The Advocate

Three Slates Compete for SBA Offices; FLS Phonothon Seeks $ for Special Projects; Bomb Threat Raises Question of School\u27s Safety Measureshttps://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/student_the_advocate/1062/thumbnail.jp

Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in Graphic Novels

In “Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in the Graphic Novel,” I examine how graphic narratives have historically been used to express political concerns; I then rate the impact of two contemporary works which imagine planetary crisis in relation to this context. Working with Robert Kirkman\u27s The Walking Dead and Alan Moore\u27s Saga of the Swamp Thing, I aim to illustrate that the violent worlds depicted in each fiction attest relevant social critique. As a frame for this analysis, I turn to the work of philosopher David Kellogg Lewis. Using his model of modal realism, I argue that engaging ideas of alternate realities through graphic narratives can be beneficial to stimulating questions of political discourse among readers which might not arise otherwise. Beginning with a consideration for early examples of sequential art and their social functions, the first of my three chapters builds a foundation for understanding how the modern comics form came into being. Next, I focus my attention upon the significance of the portrayal of violence in my two primary texts. Both works imagine spaces of total war but portray this experience through vastly different perspectives. Mainly, my analysis of Kirkman\u27s work concerns how the presentation of the human body is linked to suicide bombers and the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. Here I apply the work of philosopher Adriana Cavarero, author of Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, citing Kirkman\u27s post-apocalyptic universe as a symptomatic expression of cultural concerns regarding ceaseless conflict and erasure of identity. Conversely, my interest in Moore\u27s Saga of the Swamp Thing is motivated by his fusion of awareness into the environment. Moore\u27s monumental revival of a marginally successful superhero demonstrates that certain themes, like natural preservation and dependency, may become more pertinent to discuss with the passing of time

The superhero afterlife subgenre and its hermeneutics for selfhood through character multiplicity

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityComic book superheroes venture frequently into the afterlife, to the extent that the recurring conventions of such tales constitute a superhero subgenre. These generic elements help ensure that the stories can be read normatively by their audience (e.g. one's soul continues separately to function after the death of the body, existence after death is its own reality and discernible from illusion). The new subgenre, however, can also be regarded as masking an alternate understanding of narrative character and suggesting an alternative model of selfhood to readers. Beginning with the genre theory work of Paul Ricoeur, Tzvetan Todorov, and Peter Coogan, this project applies their perceived linkage between generic character and audience models for selfhood to the concerns of Helene Tallon Russell, J. Hillis Miller, and Karin Kukkonen. This second set of theorists warns against narrative characters being understood as whole and unified a priori when the presumably counterfactual idea of a multiple self better matches with the goals of religious pluralism and healthful self-understanding. Through these combined sets of theoretical lenses, the project focuses on popular recent depictions of the afterlife in the word-and-image medium of top-selling comics titles such as Thor, Green Lantern, Fantastic Four, Planetary, and Promethea. The comics, with their dual sign systems and 'low-art' fringe status, provide a consideration of personal multiplicity more naturally than prose does alone. Jeffery Burton Russell and Andrew Delbanco recount modern Americans' declining investment in the afterlife, one steeped in traditionally Augustinian models of singular selfhood. As H.T. Russell champions in Irigaray and Kierkegaard: On the Construction of the Self, this model may serve more as a hindering relic than as a useful system for consideration of one's full selfhood. This superhero subgenre offers a hermeneutic for integrating multiplicity into religious practices and considerations of the afterlife

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown: Why Content\u27s Kingdom is Slipping Away

This Article examines the ongoing power struggle between the content industries (with a particular focus on Hollywood) and the technology industry. These two sectors are intertwined like never before, yet their fates seem wildly divergent, with content stumbling while distribution technology thrives. The Article begins by illustrating that, even before the recession took hold, traditional paid content was in trouble, and that this was and is true across a range of distribution platforms and content types, including theatrical motion pictures, home video, network television, music, newspapers, books, and magazines. The Article next posits six reasons for content\u27s discontent: supply and demand, the decline of tangible media, reduced transaction costs for intangible media, the rise of free content, market forces in the technology industry, and the culture of piracy. The result of these factors has been a migration of audiences from paid professional content to free content, whether user-generated, ad-supported, or pirated. The Article then briefly contrasts the technology industry\u27s economic success (albeit tempered by the recession) and history of innovation. It next examines Hollywood\u27s responses to technological challenge--responses that have included litigation, legislation, and various business responses. The Article notes that none of these responses have been successful so far, and concludes by examining the dilemma that paid content creators and companies now face

Mirrors of the past : versions of history in science fiction and fantasy

The primary argument of this Thesis is that Science Fiction (SF) is a form of Historical Fiction, one which speculatively appropriates elements of the past in fulfilment of the ideological expectations of its genre readership. Chapter One presents this definition, reconciling it with some earlier definitions of SF and justifying it by means of a comparison between SF and the Historical Novel. Chapter One also identifies SF's three modes of historical appropriation (historical extension, imitation and modification) and the forms of fictive History these construct, including Future History and Alternate History; theories of history, and SF's own ideological changes over time, have helped shape the genre's varied borrowings from the past. Some works of Historical Fantasy share the characteristics of SF set out in Chapter One. The remaining Chapters analyse the textual products of SF's imitation and modification of history, i.e. Future and Alternate Histories. Chapter Two discusses various Future Histories completed or at least commenced before 1960, demonstrating their consistent optimism, their celebration of Science and of heroic individualism, and their tendency to resolve the cyclical pattern of history through an ideal linear simplification or 'theodicy'. Chapter Three shows the much greater ideological and technical diversity of Future Histories after 1960, their division into competing traditional (Libertarian), Posthistoric (pessimistic), and critical utopian categories, an indication of SF's increasing complexity and fragmentation