Recent Theses and Dissertations
Recent Master's Theses and Dissertations
Full documents are available electronically through ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst or ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database.
Master's Theses
2011
Kumar, Hari S. Decolonizing Texts: A Performance Autoethnography.
2010
Drew, Shara Dunn. Vilification in Fox’s 24.
Hasan, Fadia. Fair Trade Practices in Contemporary Bangladeshi Society: The Case of Aarong.
Pradhan, Jinni. It’s My Passion, That’s My Mission to Decide, I’m Going Worldwide: The Cosmopolitanism of Global Fans of Japanese Popular Culture.
Yakupitiyage, Thanushka N. Media and Immigration in Post 9/11 America.
2009
Robb, Margo L. Community Radio, Public Interest: The Low Power FM Service and 21st Century Media Policy.
Steblea, Jeffrey J. “Is She a Positive Female Role Model?: Perceptions of the Female Action Hero Among Teenage Girls.”
2008
Kang, Kyoung-Lae. Novel Genres or Generic Novels: Considering Korean Movies Adapted from Amateur Internet Novels.
2007
Boulton, Chris. Trophy Children Don’t Smile: Fashion Advertisements For Designer Children’s Clothing In Cookie Magazine.
Coryat, Diana M. "Constructing a pedagogy of critical youth media: A case study of Global Action Project."
Dilip, Meghana. Rang de Basanti: Consumption, citizenship, and the public sphere.
Lan, Qiao. Immigrant Perceptions of Advertising amid Acculturation Levels, Stress and Motivation.
Paradise, Phyllis. "Leadership enactment in a small group: A constitutive communication approach."
Siibi, Razvan. “Romanianism” and “Romanianness”: Two frames of Romanian identity.
Wisneski, Kirsten. Maximizing Masculinity: A Textual Analysis of Maxim Magazine.
2006
Kostides, Joanne. "Press coverage of the 2002 Biennial Review of Media Ownership Rules."
2005
Bergstrom, Andrea M. "From fantasy dates to elimination ceremonies: A content analysis of gender, sex, and romance on reality television."
Chelaru, Iris S. "Behind the virtual wall: Information society policy in Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine."
Weye, William H. "Audiences as producers: Creating brand value in cyberspace."
Zeng, Ya. "College students’ adoption of instant messaging, online shopping, and music/video downloading."
2004
Chase, Gordon L. "Discourses of independence and interdependence: The construction of Bermudian national identity."
Paradise, Angela. "Just a word from your sponsor?: The commercialization of children's public television."
2003
Sousa, Arthur. "A path formed of words: Native North Americans and their languages."
2002
Ericsson, Susan. "Curious conventions: Filmic representations of nuns."
Goodwin, Janna. Coordinated Management of Meaning in productive post show: Exploring a method for audience research.
MacLeod, Erna L. "Negotiating nationhood: History, cultural identity, and representation at Fortress of Louisburg National Historic Site."
Rudnick, Lisa “Hygge” and “jantelovn”: An ethnographic study of two symbolic terms in the communication of Danish cultural identity and a Danish model of personhood."
2001
Campbell, John E. Guts and muscles and bears, oh my! The body, embodied identity, and queer erotic space online.
Ionescu, Sanda. "Television’s contribution to the erosion of social capital: The cultivation perspective."
Tanamura, Naho. "A Japanese cultural discourse of names and marriage: Key symbols, motives and terms of address."
2000
Benotti, Lauren F. "Alternative modes of cultural expression: Viewing performances of Basque nationalism and identity from a communication perspective."
Click, Melissa A. "Who dunnit?: The utility of theorizing (in)visible identities in feminist action."
Desilva, Melanie R. "Knowledge and power within natural childbirth discourse: Feminist interrogations, theoretical considerations and practical concerns."
Kemmitt, Alicia M. "Viewing the troubles: Irish-American audience interpretations of political violence."
Reyes, Ian. "The self in sound."
Scollo, Michelle. “Living music” or “museum piece”?: An ethnographic study of the “debate” over opera translation."
Dissertations
2011
Bergstrom, Andrea M. Expanding the third person effect: Parents’ perceptions of positive and negative media effects on their own children compared to other children.
