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Title: STARS, STRIPES, CAMERAS AND DECADENCE: MUSIC VIDEOS OF THE IRAQ WAR ERA.
Creator: Miller, Henry, Mauer, Barry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Recently, academic researchers have brought critical attention to representations of the Iraq War in popular culture. Most of this work, however, focuses on film and music, leaving the influential medium of music video largely unexplored. A number of artists produced music videos that capture the zeitgeists of competing movements leading up to and following the United States' involvement in the Iraq invasion. This project, "Stars, Stripes, Cameras and Decadence: Music Videos of the Iraq War,"...
Show moreRecently, academic researchers have brought critical attention to representations of the Iraq War in popular culture. Most of this work, however, focuses on film and music, leaving the influential medium of music video largely unexplored. A number of artists produced music videos that capture the zeitgeists of competing movements leading up to and following the United States' involvement in the Iraq invasion. This project, "Stars, Stripes, Cameras and Decadence: Music Videos of the Iraq War," seeks to survey music videos in order to understand how music video helps shape Americans' relationship to heavily polarized public discourses in the United States regarding this controversial military act. The thesis will take a multi-dimensional approach to analyzing each music video. The study will incorporate data on public opinion, audience reaction and political shifts in relationship to each video. On the most elementary level, the thesis will address the "anti" and "pro" war stances portrayed by music videos to understand both how they were shaped by their relationship to power and how they consequently shape their audience's relationship to power. The study will also undertake to understand these music videos aesthetically. Both "anti" and "pro" music videos draw upon schools of political messaging that largely dictate the art of the music video. Each school portrays soldiers, violence, war, enemies, families and loved ones in different ways. The thesis will delve into the histories of how various political traditions use images of war to shape their messages and how music videos continue (or break from) these traditions.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: CFH0003796, ucf:44755
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0003796

Title: DECONSTRUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC COMEDY IN CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND.
Creator: Crivelli, Mary E, Mauer, Barry, Preston-Sidler, Leandra, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This research seeks to unpack the narrative of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend using semiotics, particularly through Roland Barthes' work in Mythologies and A Lover's Discourse. The goal of this research is to demonstrate long-form storytelling's ability to interrogate and revisit criticism through consideration of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's role as an ongoing satire of romantic comedies. This research culminated in a thesis discussing the semiotic myths that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend interrogates, and the process...
Show moreThis research seeks to unpack the narrative of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend using semiotics, particularly through Roland Barthes' work in Mythologies and A Lover's Discourse. The goal of this research is to demonstrate long-form storytelling's ability to interrogate and revisit criticism through consideration of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's role as an ongoing satire of romantic comedies. This research culminated in a thesis discussing the semiotic myths that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend interrogates, and the process of deconstruction that occurs within the text. The thesis applied the "fragments" identified in Barthes' A Lover's Discourse to corresponding scenes in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, with a focus on the musical nature of the show. This research also analyzed Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's role as a deconstruction of the romantic comedy genre, and its position as either upholding or subverting the myth of the "crazy ex-girlfriend." Through applying A Lover's Discourse to an hour-long television drama (in this case Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), this research contributes to the field of cultural studies by considering network entertainment media from a critical perspective, and utilizing A Lover's Discourse in an innovative manner.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: CFH2000290, ucf:45702
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH2000290

