some of the goals of third wave feminism. Gaga's most fanatic fans, deemed her Little Monsters, craft a large portion of their identities around Gaga's public presentations. Not only do these Little Monsters individually identify with Gaga, they often form communities based around their Gaga centered commonalities. In this thesis I explore those who self-identify as Little Monsters and how being a part of the Monster collective impacts the way in which they view both themselves and others. I also explore how identities are crafted and perpetuated via the internet and online communication.

Committee: Kara Attrep (Advisor); Katherine Meizel (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Popular Culture

Invasion is ubiquitous in popular culture, and while they may be fictional, marauding hordes play on very real human fears. Invaders evoke deep cultural anxieties and challenge our identities on both a personal and national level. This theme has been readily adopted by shooter video games, where players gleefully blast through hordes of foreign invaders, human or otherwise. Most of the scholarly attention given to video games has focused on attempting to find a correlation between video game violence and real world violence, while little attention has been given to the forms this violence takes. This thesis attempts to correct this deficiency by analyzing the theme of invasion in video games. Linking these games to earlier invasion narratives, such as George Tomkyns Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (1871) and H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898), I argue that the aliens in these narratives are linked to cultural anxieties concerning Otherness. Brought into a contemporary, post 9/11 setting, I argue that video games in series such as Halo and Call of Duty portray Muslim and Arab peoples as invading Others and play into conservative political rhetoric concerning the “War on Terror” that renders Otherness inhuman and an object of fear. The games thus attempt to validate American foreign policy since September 11 by guiding players toward specific subjectivities. I ultimately explore the medium and genre as tools for maintaining imperialist power while also exploring methods of resistance to that power.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Committee Chair); Jeffrey Brown PhD (Committee Member); Esther Clinton PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Artificial Intelligence; Communication; Cultural Anthropology; Ethnic Studies; Mass Communications; Mass Media