This project provides an oppositional reading of ABC's popular <em>Bachelor </em>franchise, arguing that these reality dating programs present viewers with specific narratives of gender, sexuality, class, and race that contribute to greater hegemonic discourse that reifies heterosexual marriage. Through a close reading of one season of <em>The Bachelor </em>and one season of <em>The Bachelorette, </em>this project details the ways in which these programs manipulate both cast members and audiences to reinforce the heterosexuality and the institution of marriage, thereby suggesting that these programs are both a product and a tool of a heteronormative society. I conclude these readings by urging audiences to always remain cognizant and critical of the hidden agendas of entertainment media and popular culture; I do not, however, suggest that audiences reject these programs altogether. Instead, I call for an increase in Stuart Hall's notion of the negotiated viewing, suggesting that audiences can enjoy "mindless" entertainment, so long as they understand that they cannot be mindless in their viewings.

<em>Words </em>is a game based at its core on the idea that American citizens should have access to a form of media that gives them the power to interact with, and alter, political propaganda. Defined as information that is "especially of a biased or misleading nature," propaganda provides nothing of value to the voter, and should be ridiculed in modern society; <em>Words </em>gives its player the stage to do so.

This project explores a new register of language called 'textese,' which has developed as a result of text messaging via cell phones. I research how and why textese is being used, to understand how text messages are linguistically affecting the English language in novel ways. Possible influences in the rise of textese include limitations with the cellphone itself, and inspiration from previous media such as postcards and telegrams. I also outline the various 'textisms,' or lexical shortenings, that exist in textese, and the idea of orality within this written medium. I then contrast this data with information collected from a campus-wide survey at Vassar about students' texting habits. I find that Vassar students do not use textese in teh ways that have been previously documented, and in fact do not even see textese as appropriate in certain contexts. I also explain how Vassar students are using textese in new and undocumented ways, such as irony, sarcasm, or as pragmatic markers, and speculate as to why my results are different from previous texting studies.

Everyone today seems to be a critic. As our online and offline lives become increasingly intertwined, we have never had so many sites that depend upon consumer opinion-making for content. User-generated media satisfies the needs of certain consumers, but consumers also appear to trust these sources more so than traditional forms of advertising. The effect of online criticism (or word of mouth) is not just cultural, but personal. What brunch we go to on Sundays or what concerts we deem cool enough to check out, are to some extent the result of what is written about that brunch or that band online. This thesis explores the phenomena through the popular website, Yelp.com, focusing on food media and the impact of online review sites on the decisions we make daily.

As the Internet drifts away from being a novel technology, people have increasingly become fascinated by the sometimes-garish, comparatively rudimentary aesthetics of the early web. Using Walter Benjamin's reflections on the Parisian arcades as a framework, I propose that this nostalgia for the hand-made digital does not necessarily reflect a desire to return to the dial-up era. Rather, what people are actually missing is the energy of possibility for the potential future. To further this comparison, my art installation, <em>the internet was my teenage bedroom, </em>expounds upon the written critical component of my thesis, drawing a parallel between the teenage bedroom and the older Internet as spaces of rich excitement, discovery, and creativity–something special, pure, and somewhat utopic in the personal and beyond.

This project calls for a re-thinking of how we consume the performance of choreographed dance in music videos in regards to the Latina body. By taking a look at the underlying mechanisms at work in the entertainment industry, this project provides a deeper understanding of the marketing of racialized Latina bodies within the realm of visualized popular music. By working from the position of a Latina dancer, choreographer, and amateur media producer, I attempt to organically link the exploration of my topic with the creative process of producing my own music video. To move into the artistic domain of creating a music video, I break down the often-overlooked role of choreography itself, demonstrating its function as a more subtle though equally important form of communicating messages inside of the multimedia structure of music video. The objective is to set in motion this alternative understanding of dance through my exploration of choreography as a medium in and of itself in conjunction with socio-cultural readings of the Latina body in popular culture.