Title: Touching the Unreal: The Definition, Narrative Strategies, and Aesthetics of 3D Cartoon Narratives.
Creator: Snow, Nathan, Mauer, Barry, Applen, JD, Grajeda, Anthony, Larsen, Darl, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: (")Touching the Unreal(") follows the structure set out by Scott McCloudin Understanding Comics to argue that understanding cartoons is serious business and requires that we define the art form, outline its basic tenets, and theorize how the mind understands it. The dissertation argues for a new definition of 3D computer generated cartoons, beginning with the most basic definition applicable to all forms of animation and taking into account new technological developments before arriving at...
Show more(")Touching the Unreal(") follows the structure set out by Scott McCloudin Understanding Comics to argue that understanding cartoons is serious business and requires that we define the art form, outline its basic tenets, and theorize how the mind understands it. The dissertation argues for a new definition of 3D computer generated cartoons, beginning with the most basic definition applicable to all forms of animation and taking into account new technological developments before arriving at the 3D cartoon narratives of today. The dissertation outlines the basic facets of 3D cartoon narratives in terms of narrative and aesthetics, arguing that, in spite of the technological changes required to produce the art form, narrative strategies have not changed significantly from 2D to 3D cartoon narratives. Rather, the 3D cartoon narrative aesthetic is focused primarily on synthetic, sculptural materiality to create a tactile, haptic viewing experience unavailable in any other form of animation. The dissertation advances theories of how the mind understands 3D cartoon narratives, starting with how these films guide the spectator to pre-determined conclusions based on character identification, flow theory, and mirror-neuron cognition. As a result of their narrative, aesthetics, and reception, these films constitute a new form of posthumanism and operate as a node in the modern viewer's web of distributed cognition, enchanting viewers through the ability to touch the unreal, synthetic images common to the modern world. (")Touching the Unreal(") contributes to the media field by providing a definition for 3D computer animation in all of its facets as genre, narrative, aesthetics, and ideology.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: CFE0007101, ucf:51962
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007101

Title: Noise Thinks the Anthropocene: An Experiment in Noise Poetics.
Creator: Zwintscher, Aaron, Mauer, Barry, Grajeda, Anthony, Rounsaville, Angela, Schafer, Mark, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This dissertation is a textual experiment in noise poetics. It is an experiment in that it results from indeterminate means, alternative grammar, and experimental thinking. The outcome was not predetermined. Noise poetics is the use of noise to explain, elucidate, and evoke (akin to other poetic forms) within the textual milieu in a manner that seeks to be less determinate and more improvisational than conventional writing. This text argues that noise poetics is a necessary form for...
Show moreThis dissertation is a textual experiment in noise poetics. It is an experiment in that it results from indeterminate means, alternative grammar, and experimental thinking. The outcome was not predetermined. Noise poetics is the use of noise to explain, elucidate, and evoke (akin to other poetic forms) within the textual milieu in a manner that seeks to be less determinate and more improvisational than conventional writing. This text argues that noise poetics is a necessary form for addressing political inequality, coexistence with the (nonhuman) other, the ecological crisis, and sustainability because it approaches these issues as system of interconnected fragments and excesses and thus has the potential to reach or envision solutions in novel ways. The experiment draws quotations and fragments from a diverse collection of noise theory texts, arranged and assembled via indeterminate cut-up methods based on the work of several prominent artists and theorists (John Cage and William Burroughs among them). The experimental text (contained in full in Appendix B) was then edited and added to in order to craft the textual project into an argument for noise poetics that followed the juxtaposed lines of thought towards possible conclusions and practical applications. This project coincided with and was supplemented by bruit jouissance, a multimedia audiovisual noise project (contained and explicated in Appendix A). The two projects together are two applications of thoryvology (an articulation of noise theory created and presented within the text) and as complementary methods of viewing and understanding each other.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: CFE0006679, ucf:51911
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006679

Title: Mapping Addiction: A Digital Psychogeographic Approach to America's Addiction Epidemic.
Creator: Benjamin, Clayton, Mauer, Barry, Applen, JD, Janz, Bruce, Oleksiak, Timothy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: iiiABSTRACTFocusing on policy consultation, my dissertation consults on the current US addiction epidemic and aims to answer, (")What is our disposition to addiction?(") Borrowing and clarifying Ulmer's MEmorial method, as established in his text Electronic Monuments, the dissertation combines the ancient Greek practice of theoria, Deleuzian theory, and psychogeographic counter-mapping methods to trace ways in which ideological apparatuses construct addiction. The aim of the dissertation is...
Show moreiiiABSTRACTFocusing on policy consultation, my dissertation consults on the current US addiction epidemic and aims to answer, (")What is our disposition to addiction?(") Borrowing and clarifying Ulmer's MEmorial method, as established in his text Electronic Monuments, the dissertation combines the ancient Greek practice of theoria, Deleuzian theory, and psychogeographic counter-mapping methods to trace ways in which ideological apparatuses construct addiction. The aim of the dissertation is to reveal an abject value by constructing MEmorials which provide space for individuals to mourn loss and see their relation to that loss. Through mourning, individuals strengthen their ties to other community members and new policy can be made possible. Currently there is not an AIDS-like quilt for the victims of the addiction epidemic; therefore, the dissertation proposes the construction of a physical and electronic MEmorial to addiction. By conducting a psychogeography, a method directly tied to logic and reasoning appropriate to electracy, I traced the abject value of desire as it is constructed through the assemblages that construct the values of the Bradenton, FL community. The psychogeography revealed a categorical image (")DE(") which I traced through the ideological state apparatuses working their effects on Bradenton, FL. The image also connects to Bradenton, FL to the larger National War on Drugs through the star emblem of John Wayne. Concluding from the method, I argue to create a MEmorial to addiction at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum to reveal the horror of our communal desires and call for national drug policy reform.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: CFE0007785, ucf:52358
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007785

