2013 Abstract Booklet

Complete Schedule of Events for the 15th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Realigning revolution : the poetics of disappointment in Cuban and Angolan narrative

textThis dissertation traces how Cuban and Angolan novels published in the final decades of the twentieth century engage with the political and artistic projects promoted by and through the post-revolutionary socialist-aligned political systems. The dissertation sustains that there are a collection of textual practices that insert themselves into the official “orthodox” historiographic and literary debates by reconsidering not just historical moments in the past that are central to these debates, but also reference how these moments are written and read from an official point of view. By employing tactics of ironic citation, parody and anachronism, these works not only comment upon official readings of history and demands of post-revolutionary literature, but they also reveal “silences,” to use Rolph-Trouillot’s term, in the literary corpus and in the experiences of Angolan and Cuban people that these alternative corpuses represent. Through revision of official discourses, they present an alternative reading of present subjects’ interactions with the past. These practices, which together I have termed “poetics of disappointment,” allow an intervention into the discussions surrounding both the production and the criticism of contemporary Cuban and Angolan literatures from a variety of political perspectives. The dissertation analyzes Cubans Alejo Carpentier’s La consagración de la primavera, Reinaldo Arenas’ La loma del ángel and Eliseo Alberto’s Caracol Beach as well as Angolans Manuel Rui’s Memória de mar, J. E. Agualusa’s Nação crioula and Boaventura Cardoso’s Mãe, materno mar. On one hand, these works recall the monumental events that the Cuban Revolution and Angolan independence represented, evoking a collective optimism and sense of community forged among pueblos/ povos in the processes of decolonization and promoting movements for social justice. On the other hand, the novels analyzed point out the limits of programmatic interpretations of post-revolutionary history. Demonstrating positions of discomfort with the notions of messianic immanence, idealized racial synthesis and the aftermaths of violence and displacement that official sources rarely document, these novels both privilege and question literary creation as a way of negotiating this disappointment.Comparative Literatur

The content and critical metaphor analysis of illustrated print advertisements in China.

This dissertation takes Chinese advertisements as the research subjects to see in what way a quantifiable large number of advertisements with its metaphorical nature and instrumental mission can reflect social cultural change, in specifics, ideology and identity change of China in the last thirty years by combining four methods of research: content analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Conceptual Metaphor Analysis and Pictorial Metaphor Analysis. The dissertation goes through the sign or ad interpretation process of linguistic, semiotic and critical analysis of 300 sample illustrated print advertisements collected from popular and award-winning illustrated print advertisements in Chinese media in the three periods of 1980s, 1990s and 2000s respectively. After comparing and contrasting the high frequency key words, advertising appeals and metaphorical expressions and images (categories and groups) appeared in the advertisements of the three periods the following conclusions are made: First, although advertisements in all the three periods belonged to the commercial public discourse, those in 1980s were inclined towards public discourse without much consideration for specific target groups while those in 1990s and 2000s tended to denote private and personal discourse with clear target groups in mind. While the advertisements in 1980s were characterized largely by the direct informative style, the majority of the advertisements in 1990s manifested a hybridization of both informative and involving styles. The advertisements in 2000s demonstrated strong involving and interacting style. Second, it can be seen from the shift of advertising appeals from the use of rational appeal to personal appeal that the overall society is moving up the ladder of Maslow\u27s Hierarchy of Needs Analysis from the basic need satisfaction to more social need and personal need satisfaction. Third, with regard to semiotic image categories used, the result shows the tendency that China is increasingly becoming a male-dominated society with a big increase in using male images from 1980s to 2000s and in particular adult male images. The representational images in the ads show a decline in intimacy but an increase in positional communication. The social setting is the dominant advertising background for all the three periods. Meanwhile with regard to the typical types of metaphorical images that are used as signifieds or secondary subjects to be projected onto the signifiers or primary subjects, there is a decline in using human images as opposed to non-human images. The dominant metaphorical image types used in three periods are in concomitant with the ideology and identity needs of each specific period of time. Fourth, on the whole the critical metaphor analysis of 300 sample illustrated print advertisements in mainland China from 1979 to 2008 has revealed advertisements during this period, implicitly or explicitly, have served the evolving ruling and dominant ideology very well. The dominant ideologies have changed from political ideology to economic ideology in 1980s, from economic ideology to national ideology in 1 990s, and from national ideology to balanced harmonious ideologies in 2000s. The individual consumers have transformed their identities from political self to material social self in 1980s, from material social self to national cultural self in 1990s, and from national cultural self to a individualized myself in 2000s. The dissertation contributes both theoretically and practically to the advertising research as well as visual culture research. On the one hand it confirms the critical discourse theory that discourse change can reflect socially-constructed reality. On the other hand, it contributes to pictorial metaphor theory by that visual metaphors are deep-rooted in human conceptualization and are cultural-specific

Women and Video Games: Pigeonholing the Past

Academic work dealing with the overlap between video games and female representation is limited in both volume and proper research. Most texts agree on three supposed flaws with video games: they alienate female participants, there are no games for female players, and female players cannot relate to female characters. This thesis sheds light on these points, not only citing specific counter-examples, but also showing how many of these issues reflect on a larger societal problems

SEX, LABOR, AND DIGITAL SPACES: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF GPGUIADELAS, A BRAZILIAN SEX WORKER TWITTER FEED

