Media Studies Program

The truism that punk is dead reverberates throughout basements, record stores, and community centers across the world. What does this mean? Was punk ever alive? What does punk even mean in the first place? This thesis seeks to explore these...

The truism that punk is dead reverberates throughout basements, record stores, and community centers across the world. What does this mean? Was punk ever alive? What does punk even mean in the first place? This thesis seeks to explore these...

Opening a discussion about digital voices in contemporary spaces and popular music in two parts: 1) An essay that traces discourses of disembodiment and the rise in prominence of digital voices in electronic music, enumerates the ways in which they...

This project is a meditation on Blackness, life, death, loss, and spirituality. Although this thesis was executed in hopes of fulfilling an academic requirement, each frame provides insight into my experiences as a low-income Black and Native Hawaiian woman living...

My thesis takes a look at the history of webcam culture and investigates the changing attitudes towards surveillance and privacy since the creation of webcam technology and the rise of participatory culture. I postulate that since webcam culture became increasingly...

The topic of memes and the ethnographies they create are discussed. Memes that have been created and adopted by alt-right communities, specifically incels, illustrate their ideologies while simultaneously validating their views and recruiting insecure, vulnerable populations. Memes from times past...

<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...

Whom is media theory for? Everyone is implicated. No individual is beyond the complicating effects of an increasingly mediated world, one in which people communicate in six-second image bursts and where college courses are taught online. And yet, the theorization...

This dual thesis utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to examine Asian American sexual literacies in the distinct areas of family, schooling, and media using Critical Discourse Analysis to consider the role of power in knowledge and panopticism in normative sexual behaviors...

This dual thesis utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to examine Asian American sexual literacies in the distinct areas of family, schooling, and media using Critical Discourse Analysis to consider the role of power in knowledge and panopticism in normative sexual behaviors...

This project, a hypertext science fiction story entitled "Plenty," aims to explore our relationships to labor, leisure, and technology. Hypertext, a form of interactive fiction, resembles a choose your own adventure story, but incorporates digital elements which wouldn't be possible...

The 1970s and 1980s saw a significant increase in the popularity of jeans among the Soviet Union's youth. To gain a better understanding of the origins of this trend, the paper analyzes interviews with former Soviet Union citizens, as well...

The 1970s and 1980s saw a significant increase in the popularity of jeans among the Soviet Union's youth. To gain a better understanding of the origins of this trend, the paper analyzes interviews with former Soviet Union citizens, as well...