Title: The Feminine Margin: The Re-Imagining of One Professor's Rhetorical Pedagogy--A Curriculum Project.
Creator: Alvarez, Camila, Brenckle, Martha, Bowdon, Melody, Mauer, Barry, Weishampel, John, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Writing pedagogy uses techniques that institutionalize dichotomous thinking rather than work against it. Cartesian duality has helped to create the marginalization of people, environments, and animals inherent in Western thought. Writing pedagogy based in current-traditional rhetoric uses a writing process that reinforces the hierarchical structure of Self/Other, Author/Reader, and Teacher/Student. This structure, in conjunction with capitalism, prioritizes the self and financial gain while...
Show moreWriting pedagogy uses techniques that institutionalize dichotomous thinking rather than work against it. Cartesian duality has helped to create the marginalization of people, environments, and animals inherent in Western thought. Writing pedagogy based in current-traditional rhetoric uses a writing process that reinforces the hierarchical structure of Self/Other, Author/Reader, and Teacher/Student. This structure, in conjunction with capitalism, prioritizes the self and financial gain while diminishing and objectifying the other. The thought process behind the objectification and monetization of the other created the unsustainable business and life practices behind global warming, racism, sexism, and environmental destruction. A reframing of pedagogical writing practices can fight dichotomous thinking by re-imagining student writers as counter-capitalism content creators. Changing student perceptions from isolation to a transmodern, humanitarian, and feminist ethics of care model uses a self-reflexive ethnography to form a pedagogy of writing that challenges dichotomous thought(-)by focusing on transparency in my teaching practice, the utilization of liminality through images, the use of technology to publish student work, and both instructor and student self-reflection as a part of the writing and communication process. This practice has led me to a theory of resistance and influence that I have titled The Resistance Hurricane, a definition of digital rhetoric that includes humanitarian and feminist objectives that I have titled Electric Rhetoric, and a definition for the digitally mediated product of that rhetoric that I call Electric Blooms or electracy after Gregory Ulmer's term for digital media.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: CFE0007777, ucf:52371
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007777

