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Item Lady Lawyers: How The Good Wife Portrays Females in the Legal System(North Dakota State University, 2012) Hammes, AbbyThis research is an attempt at analyzing the messages that entertainment media sends to the public about female lawyers. Although much research has been done on this topic, it has not been revisited in many years, since the overwhelming response to Ally McBeal in the late 1990’s. Since culture is constantly changing, it is important to keep studying this representation to analyze positive or negative growth or change. An analysis of a more current television show, The Good Wife, which first aired in 2009, was used in this research to examine how American television portrays females in the legal system, how stereotypes and prescribed gender roles influence how these women behave, and what these characters suggest about the way society thinks about female lawyers in regards to their professionalism and success.Item Writing Back to the Center In Louis Owens’ Wolfsong(North Dakota State University, 2012) Markwardt, KyleLouis Owens, like many other Native American writers, finds himself writing back to the center in his novel, Wolfsong. Owens re-shapes the idea of the Native American by creating a realistic interpretation of Native experience. In Steinbeck’s “Flight” Mexican Americans are stereotyped and limited as characters. They are portrayed as people to be feared. Rather than letting this idea of minorities let sit, Owens writes back to Steinbeck in Wolfsong, creating a similar story to Steinbeck, but with a different ending for the Native American character. Owens erases Steinbeck’s portrayal and creates a more realistic interpretation of the interactions between the colonizers and the ones who have been colonized on our very own soil.Item Rise of Zombies in a Post-September 11th Culture(North Dakota State University, 2012) Gullickson, LeeThis project explores the effect the 9/11 terrorist attacks had on Western culture by looking at zombies in popular culture prior to 9/11 and how the zombie genre has changed to reflect Americans’ fear of another terrorist attack. The presentation examines the cultural role early zombie movies, Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978), had upon their releases and how they reflected Western culture’s social anxieties of their time. The next focus is on the September 11th terrorist attacks and the lasting effect they have had on Western culture. The 9/11 attacks are compared to Immanuel Kant’s theories of the sublime and how a society is impacted by such an extreme act of hyper violence. A newer perspective of apocalyptic rhetoric combines Kant’s theories with traditional apocalyptic rhetoric to create a term known as “apocalyptic sublime”. By applying theories on the “apocalyptic sublime” to themes in zombie movies after 9/11, the project relates this comparison to the rise of zombies in popular culture with the movies 28 Days Later (2003) and City of the Dead (2005) to reflect the change in Western culture.Item Cultural Interpretations of Agency in Film Adaptations of Macbeth(North Dakota State University, 2012) Wagner, JesseMuch of the criticism on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth has focused on the question of agency in the play: What drives Macbeth to commit regicide to gain the throne? Is Macbeth in control of his own actions? The play does not seem to give a clear answer to this question, and there is no critical consensus. I will examine filmic interpretations made by directors regarding the question of agency in their adaptations of the play. The film I will be focusing on is Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957), and I will be using Rupert Goold’s Macbeth (2010) for comparison. Drawing on auteur theory and branching out into cultural semiotics, I will analyze the different ways in which directors manipulate and go beyond Shakespeare’s text to support their interpretation. Literary theory and the application of a New Historicist lens will allow me to determine how the directors’ choices reflect the culture in which the films were produced.Item Fictional Dreaming(North Dakota State University, 2012) Rittman, JacobMy project explores the realms of dreams. In-depth research has been conducted upon the topic derived from various schools of thought and also past research studies. Some of the research will come from well-known historical figures, while other research will derive from some obscure, contemporary researchers. Coinciding with my research is a lengthy dream journal featuring entries of my personal nighttime experiences. The research has laid the defining groundwork of dreams, and the dream journal proceeds to provide source material for a creative conclusion for my project. The final product is a short story adapted directly from the entries, themed by recurring items of my personal dreams. The primary basis of my project comes from the theory that an inner wisdom can be gained through dream analysis. I have outlined and personally experienced the path toward this alleged enlightenment. My project has the potential to not only provide an interesting showcase for those intrigued by the subject matter, but it may also inspire others to take up a similar experiment.Item Breasts and the West: Breast Size, Bad Girls, and the Japanese Ideal(North Dakota State University, 2012) Thieschafer, JacintaMy project is about the role of breasts in anime. Although the popular belief is that anime depicts a cultural obsession with large breasts, after watching years of anime, I noticed that there was a trope: only the bad girls have large breasts. In Japan, where women typically have smaller breasts than in the west, there wasn’t interest in breasts until the Japanese began to have contact with the West, post WWII. As I began to research the topic, I learned that heroines (good girls) in comics are a portrayal of the ideal. Therefore, I argue that small breasts are associated with the ideal, traditional Japanese woman. This leads me to suggest that perhaps large breasts in anime are a signifier of something that is not traditionally Japanese. When this significance is attached to a villain, westernization is seen as a threat to the traditional way of life. Therefore it is up to the small-breasted heroine, representing the values of traditional culture, to defeat this villain, who represents the dangers of westernization, and win the