Visual & Media Arts

Media portrayals of comic book fandom routinely depict the comics community as a masculine space, one in which the female fan is an anomaly. Yet, women reportedly represent a growing number of comic book purchasers and convention attendees. If women are, in fact, such a large contingent of the comic book fan community, then why do these gendered stereotypes of female fans persist? Moreover, why do we continually see narratives about the ‘exotic’ female comics fan if women are such a large population within comics culture? I theorise that many female comic book fans render themselves invisible in the comics community out of fear of stigmatisation, from both non-comics fans as well as male members of comics fandom. Drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, I use semi-structured interviews to explore how female comics fans in the United States experience fandom as members of a culture that is coded as masculine.

Released in October 2013, Papers, Please is an independently-produced game in which players are an immigration officer working at the border checkpoint in the fictional, Soviet-esque country Arstotzka in the year 1989. Gameplay is centered on checking and verifying immigration documents of the NPCs who wish to enter Arstotzka. With only each traveler's documents and the options to inspect their papers, search their body for concealed contraband or weapons, or fingerprint them at your disposal, the player decides who will gain entry into the country and who will be denied. In addition to the dozens of immigrants vying for admission, there are also smugglers, spies, and terrorists attempting to cross the border. As relations between Arstotzka and its neighboring countries become more tense over the course of the game – even resulting in terrorist attacks at the border checkpoint – players are continuously confronted with additional challenges and regulations they are expected to perform, with limited time and resources – a tongue-in-cheek reference to the bureaucratic issues that continue to plague immigration policy and practice.

In this paper, I analyze the ways in which Papers, Please functions as a critique of migratory policy and enforcement. Specifically, I examine the game's take on notions such as immigration, nationalism, and the gendered and racialized migrant subject. Drawing on literature from the disciplines of game studies and feminist geography – the latter specifically in relation to migration politics – I conduct a feminist analysis of Papers, Please's constructed narrative of global migration. As I hope to illustrate, migration is an inherently gendered and racialized experience.

This dissertation explores possible explanations and complexities surrounding women’s relationship with leisure and video games. One of my objectives with this study is to understand how women players view their relationship with gaming: how they become involved with video games, how gaming fits into their adult lives (specifically, as wives, mothers, etc.), and the reasons they play games. Primarily, I am interested in how women’s reported experiences with games affirm or challenge dominant narratives about their experiences. After surveying more than 3,000 women players and conducting 21 follow-up interviews, I discuss trends in women’s video game play, including their genre and play style preferences, motivations for playing games, the extent that they consider themselves “gamers,” and how their relationships with gaming have evolved over the course of the lives. Specifically, I investigate how gendered constraints on women’s access to and enjoyment of leisure time influence the reported trends in women’s gaming experience. I argue that such trends, which are often framed as “natural” gender-based affinities for certain types of games or ways of experiencing games, might be influenced by broader social contexts such as gender socialization, the nature of women’s leisure time, constraints placed upon their play such as physical and virtual spaces that restrict access based on gender, and the ambivalent relationship many women players have with the games industry. Scholars interested in gender-based motivations and preferences in digital games should continue to explore the various constraints that are imposed on players of different gender identities. I believe the key to understanding the complexities of how gaming decisions are made relies on researchers’ ability to examine the interplay of multiple, sometimes competing constraints.

Linguists like to joke that a language is a ‘dialect with an army and navy’, a suggestion which takes on even greater meaning within the universe of Saga, where the strongest military powers speak a dialect known as Language. This analysis explores the power of language in Saga, the continuing series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. The series uses the graphic-verbal medium of comics to draw special attention to the use of language and to portray linguistic power dynamics within the story. This analysis will first discuss the depiction of linguistic identity and multilingualism in Saga through the use of lettering, discourse and constructed language. The second portion of this analysis will examine two characters through their use of language, artistic representation and lettering: a power holder seeking to maintain power, Prince Robot IV, and a talking animal who subverts power structures with a one-word vocabulary, Lying Cat.

Samoa is a small developing country in the Pacific Islands. While Samoa has often struggled to keep up with economic development, in recent years, the Samoan people have embraced a new information culture. As more Samoan people place a greater value on participating in a global information culture, libraries play a key role in the development of the small nation. Originally published as Gartley, E. (2014). Toward a global information culture in Samoa: Growth and challenges. World Libraries, 21(1). 2

Research has found that LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum improves the school experiences and achievement of all students, LGBTQ and straight. The school library has a unique opportunity to support a safe learning environment and provide a more accurate representation of the diversity of the world through LGBTQ inclusion. This paper provides school librarians working in a variety of cultural and political settings strategies to support LGBTQ inclusion through identifying barriers, reviewing library policies, assessing the information needs of LGBTQ students, providing access to information, and promoting LGBTQ inclusion in the library and in the classroom.

Grigorii Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg’s 1927 film S.V.D. was the last of their films produced as the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS) and the first in the directorial duo’s longer history of historical appropriation
and adaptation. While the film has been held up as FEKS’ application of
the Formalist method to the genre of historical melodrama, I argue that
the tensions produced by the S.V.D.’s con artist and trickster Medoks
help to establish a demarcation line between Eccentrism and Russian
Formalism, and simultaneously present FEKS with a dead end: if the
Eccentrics’ allegiance is to the compelling figure of the trickster, then
the trickster’s delight in sabotaging revolution presents a political and
ideological problem within the Eccentric platform. In order to trace
the complexities presented by S.V.D., this article examines, first, the
historical context of the film’s making; second, the transformation of
Decembrist history into a narrative arc; third, the relationship between
Formalism and Eccentrism as distinct movements; and, finally, the
shifting emphasis from ambiguous sign to the mercurial figure of the
trickster, who appears here in the perplexing role of anti-revolutionary
villain, as a defining feature of Eccentrism.

Rather than fully restoring the sound of notes and voices that have been quieted, Susan Philipsz invites her audiences to the more difficult experience of silence. It may not always sound beautiful but it rings truer than other projects of historical recovery. Part File Score exposes what authorities have long wished to repress while preserving the gnarly scars of history.

The remaining brick façade from 1927, facing Harvard Yard, suggests an institution steeped in tradition. From the front, one expects to step inside and see art by dead white men, displayed according to national styles and chronology. The backside, however, explodes the brick structure with a boxy grey addition topped with a pyramid of glass. The dichotomy between order and innovation that plays out in the architecture continues inside the galleries. While the museum has little African, pre-Columbian, or Native American art, and few modern or contemporary pieces from outside the United States and Western Europe, the re-installation of the collections nevertheless succeeds in challenging existing narratives of art production over the longue durée.

Curator Klaus Biesenbach at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) has long wished to mount an exhibition devoted to Björk’s multi-media artistry and finally was able to do so concurrently with the New York concert series. Björk was implicated in the history of art long before her MoMA retrospective in a number of ways that surprisingly are nowhere evident in the exhibition.