A Mermaid’s Tale: The Evolution of the Representation of Mermaids in Popular Culture

This paper traces the evolution of the representation of mermaids throughout history through an examination of the portrayals of mermaids in literature, oral tradition, paintings, plays, art, movies, logos, and other forms of popular culture

Learning as a MerPerson

Ana Leandro is a graduate student at California State University, Los Angeles. In her poem, she describes herself as a supernatural being in order to demonstrate that traditional labels are not enough to describe the multiple identities she ascribes to. She also expresses how education has empowered her to embrace her multiple identities and advocate for resources tailored to help first-generation students succeed and develop a sense of belonging. With this spoken word poem, Leandro hopes to increase awareness of experiences unique to first-generation students and address institutions that lack support and resources to help them succeed

Cognitive Modeling for Computer Animation: A Comparative Review

Cognitive modeling is a provocative new paradigm that paves the way towards intelligent graphical characters by providing them with logic and reasoning skills. Cognitively empowered self-animating characters will see in the near future a widespread use in the interactive game, multimedia, virtual reality and production animation industries. This review covers three recently-published papers from the field of cognitive modeling for computer animation. The approaches and techniques employed are very different. The cognition model in the first paper is built on top of Soar, which is intended as a general cognitive architecture for developing systems that exhibit intelligent behaviors. The second paper uses an active plan tree and a plan library to achieve the fast and robust reactivity to the environment changes. The third paper, based on an AI formalism known as the situation calculus, develops a cognitive modeling language called CML and uses it to specify a behavior outline or sketch plan to direct the characters in terms of goals. Instead of presenting each paper in isolation then comparatively analyzing them, we take a top-down approach by first classifying the field into three different categories and then attempting to put each paper into a proper category. Hopefully in this way it can provide a more cohesive, systematic view of cognitive modeling approaches employed in computer animation

A systematic review of trends and gaps in the production of scientific knowledge on the sociopolitical impacts of emojis in computer-mediated communication.

This systematic literature review analyses trends in original research on emoji use in computer-mediated communications (CMC) published between 2011 to 2021. In total, 823 articles were identified that met the search criteria. The mixedmethod approach included qualitative coding of articles and frequency analysis by year, impact quartile, research topic and multidisciplinarity, as well as a cluster analysis to examine trends in sociopolitical research. The results show that Computer Science, Communications and Social Sciences disciplines accounted for largest proportion of original research on emojis and CMC in the time period analysed and that the degree of scientific impact increased significantly across the time series. In recent years, sociopolitical research has had higher than average growth and can be clustered into various groups based on two broad objects of study: “culture-identity” and “social exclusion”. The study also identified significant knowledge gaps, particularly in relation to emoji standardization and its sociopolitical implications. Overall, multidisciplinary approaches are epistemologically constrained, Spanish-language production is low, and there is an almost complete absence of context appropriate methodologies. The study concludes that there is a need to for more sociopolitical research on emoji use in CMC and multidisciplinary approaches, a shift away from the hegemony of Anglocentrism, and greater questioning of the structural influences of standardization process on questions of cultural, identity and social exclusion.post-print2114 K

The Eternal Waters

This creative thesis is from the first book of a planned trilogy. It is the beginning third of a young adult, dark fantasy novel about a secondary, drowning world. Merfolk and humans have been at conflict for centuries over territory and resources. When an angry ocean goddess wakes after a thousand years of slumber, both societies are threatened. The races are forced to work together to solve their environmental and fantastical perils. We see the island and water worlds though an alternating point of view. The two male point of view characters, one human and the other merfolk, become attracted to each other as they try to find and build a new home

El bestiario rowlingiano en la saga Harry Potter: Fuentes literarias y mitológicas

La presente tesis analiza el poder del simbolismo animal en la saga Harry Potter y tendrá como objetivo principal comprender el significado del bestiario rowlingiano explorando tanto la dimensión física como la moral de las criaturas que la conforman. Aplicaremos un método diacrónico y literario-contrastivo al dragón, al fénix, al hipogrifo, al unicornio, al centauro, al basilisco, al hombre lobo y a la sirena, ya que son estos los seres de mayor importancia del bestiario de J.K. Rowling, tanto por su peso narrativo como por su presencia en la tradición literario-cultural occidental desde la época clásica a la actualidad, prestando especial atención a la herencia cultural de Gran Bretaña, ya que el folklore nacional pudo ser el factor más determinante en el imaginario de la autora. Sin embargo, pese a la gran influencia de la tradición británica, nuestro corpus de estudio no pudo escapar ni de la tradición clásica ni de la criatura, siendo esta última la responsable de la codificación del simbolismo animal en los últimos dos mil años. Concluiremos enfatizando de que el valor literario de esta popular saga de literatura fantástica subyace en la capacidad de su autora para reinterpretar, adaptar y combinar una gran variedad de mitos literario-culturales