Brook, Joanna L. “Reclaiming America for Christian Reconstruction: The Rhetorical Constitution of a “People”.”
Flanigan, Jolane. “Utopian Gender: Counter Discourses in a Feminist Community.”
Lee, Hunju. The New Asian Female Ghost Films: Modernity, Gender Politics, and Transnational Transformation.
Halper, Donna L. Neil Postman’s Missing Critique: A Media Ecology Analysis of Early Radio, 1920-1935.
Molina-Markham, Elizabeth. Listening Faithfully with Friends: An Ethnography of Quaker Communication Practices.
2010
Meyers, Erin A. Gossip Talk and Online Community: Celebrity Gossip Blogs and Their Audiences.
Salsedo, Carlos. Andrea and Me: A Digital Autoethnographic Journey into the Past.
2009
Bindig, Lori B. A New ‘Era’: Media Literacy in Eating Disorder Treatment.
Click, Melissa. It’s ‘a good thing’: The commodification of femininity, affluence, and whiteness in the Martha Stewart phenomenon.
Liu, Zi-xu, "Political Economy of Chinese Television Advertising."
Oberacker, Jon Scott. The People and Me: Michael Moore and the Politics of Political Documentary.
Tu, Haijing. Online Audiences for Foreign Language Films: Implications of the Internet as the New Cultural Arena.
2008
Boromisza-Habashi, David. Hate Speech as Cultural Practice.
Click, Melissa. It’s ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification of Feminity, Affluence,and Whiteness in the Martha Stewart Phenomenon.
Flynn, Peter J. Coming into Clover: Ireland and the Irish in Early American Cinema, 1895- 1917.
MacLeod, Erna L. “Words apart”: Performing linguistic and cultural identities in Chéticamp, Nova Scotia.
2007
Brown, Kennaria Charlott. Good women becoming “queens”: Young mothers on welfare as cultural readers.
Lin, Ke-Ming. The Lacanian spectator: Lacanian psychoanalysis and the cinema.
Lupo, Jonathan D. Accounting for taste: Film criticism, canons, and cultural authority 1996—2006.
McClish, Carmen L. Social protest, freedom, and play as rebellion.
Paradise, Angela. Trait aggression and style of video game play: The effects of violent video game play on aggressive thoughts.
Poutiainen, Saila. Finnish cultural discourses about the mobile phone communication.
Saito, Makoto. Silencing identity through communication: Situated enactments of sexual identity and emotion in Japan.
Scollo, Michelle. Mass media appropriations: Communication, culture, and everyday social life.
2006
Butchart, Garnet C. Psychoanalyzing communication: Language, subjectivity, symbolization.
Del Rio, Esteban. All of us Americanos: Cultural exhibition and the rise of Latina/os within a national imaginary.
Isgro, Kirsten Lynn. “Real women” and the struggle against spiritual forces of darkness: A transnational feminist analysis of Concerned Women for America.
Kemmitt, Alicia M. Active voice and community engagement: Transforming United States public service media through strategic communication.
Lorencova, Viera. Becoming visible: Queer in postsocialist Slovakia.
Mierswa, Mark A. Emotion at work: Stories of teamwork, stress, and professionalism.
Stephenson, Denise L. The politics of help: The rhetoric of suicide and suicide prevention in the mainstream press.
2005
Doyle, Vincent A. The visibility professionals: The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the cultural politics of mainstreaming.
Gardner, Thomas N. “Framing an execution”: Death, lies, and videotape. ABC “20/20” and the rhetoric of law and order in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Goodwin, Janna L. Applied theatre in corrections: Community, identity, learning and transformation in the facilitated, collaborative processes of performative, artistic praxis.
Haynes, Janice L. Money makes a family: A genealogy of female-headed families, welfare and media representations.
Hughes, Will. The green car: Television automobile advertising and the environmental attitudes of television viewers.
Huntemann, Nina B. Policy and culture in the digital age: A cultural policy analysis of the United States commercial radio industry.
Huot, Francois. Communication and the grammars of child protection: An analysis of interactions between social workers and their clients.
Mackenzie, Lauren Benotti. “When words fail, music speaks”: How communication transforms identity through performance at the Berkshire Hills Music Academy (Massachusetts).