This dissertation project is a critical discourse analysis of written and visual texts produced for GPGuiaDelas, a Brazilian sex worker Twitter feed. Drawing on digital labor studies, feminist studies on sex work, and Brazilian studies on race and gender, 176 Twitter conversations between sex workers and clients were analyzed in order to answer the following: (1) What are the dominant themes in the discourse about sex work constructed through microblogging on social media?; (2) What are the discursive practices of sex workers who use social media as a platform?; and (3) What theoretical insights emerge from the analysis of sex workers’ discourse on social media? The analysis revealed three orders of discourse: economic, relational, and identity. The economic order of discourse highlights how sex workers are required to perform unpaid labor through digital media spaces. The relational order of discourse centers on the interpersonal affective labor sex workers execute. The identity order of discourse posits that sex workers appeal to available racial-sexual-gendered tropes within Brazil’s complex spectrum of racial, gender, and sexual ideologies in order to be legible and attract clients. This study also reveals how the architecture of Twitter enables discursive practices of power negotiation. I argue for forefronting sex workers’ voices in communication and media studies; blending theoretical lenses, and for giving close attention to the ways in which sex workers enact power within multiple systems of marginalization in Brazil. This study contributes to digital labor and media studies, communication studies, Brazilian studies, and feminist scholarship on sex work

A multi-semiotic discourse analysis of feminine beauty in selected True Love magazine advertisements

Magister Artium - MAAdvertising and media imagery shape attitudes about race and ethnicity, which means that advertising media play an influential part in constructing the frame through which individuals perceive racial differences and negotiate norms and ideas around ethnicity. Physical signifiers such as skin colour and hair are not only considered to be the most important facets in global beauty culture but are also seen as two principal phenotypes for racial classification (Mercer, 1987). These two attributes are also deeply situated within Black Feminist Discourse Studies and are therefore, culturally and socially significant (Erasmus, 1997; Hunter, 2002). As Dyer (1997:539) states: “every decision about a person’s worth is based on what they look like, what they speak, and where they came from.” Hence, body and hair politics point to power struggles which stem from historical discourses. As part of a capitalist environment, magazines such as True Love are also perceived as cultural commodities which occupy an important role in creating, transmitting and disseminating cultural meaning and in this regard, advertised texts are rich in cultural meaning and embedded with hidden ideologies. As a vehicle of social communication, True Love professes to be a mouth piece and a representative of the liberal, modern Black South African woman and portrays itself as a guiding companion and expert on womanhood (Laden, 2001). In this capacity, the magazine also creates and transmits messages about ideal feminine beauty. Following a multi-semiotic approach, by incorporating multimodality and social semiotics as proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), Van Leeuwen (2006; 2008) and O’Halloran (2011, in press), beauty advertisements are scrutinized in terms of the different semiotic principles which afford for different meaning-making opportunities and interpretation. Critical discourse analysis suggested by Fairclough (1992) and Wodak (1995) renders a supportive function to this social semiotic multimodal framework, in order to critically explore how the notion of ideal feminine beauty is constructed in True Love and to establish how inter-semiotic relations are created, reinforced and function to sustain hegemonic ideas in present-day beauty advertisements. The findings suggest that socio-cultural meanings attached to phenotypic traits such as skin and hair remain significant in contemporary society as a result of the repeated themes in media, especially advertising. Moreover, the consequential emphasis on beauty culture and the omnipresence of idealised imagery in mainstream media are responsible for composing and sustaining the belief that Whiteness is the only valid prototype of beauty. The whitewashing of Black models show how idealised preferences in media prevail. Advertisements display how the message of White superiority and supremacy is constructed visually and verbally, ultimately producing an overall ‘visual language of Whiteness’ which leads to devaluing and erasing forms of Black identity, while enhancing forms of White representation. This paper exposes existing dominant cultural narratives in the True Love advertising discourse that simultaneously produce and inflate an idealised Eurocentric version of feminine beauty. The hegemonic standard of feminine beauty dictates that women conform to a specific ideal which involves engaging in practices such as skin lightening, hair straightening or wearing weaves. This dissertation concludes that digital alteration techniques and photographic manipulation are predominantly used in mass media to portray advertised images resembling ideals closer, which means that it effectively enhances rather than detracts from the norm. Thus, White women look Whiter, thinner, richer and blonder. Caucasian models in advertised texts all have light hair and are seldom portrayed with dark hair. Light-skinned Black women portray Western mediated standards through physical appearances which seem to emulate those of their White counterparts, which Hunter (2011) describes as the ‘illusion of inclusion’. Although this marketing strategy operates under the premise of fostering ethnic diversity and to include women from all racial backgrounds, it reinforces the belief that Anglo-Saxon beauty norms are the only valorised signifiers of idealised beauty. Essentially, having a light skin colour is associated with sophistication, social mobility, success and the resulting financial and economic well-being. Based on this, the magazine appears to promote and celebrate feminine beauty based on a Eurocentric ideal

Beautiful White: An Illumination of Asian Skin-Whitening Culture

This paper uses Taiwanese and Chinese skin-whitening beauty products as a lens through which to study how globalization and the Japanese post-colonial context has influenced the nuanced East and West hybridization of skin-whitening beauty practices in primarily Culturally Chinese cosmopolitan cities such as Taipei, Taiwan. Applying Koichi Iwabuchi’s notion of transculturation, I examine the exchanges between producers of skin-whitening cosmetics and their consumers. In particular, I analyze Taiwanese and Chinese fashion and beauty magazines to examine how ads for skin-whitening cosmetics align with the local, historical context of East Asia and appeal to members of the “Culturally Chinese” diaspora. Multinational cosmetic brands advertise their skin-whitening product lines to the “Culturally Chinese” consumer market in multiple ways. I investigate some common skin-whitening marketing motifs to see how marketers renegotiate common symbols and their conventionally signified meanings to create new sign circuits that influence female consumers and redefine Culturally Chinese ideals of beauty.honors thesis, 2013, winner of Distinction Award in Visual & Media Studie