Title: Deconstructing Disability, Assistive Technology: Secondary Orality, The Path to Universal Access.
Creator: Tripathi, Tara Prakash, Grajeda, Anthony, Campbell, James, Mauer, Barry, Metcalf, David, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: When Thomas Edison applied for a patent for his phonograph, he listed the talking books for the blind as one of the benefits of his invention. Edison was correct in his claim about talking books or audio books. Audio books have immensely helped the blind to achieve their academic and professional goals. Blind and visually impaired people have also been using audio books for pleasure reading. But several studies have demonstrated the benefits of audio books for people who are not defined as...
Show moreWhen Thomas Edison applied for a patent for his phonograph, he listed the talking books for the blind as one of the benefits of his invention. Edison was correct in his claim about talking books or audio books. Audio books have immensely helped the blind to achieve their academic and professional goals. Blind and visually impaired people have also been using audio books for pleasure reading. But several studies have demonstrated the benefits of audio books for people who are not defined as disabled. Many nondisabled people listen to audio books and take advantage of speech based technology, such as text-to-speech programs, in their daily activities.Speech-based technology, however, has remained on the margins of the academic environments, where hegemony of the sense of vision is palpable. Dominance of the sense of sight can be seen in school curricula, class rooms, libraries, academic conferences, books and journals, and virtually everywhere else. This dissertation analyzes the reason behind such an apathy towards technology based on speech.Jacques Derrida's concept of 'metaphysics of presence' helps us understand the arbitrary privileging of one side of a binary at the expense of the other side. I demonstrate in this dissertation that both, the 'disabled' and technology used by them, are on the less privileged side of the binary formation they are part of. I use Derrida's method of 'deconstruction' to deconstruct the binaries of 'assistive' and 'main stream technology' on one hand, and that of the 'disabled' and 'nondisabled' on the other. Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles present an alternative reading of body to conceive of a post-gendered posthuman identity, I borrow from their work on cyborgism and posthumanism to conceive of a technology driven post-disabled world. Cyberspace is a good and tested example of an identity without body and a space without disability.The opposition between mainstream and speech-based assistive technology can be deconstructed with the example of what Walter Ong calls 'secondary orality.' Both disabled and non-disabled use the speech-based technology in their daily activities. Sighted people are increasingly listening to audio books and podcasts. Secondary Orality is also manifest on their GPS devices. Thus, Secondary Orality is a common element in assistive and mainstream technologies, hitherto segregated by designers. The way Derrida uses the concept of 'incest' to deconstruct binary opposition between Nature and Culture, I employ 'secondary orality' as a deconstructing tool in the context of mainstream and assistive technology. Mainstream electronic devices, smart phones, mp3 players, computers, for instance, can now be controlled with speech and they also can read the screen aloud. With Siri assistant, the new application on iPhone that allows the device to be controlled with speech, we seem to be very close to (")the age of talking computers(") that William Crossman foretells. As a result of such a progress in speech technology, I argue, we don't need the concept of speech based assistive technology any more.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: CFE0004259, ucf:49521
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004259

Title: Nam June Paik and Avant-Garde as Pedagogy: Promoting Student Engagement and Interdisciplinary Thinking in the Undergraduate Humanities Classroom.
Creator: Mazzarotto, Marcia, Mauer, Barry, Applen, John, Rounsaville, Angela, Taylor, Robert, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This dissertation demonstrates how avant-garde methods can be employed as pedagogical methods in the undergraduate Humanities classroom to promote student engagement and interdisciplinary thinking. The study first addresses pedagogy and avant-garde art within their historical contexts as separate, but related disciplines. Subsequently the study fuses pedagogy and avant-garde art and provides examples of in-class activities and out-of-class assignments that illustrate the ways in which avant...
Show moreThis dissertation demonstrates how avant-garde methods can be employed as pedagogical methods in the undergraduate Humanities classroom to promote student engagement and interdisciplinary thinking. The study first addresses pedagogy and avant-garde art within their historical contexts as separate, but related disciplines. Subsequently the study fuses pedagogy and avant-garde art and provides examples of in-class activities and out-of-class assignments that illustrate the ways in which avant-garde methods function as practical teaching and learning methods. Further, the study presents artist Nam June Paik, whose work exemplifies the theoretical and practical underpinnings of avant-garde art as pedagogy. The dissertation champions the pedagogy of John Dewey, who called for a progressive educational system. It also argues for Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy and the Jesuits' Ignatian pedagogical paradigm, both of which serve as necessary complements in achieving Dewey's goal of an experiential educational environment. Dewey believed education should co-exist with life and should not be treated as a preparation for it, and thus his theories on aesthetics, in particular, argued that art is not severed from life, an idea shared by four avant-garde movements discussed in this study: Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Fluxus. Each of these movements sought to change the political and cultural environment, while maintaining that art and life are on equal ground. These pedagogies, aided by avant-garde methods, encourage and challenge students to engage with and think critically about the world around them.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: CFE0006623, ucf:51282
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006623