Watson, Nessim John. Action movie Arabs and the American call to endless war: The role of American Orientalism in organizing the United States “response” to the 9/11 attacks.
2004
Comella, Lynn. Selling sexual liberation: Women-owned sex toy stores and the business of social change.
Damico, Amy M. Exploring the complexities of personal ideologies, media literacy pedagogy and media literacy practice.
Sklar, Alissa Gail. Strategies of the self: Negotiating cultural identities in anglophone and allophone Montréal (Québec).
Townsend, Rebecca M. Deliberation and democracy: Ethnography of rhetoric in a New England town meeting.
Yousman, William. The prisons outside and the prisons in our heads: Television and the representation of incarceration.
2003
Allan, James L. Fast friends and queer couples: Relationships between gay men and straight women in North American popular culture, 1959--2000.
Delap, Alpha Selene Anderson. Recovering trauma: An ethnographic study of women's storytelling within contemporary support group environments.
Duenas-Guzman, Maximiliano. Social meanings of the personal computer in Puerto Rico: Consumption as communicative praxes of modernization and social power.
Gershenson, Olga. Cultural production and Zionist ideology: The case study of Gesher Theatre in Israel.
Huang, Guan-Hua. Reading Lacan: Structure, ideology, and identity (Jacques Lacan).
Madmoni-Gerber, Shoshana. Media construction of public sphere and the discourse of conflict: A case study of the Kidnapped Yemenite Babies Affair in Israel.
Martinez-Ramos, Dora E. The desire to see: Western iconoclasm and the return of the empty image.
2002
Carroll, Charles Francis. A Kenneth Burke lexicon: A reader's guide to selected terms in the major works of Kenneth Burke, 1931–1972.
Karjane, Heather Marie. The communication of trauma in media culture: A poststructural analysis of women's experience of gender-based violence and healing.
Kolluri, Satish Kumar. Whose nation is it anyway? Nationalism and the metaphorics of secular subjectivity (India, Partha Chatterjee, Jacques Derrida).
Melhem Moufarrej, Carol. Oral, literate, and television viewers' ways with health issues.
Morgan, Eric L. Communicating environment: Cultural discourses of place in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.
Soar, Matthew Alan. Graphic design/graphic dissent: Towards a cultural economy of an insular profession.
Sun, Chyng-Fen. Stories matter: Media influence on Asian American identities and interracial relationships.
Suopis, Cynthia Anne. Women's ways of speaking about menopause and hormone replacement therapy: An American discourse on personhood.
2001
Szivos, John Chetro. Exploring the meaning of work: A CMM analysis of the grammar of working among Acadian-Americans.
Gardner, Paula M. Recovery culture: The promotion of depression and consumption of mental health technologies in contemporary social practices.
Lee, Oh-Hyeon. New technology, old medium: Internet, television, and audience.
Leggett, Susan C. Atalanta's sisters: Sport, gender, and technology in popular press, 1921–1996.
Leppington, Rozanne T. The Black, Jewish, other video dialogue: A case study of the social construction of transformative discourse.
Murphy, Brian Martin. Mapping the pre-history of cyberspace and the making of social movement computer networks, 1973–1993.
Saxe, Joel. Communicative practices of Yiddish-speaking Jewish elders on South Miami Beach (Florida).
Sender, Katherine Elizabeth. Producing the gay market: Sex, sexuality, and the gay professional-managerial class.
2000
Elmer, Greg. Discriminating technologies: Personal information in an age of computer profiling
Frechette, Julie Danielle. Media literacy in cyberspace: Learning to critically analyze and evaluate the Internet.
Jia, Wenshan. A social constructionist perspective on the Chinese lian/mian (face) practices.
Johnson, Ann Michelle. Popular belief in gender-based communication differences and relationship success.
McLeod, Kembrew. Owning culture: Authorship, ownership and intellectual property law.
Miezan, Ekra. Media images of Africa and African Americans' attitudes toward Africa.
Pond, Irina K. "Making sense of postmodern identities. A comparative investigation of social constructionist methodological theories: Theory of Coordinated Management of Meaning and rhetorical responsive perspective."