hero for the sake of maintaining traditional Japanese values.Item Evolution of Social Media and its Future in Business(North Dakota State University, 2012) Spaeth, BryantThis project studies the history and evolution and its move from being solely a social connection tool to a viable business tool. The research will draw primarily from secondary research of different social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Pinterest. The research will come from a variety of scholarly articles that will teach about the history of these sites, but will focus on their recent use in the business world as an advertising tool. The project will also be supplemented by various interviews of people that are actively using social media as a tool in their workplace. Seeing as social media is a fairly new phenomenon, the research will come primarily from the last decade.Item Defying Gravity: Female Creative Writers, Self-Destruction, and Resilience(North Dakota State University, 2012) Torgeson, TessaThis project explores the correlation between female creative writers and self-destruction. Self-destruction encompasses a constellation of disorders such as alcoholism, self-harm, mental illness and eating disorders- all of which interfere with a woman’s ability to function in daily life. History gives us many examples of mentally ill female writers such as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. There is extensive research on these authors and their struggles with mental illness. Yet, little has been written about healing and recovery. In a Prozac Nation where one in ten people take anti-depressants, it is increasingly important that the traditional view of mental illness evolves beyond a pathological model, towards a more holistic, healing model. As such, my creative non-fiction piece is written in the best form to convey its complex message. It is a fractured Deconstructionist narrative that juggles three different voices. The first layer is a narrative voice, consisting of biographical information, writing, and research about women writers such as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf and self-destruction. Another layer will be my creative non-fiction writing. Lastly, I will use a metaphor comparing self-destruction to stars, using Carl Sagan’s Cosmos as a guide to astronomy.Item In Spite of Thunder (or Flight from a Burning Tree): An Exercise in Poetic Recklessness(North Dakota State University, 2012) Nelson, LinneaThis project is a creative exploration and exercise in the serial poetry genre, grounded in the theories set forth in poet Dean Young’s book The Art of Recklessness. Young’s belief that, “No one knows how to write a poem,” and that poets should “attend” or listen to a work as it is being created, rather than allow their own designs or desired directions to override what is happening more organically, served as an ideological base for the construction of the twelve poems in this original collection. Extensive research in the canon of sequential poetry (poems which, while being independent of each other, are parts of a larger poem or poetic concept, and are often written using strategies similar to Young’s), also informed this creative writing process. Included in the project is a reflection on the finished body of poetry, and the implementation and influence of devices and approaches taken from the consulted sources.Item Negotiating Fargo: Janteloven, How Fargo of You, and Lived Reality(North Dakota State University, 2012) Brazier, BaileyDrawing on cultural studies methodology, both questioning popular perceptions and revealing a more nuanced description of Fargo’s culture, this essay examines layers of social, local, and individual perceptions of the culture of Fargo. Drawing connections and highlighting conflicts among the many texts, recorded words, and individual experiences shared in conversation, I explore a new vision of Fargo’s culture and account for my role as a researcher in cultural studies methodology. Through interviews, casual conversation, email correspondence, and observation, I gathered a small sample of the individual experience of Fargo’s culture. While much of the individual experience of Fargo aligns with social and local themes in established texts, my work suggests that deviations from the themes certainly exist.Item Living through Death in Anime(North Dakota State University, 2012) Trygstad, JordanThe focus of this project is to analyze how Japanese culture view death through anime. In aid of that goal, the project also provides some background information on traditional Japanese myths as well as the two dominant religions in Japan of Shinto and Buddhism. The project looks at several different anime, like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009), to analyze the different ways that the theme of death is represented. To focus the discussion on death, this project only discusses anime characters that have passed on having a death or near-death experience but continue to exist. The main interest of this project is how these characters continue on and interact with their living counterparts. One reason this is an important topic is the study of anime is a relatively new field, and a goal of this project is to add to that budding conversation.Item Language Contact and Change: English’s Impact on Subject Personal Pronouns in Spanish(North Dakota State University, 2012) Lorenz, AngelaIn my project, I will analyze at the debate of whether English is affecting the use of the subject personal pronoun in Spanish in the United States. In English, the subject personal pronoun is more or less obligatory—speakers cannot just say “Went to the store”; they must say “I went to the store”. However, in Spanish, “Fui a la tienda” is the same as saying “Yo fui a la tienda” because the first person singular reference is built into the verb conjugation. I will look at research asserting that there is an increased use of the SPP in Spanish speakers of the US because of its contact with English, as well as research asserting that English has not affected its use. More generally, I will look not only at the subject personal pronoun, but contextualize it with some history of change in the English and Spanish languages, as well as how language changes when in contact with another language.Item How Feminism has Transformed the Character of Morgan le Fay: A Literary and Media Analysis(North Dakota State University, 2012) Ruhland, EmileeItem Watchmen: Deconstructing the Superhero(North Dakota State University, 2012) Rapp, Erica R.Looking at how the characters of Watchmen defy stereotypical superhero characteristics.Item Unearthing the Fracking Rhetoric: A Burkeian Cluster Analysis(North Dakota State University, 2012) Kostecki, DougThis paper looks at the rhetoric utilized in the debate surrounding the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing—a process for removing oil and natural gas from deep within the ground. In order to study the rhetoric surrounding hydraulic fracturing, the websites of three lobbyist groups from both sides of the debate, six in total, were selected and analyzed using Kenneth Burke’s cluster analysis method. This method consists of discovering “what goes with what” or looking at both the frequency and intensity of, as well as the relationships between, the words utilized by a speaker in order to better understand their views. Following Carol Berthold who argues cluster-analysis can be used upon multiple subjects in order to compare them and that cluster analysis can be used in order to better understand the rhetoric behind a social movement, in this paper, I have combined the rhetoric of each of the three lobbying groups in favor of hydraulic fracturing, as well as the three lobbying groups in opposition to hydraulic fracturing, so that they can be compared as if there is only two speakers, each of them representative of the arguments of their side.Item In a Serious Relationship with my Cell Phone: A Study of Different Perspectives on Mobile Phone Use and Services(North Dakota State University, 2012) Knutson, KelseyMultiple studies have been conducted on mobile phone use and how, why, how much, and in what ways are individuals using them. However, this study discovers how mobile phones are changing the way an individual thinks, feels, relates, and then acts in regards to their cell phone. Cell phones were used with the intent to close the physical gap between people and improve long-distance relationships. Yet, this may not be the primary outcome for most mobile phone users. Instead, a relationship is being built between a user and their cell phone. The book Networked by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman states 84% of mobile phone owners go to bed with the cell phone close by so as not to miss messages or calls and 10% “can’t live” without it. By conducting my own one-on-one interviews I want to provide evidence that users feel a connection with their cell phone. When questioned about these feelings, what language and metaphors keep recurring? Then, using these findings I discuss the implications of this relationship. What does this serious relationship mean for an individual’s actions?Item Career in Blogging(North Dakota State University, 2012) Fetch, ChelseaThough a relatively new medium, blogging has transformed substantially in the past few years. What was once simple online journaling now earns some dedicated bloggers a triple figure income. This project aims to explore blogging for money and discover whether it could be a career outlet for writers. Through secondary research and interviews with bloggers, this project analyzes the earning potential of blogging and the motivations that drive money-earning bloggers.Item Honeymoon Hitchhikers: Archival Letters to Creative Nonfiction(North Dakota State University, 2012) Hauge, KateThis creative nonfiction project is based on the letters written by Mildred La Due Mead to her family during the time that she and her newlywed husband were in California after eloping and leaving Minnesota. The letters, held by the Minnesota Historical Society, give fairly detailed accounts of arriving in California mere days after the stock market crashed in 1929 and the following year as the newlyweds struggle to establish themselves in their new environment. Selections of these letters have been transformed into a narrative structure, taking historical context into account and attempting to stay as true to the letters as possible, only extrapolating to fill the gaps when necessary. Mildred’s family, the La Dues, was one of the founding families of Fertile, MN.Item The Mascot Effect 2: Social Factors Influencing Pronunciation of Coyote(North Dakota State University, 2012) Barta, KellamThe purpose of this project is to build upon previous findings that suggest that a university mascot with varying pronunciations (NDSU Bi/z/on vs. Bi/s/on) contributes to establishing and maintaining a sense of local identity through specific sound features (in NDSU's case, does the middle consonant sound like a z or an s). This project, a field study in sociolinguistics, investigates a similar phenomenon at the University of South Dakota, whose “Coyotes” may encode group identity based on whether or not the final syllable of the word representing the school mascot is pronounced. In addition to demonstrating “the mascot effect” at USD, this project explores the story of the word coyote, and how social factors may have shaped its use.Item Economic Information is not Scarce: Strategies for Reading the Economist Using Iser’s ‘Implied Reader’(North Dakota State University, 2012) Opgrand, JeffLike other news magazines, The Economist writes with an editorial bias that is exposed through signal words and prior knowledge it assumes of its readers. The Economist, now more popular in its online form with identical content to the print version, has historically had a target audience of educated, wealthy men. As such, The Economist tends to espouse libertarian politics but strays from this position when it is expedient to advancing western influence throughout the world. This research project uses reader-response theory as discussed by literary theorists such as Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish and Louise Rosenblatt to analyze text of The Economist with a focus on the reader’s production of meaning as she interacts with the text. Specifically, this research applies Iser’s theory of the “implied reader” as a means of exploring the unstated details and polarities of a specific article from The Economist. Iser initially put forth this theory in his two-volume The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response and has since modified it himself and modified it through the criticism of other theorists. This research is useful not only for reading The Economist, but also because the analytic methodologies can be applied to various news sources and commentaries.