Title: Dining with the Cyborgs: Disembodied Consumption and the Rhetoric of Food Media in the Digital Age.
Creator: Cotto, Maggie, Brenckle, Martha, Mauer, Barry, Scott, Blake, Matejowsky, Ty, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This project explores digital media productions based specifically on food and cooking in order to demonstrate that new communication technologies are increasingly incorporating all five of the bodily senses. In doing so, they contribute significantly to the emergence of new ideological apparatuses appropriate for a global community. These apparatuses (-) including the formation of a posthumanist subject, the use of technology to support embodied cognition, and the establishment of...
Show moreThis project explores digital media productions based specifically on food and cooking in order to demonstrate that new communication technologies are increasingly incorporating all five of the bodily senses. In doing so, they contribute significantly to the emergence of new ideological apparatuses appropriate for a global community. These apparatuses (-) including the formation of a posthumanist subject, the use of technology to support embodied cognition, and the establishment of entertainment as an ideological institution (-) have become the harbingers of a rhetorical evolution. Based on the work of Gregory Ulmer, along with Jacques Derrida, N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, and Cary Wolfe, this evolution expands the work of Plato and Aristotle by overcoming the privileging of mind over body and abstract reasoning over concrete physical experience.As such hierarchies become turned on their heads, a renewed emphasis on materiality and embodiment demands virtual products that stimulate the body. As such, a phenomenon I have named disembodied consumption takes place whereby users' chemical senses can be incited through participation with digital technologies. Through the stimulation of these physical senses, and in turn the connected emotions, today's digital citizens are practicing the rhetorical method referred to by Ulmer as conduction.By examining sites, blogs, and postings that include references to food and flavor, I reveal examples of conduction and show how this method is necessary for the development of well-being, and the defeat of compassion fatigue in digital society.
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Date Issued: 2016
Identifier: CFE0006089, ucf:50948
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006089

Title: Inverse Intuition: Repurposing as a Method to Create New Artifacts, to Invent new Practices, and to Produce new Knowledge.
Creator: Jones, Warren, Mauer, Barry, Grajeda, Anthony, Bowdon, Melody, Koller, Lynn, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: This dissertation argues that Digital Natives, rather than employing novel ways of thinking (such as those suggested by Walter Ong's concept of Second Orality), are in fact employing a way of thinking that has always existed: repurposing. Ruth Oldenziel discusses how, historically, women used (")a kind of mental quality(") enabling them to re-use objects in novel ways to accomplish more of life's tasks. My research led me to investigate how a wide variety of people, especially historically...
Show moreThis dissertation argues that Digital Natives, rather than employing novel ways of thinking (such as those suggested by Walter Ong's concept of Second Orality), are in fact employing a way of thinking that has always existed: repurposing. Ruth Oldenziel discusses how, historically, women used (")a kind of mental quality(") enabling them to re-use objects in novel ways to accomplish more of life's tasks. My research led me to investigate how a wide variety of people, especially historically marginalized people, used this kind of mental quality. This dissertation explores repurposing's real world uses as well as its uses in narratives, specifically dystopia and apocalyptic narratives. Within these narratives, repurposing plays a similar role to repurposing in the real world, filling the gap between a survival mode of life and a science/technology driven society. The last part of this dissertation explores the place of repurposing among a myriad of current concepts concerning creativity.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: CFE0005010, ucf:50013
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005010

Title: Recycled Modernity: Google, Immigration History, and the Limits for H-1B.
Creator: Patten, Neil, Dombrowski, Paul, Mauer, Barry, Grajeda, Anthony, Dziuban, Charles, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Regulation of admission to the United States for technology workers from foreign countries has been a difficult issue, especially during periods of intense development. Following the dot.com bubble, the Google Corporation continued to argue in favor of higher limits under the Immigration and Nationality Act exception referred to as (")H-1B(") for the section of the law where it appears. H-1B authorized temporary admission for highly skilled labor in specialty occupations. Congressional...
Show moreRegulation of admission to the United States for technology workers from foreign countries has been a difficult issue, especially during periods of intense development. Following the dot.com bubble, the Google Corporation continued to argue in favor of higher limits under the Immigration and Nationality Act exception referred to as (")H-1B(") for the section of the law where it appears. H-1B authorized temporary admission for highly skilled labor in specialty occupations. Congressional testimony by Laszlo Bock, Google Vice President for People Operations, provided the most succinct statement of Google's concerns based on maintaining a competitive and diverse workforce. Diversity has been a rhetorical priority for Google, yet diversity did not affect the argument in a substantial and realistic way. Likewise, emphasis on geographically situated competitive capability suggests a limited commitment to the global communities invoked by information technology. The history of American industry produced corporations determined to control and exploit every detail of their affairs. In the process, industrial corporations used immigration as a labor resource. Google portrayed itself, and Google has been portrayed by media from the outside, as representative of new information technology culture, an information community of diverse, inclusive, and democratically transparent technology in the sense of universal availability and benefit with a deliberate concern for avoiding evil. However, emphasis by Google on American supremacy combined with a kind of half-hearted rhetorical advocacy for principles of diversity suggest an inconsistent approach to the argument about H-1B. The Google argument for manageable resources connected to corporate priorities of Industrial Modernity, a habit of control, more than to democratic communities of technology. In this outcome, there are concerns for information technology and the Industry of Knowledge Work. By considering the treatment of immigration as a sign of management attitude, I look at questions posed by Jean Baudrillard, Daniel Headrick, Alan Liu, and others about whether information technology as an industry and as communities of common interests has achieved any democratically universal (")ethical progress(") beyond the preceding system of industrial commerce that demands the absolute power to exploit resources, including human resources. Does Google's performance confirm skeptical questions, or did Google actually achieve something more socially responsible? In the rhetoric of immigration history and the rhetoric of Google as technology, this study finds connections to a recycled corporate-management version of Industrial Modernity that constrains the diffusion of technology.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: CFE0005685, ucf:50135
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005685

