Cultural Studies Interdisciplinary Graduate Program: Theses
Recent Submissions
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Is Daoism Green? Engaging Daoist Responses to Environmental Challenges in China
This paper seeks to examine the role that Daoism is playing in environmental activism in China. It analyzes a variety of sources including academic literature, primary source material from Daoist groups and my own research ... -
Tracing Incense: The Affective Power of Objects
Incense has been an integral part of Chinese culture since before the introduction of Buddhism in the third century B.C.E. A rise in the popularity of Buddhist practice marked an increase in the importation, production, ... -
Post-Islamism Redefined: A Genealogy of Political Islam in Iran
Challenging the current academic conception of the term “post-Islamism,” this dissertation provides an alternative definition of the concept, having in mind the case of Iran. In contrast to Asef Bayat’s deployment of ... -
Unfinished Business: The New Wave of Women's Horror Cinema
My doctoral dissertation, “Unfinished Business: The New Wave of Women’s Horror Cinema,” responds to early considerations in feminist horror studies via the recent surge of horror films directed by women filmmakers for a ... -
Talking Plant
This doctoral research-creation project focuses on plants in the context of larger efforts by artists and scholars to denaturalize the anthropocentric and hierarchical ordering of species that objectify non-human life. ... -
“A NEW RACE, INVINCIBLE AND VAST”: AN EXPLORATION OF THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST THINGSPIEL DAS FRANKENBURGER WÜRFELSPIEL’S METHODS TO CREATE COMMUNITY
This project investigates the 1936 Berlin Olympics theatre production Das Frankenburger Würfelspiel, an example of the National Socialist theatre movement the Thingspiel. The goal is to explore the methods intended by Das ... -
Nation, Race, and the Cultural Political Economy of Art for Social Change Philanthropy in Canada
The arts are increasingly celebrated as a powerful mechanism for a philanthropic sector seeking to address some of society’s most pressing social and economic challenges. Over the past decade, “art for social change” [AFSC] ... -
Distinguishing Ritual from Theatre
This paper begins by analyzing Richard Schechner’s distinguishing features of ritual and theatrical performances, specifically regarding audience participation, audience belief, and intention of the performance to determine ... -
Ethics and Participation in Art: Reading the Migration Library and other methods
This dissertation portfolio provides a focused—albeit methodologically diverse—review of research ethics in the context of participatory art, including research-creation and social art practices. Focusing on a case of ... -
Gay By The Bay: Feeling Queer, Feeling Newfoundland
While growing up in rural Newfoundland, I often felt that my identities as a rural Newfoundlander and a queer person were in conflict. Inspired by my own experiences and those of my loved ones, I began this research with ... -
Borderline Cinema
The term ‘Borderline Cinema’ may sound strange at first, even for scholars and film aficionados. It may also sound like something unprecedented, modern, a result of the changes and re-adaptations in the film industry that ... -
Exhibiting Diplomacy: Art and International Cultural Relations in Canada
In this dissertation, I analyze Canadian cultural diplomacy through the international exhibition of art, with particular consideration for the various ways in which state institutions have utilized art as an expedient in ... -
Music Production and Cultural Entrepreneurship in today’s Havana: Elephants in the Room
Cultural production and entrepreneurship are two major components of today’s global economic system as well as important drivers of social development. Recently, Cuba has introduced substantial reforms to its socialist ... -
Staying a Woman, Becoming a Patient: Experiences of Breast Cancer, Gender and Identity in Neoliberal Turkey
Drawing on ten interviews, this thesis explores the perspectives and practices of women with breast cancer in contemporary Turkey. My analysis focuses on two key areas: the gendered nature of intimate and family relationships, ... -
"The Trans Tipping Point": Assessing Contemporary Transgender Visibility in Alternative and Mainstream Media
This thesis seeks to develop a rubric for the assessment of recent transgender visibility across disparate media spaces. The rubric is based upon the critiques of transgender studies scholars and transgender activists ... -
A Preface to Perversion: Foucault, Archives, Evidence
This dissertation assembles four previously published articles on the subject of queer archives and evidence. Published over a period of almost thirty years, the articles reflect the author’s changing approach to archival ... -
The illusion of Inclusion for Children with Invisible Disabilities in Ontario Public Schools
The current study examined inclusive education in Ontario public schools, as it is experienced by students with invisible disabilities and their families. Invisible disabilities are those that are not immediately visible ... -
Unsettling Hegemonic Whiteness in Cultural Production: Praxis-based Approaches in Concert Dance
This dissertation examines the racialized power dynamics in cultural production in Canada by offering a re-reading of critical multicultural discourse through black and Indigenous studies. Although dominant modes of artistic ... -
Per/forming Memoration: Integrative Artistic Strategies for Unsettling From a White Settler Perspective
“Memoration” is an integrative and adaptable artistic methodology that has emerged from my practice as an artist and scholar. I characterize it as an evolving set of theoretical and aesthetic provocations directed at ... -
Only Yesterday and the Transnational Power of Anime
Though the medium of animation has existed since at least the 1900s, scholarship in the field of animation has been largely neglected in favour of the academic study of live-action films. This trend in film academia has ...
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