Title: The Visual Divide: Islam vs. The West, Image Peception in Cross-Cultural Contexts.
Creator: Akil, Hatem, Mauer, Barry, Scott, John, Gleyzon, Francois-Xavier, Janz, Bruce, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Do two people, coming from different cultural backgrounds, see the same image the same way? Do we employ technologies of seeing that embed visuality within relentless cultural and ideological frames? And, if so, when does visual difference become a tool for inclusion and exclusion? When does it become an instrument of war? I argue that we're always implicated in visuality as a form of confirmation bias, and that what we see is shaped by preexisting socio-ideological frames that can only be...
Show moreDo two people, coming from different cultural backgrounds, see the same image the same way? Do we employ technologies of seeing that embed visuality within relentless cultural and ideological frames? And, if so, when does visual difference become a tool for inclusion and exclusion? When does it become an instrument of war? I argue that we're always implicated in visuality as a form of confirmation bias, and that what we see is shaped by preexisting socio-ideological frames that can only be liberated through an active and critical relationship with the image. The image itself, albeit ubiquitous, is never unimplicated - at once violated and violating; with both its creator and its perceiver self-positioned as its ultimate subject.I follow a trace of the image within the context of a supposed Islam versus the West dichotomy; its construction, instrumentalization, betrayals, and incriminations. This trace sometimes forks into multiple paths, and at times loops unto itself, but eventually moves towards a traversal of a visual divide. I apply the trace as my methodology in the sense suggested by Derrida, but also as a technology for finding my way into and out of an epistemological labyrinth.The Visual Divide comprises five chapters: Chapter One presents some of the major themes of this work while attempting a theoretical account of image perception within philosophical and cross-cultural settings. I use this account to understand and undermine contemporary rhetoric (as in the works of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis) that seems intent on theorizing a supposed cultural and historical dichotomies between Islam and the West.In Chapter Two, I account for slogan chants heard at Tahrir Square during the January 25 Egyptian revolution as tools to discovering a mix of technology, language and revolution that could be characterized as hybrid, plural and present at the center of which lies the human body as subject to public peril. Chapter Three analyzes a state of visual divide where photographic evidence is posited against ethnographic reality as found in postcards of nude and semi-nude Algerian Muslim women in the 19th century. I connect this state to a chain of visual oppositions that place Western superiority as its subject and which continues to our present day with the Abu Ghraib photographs and the Mohammed cartoons, etc. Chapter Four deploys the image of Mohamed al-Durra, a 3rd grader who was shot dead, on video, at a crossroads in Gaza, and the ensuing attempts to reinterpret, recreate, falsify and litigate the meaning of the video images of his death in order to propagate certain political doxa. I relate the violence against the image, by the image, and despite the image, to a state of pure war that is steeped in visuality, and which transforms the act of seeing into an act of targeting.In Chapter Five, I integrate the concept of visuality with that of the human body under peril in order to identify conditions that lead to comparative suffering or a division that views humanity as something other than unitary and of equal value. I connect the figures of der Muselmann, Shylock, Othello, the suicide bomber, and others to subvert a narrative that claims that one's suffering is deeper than another's, or that life could be valued differently depending on the place of your birth, the color of your skin, or the thickness of your accent.Finally, in the Epilogue: Tabbouleh Deterritorialized, I look at the interconnected states of perception and remembering within diasporic contexts. Cultural identity (invoked by an encounter with tabbouleh on a restaurant menu in Orlando) is both questioned and transformed and becomes the subject of perception and negotiation.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: CFE0004084, ucf:49144
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004084

Title: From Ashes To Ash(&)#233;: Memorializing Traumatic Events Through Participatory Digital Archives.
Creator: Carlton, Patricia, Kamrath, Mark, Janz, Bruce, Mauer, Barry, Underberg-Goode, Natalie, Bedwell, Jeffrey, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: Traumatic, cataclysmic events, whether caused by man-made or natural forces, threaten the safety, stability, and resilience of a community or state. Additionally, massive media exposure given to documenting and providing information, place the media consumers at psychological risk. As an alternative to broadcast news reports, online memorials and disaster archives provide the public the means and central locations for witnessing catastrophic events, as well as collectively commemorating and...
Show moreTraumatic, cataclysmic events, whether caused by man-made or natural forces, threaten the safety, stability, and resilience of a community or state. Additionally, massive media exposure given to documenting and providing information, place the media consumers at psychological risk. As an alternative to broadcast news reports, online memorials and disaster archives provide the public the means and central locations for witnessing catastrophic events, as well as collectively commemorating and mourning the tragic losses. According to psychological and ethnographic research, narrativizing the trauma through shared memories and artifacts of mourning produce multiple therapeutic benefits, including the likely development of cognitive awareness, empathy, and catharsis.Complicating these benefits, however, are psychological risks of secondary trauma resulting from archiving and curating disaster collections, and the potential for economic and political exploitation. The participatory disaster archives are embedded in trauma culture, serving as public witnesses to survivors of trauma and reinforcing the medical, social, and civic infrastructures associated with a community's recovery from and resilience to calamities. Ironically, the confluence of public archive/memorials with medical and other socio-technical institutions that facilitate recovery from crises, also contribute to trauma culture's sustenance. This dissertation investigates the effects of digitally archiving and memorializing traumatic events through an interdisciplinary methodology of critical cultural studies and ethnography. I argue that participatory disaster archives may both mitigate psychological risks and augment social benefits through adopting protocols of best practice.
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Date Issued: 2016
Identifier: CFE0006277, ucf:51599
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006277

Title: The Impact of User-Generated Interfaces on the Participation of Users with a Disability in Virtual Environments: Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft Model.
Creator: Merritt, Donald, McDaniel, Rudy, Zemliansky, Pavel, Mauer, Barry, Kim, Si Jung, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description: When discussing games and the experience of gamers those with disabilities are often overlooked. This has left a gap in our understanding of the experience of players with disabilities in virtual game worlds. However there are examples of players with disabilities being very successful in the virtual world video game World of Warcraft, suggesting that there is an opportunity to study the game for usability insight in creating other virtual world environments. This study surveyed World of...
Show moreWhen discussing games and the experience of gamers those with disabilities are often overlooked. This has left a gap in our understanding of the experience of players with disabilities in virtual game worlds. However there are examples of players with disabilities being very successful in the virtual world video game World of Warcraft, suggesting that there is an opportunity to study the game for usability insight in creating other virtual world environments. This study surveyed World of Warcraft players with disabilities online for insight into how they used interface addons to manage their experience and identity performance in the game. A rubric was also created to study a selection of addons for evidence of the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The study found that World of Warcraft players with disabilities do not use addons more than able-bodied players, but some of the most popular addons do exhibit many or most of the principles of UDL. UDL principles appear to have emerged organically from addon iterations over time. The study concludes by suggesting that the same approach to user-generated content for the game interface taken by the creators of World of Warcraft, as well as high user investment in the environment, can lead to more accessible virtual world learning environments in the future.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: CFE0005667, ucf:50175
Format: Document (PDF)
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005667

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