Browsing by Subject "Aesthetic"
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Item Aesthetic fandom : furries in the 1970s(2021-05-06) Dunn, Kameron Isaiah; Davis, Janet M.This report offers a cultural history of the furry fandom by analyzing their emergence in the 1970s within broader transnational economic and cultural flows. The furry fandom is a community of people interested in anthropomorphic animals, the kind you see in Disney animated films and newspaper cartoons. This aesthetic interest differentiates furries from other fandoms emerging at this time whose congregation is normally predicated on an interest in a particular piece of media, such as Trekkies and their love of Star Trek. Furries’ interest in the aesthetics of anthropomorphic animals can be transformative and places them within a group of people who foster this niche interest as well as aspects of their queerness. Indeed, the furry fandom is majority LGBTQ+-identifying. This history examines niche interest and the queerness of the furry fandom, placing these facets into broader conversations of queer theory and consumer capitalism. Ultimately, this report shows how furries co-construct a sort of utopic reality within larger society’s political and economic anxiety in the 1970s, and how these originating practices continue today. Furry cultural production demonstrates elements of American cartoons as well as Japanese anime made manifest in their art, such as their alter-egos known as “fursonas.” This blending of anthropomorphic styles into something uniquely furry is a practice that is ongoing. This report utilizes a mixed methods approach including historiography and visual analysis to tell this story of furries’ origins in the 1970s and their persistence to today.Item Aesthetic suicide in avant-garde literature of the 1920s : portraits of self-destruction by Breton, Gide, and Cocteau(2020-05-04) Brynes, Stephanie Alexis; Picherit, Hervé G.; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; Coffin, Judith; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth“Aesthetic Suicide in Avant-Garde Literature of the 1920s” explores the connection between portraits of suicide and reflections on art and its production in select avant-garde works by André Breton, André Gide, and Jean Cocteau. I suggest more specifically that each author used portraits of suicide as a vehicle to articulate their artistic principles in the early twentieth century. These principles are visible, for instance, in Breton’s construction of the Vaché suicide myth from 1919 to 1924, in Gide’s novel Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925), and in Jean Cocteau’s novel Les Enfants terribles (1929). The ambiguity that clouds the act of suicide served each author’s representation of art and its production in various ways: by modeling a form of artistic abstention from life as poetry in line with an avant-garde rejection of literary ambition; by holding a mirror to the ways in which counterfeit infiltrates the stories we tell about ourselves and the world, or by expressing the imperfect coalescence of content and form in the production of the work of art. Given the diversity of the select authors’ thematic concerns, their use of diverse forms and mediums, as well as their personal and profession disputes, this project provides a window to a shared attribute across three otherwise discordant oeuvres. In this comparative, thematic study, I suggest the unanticipated link between Breton, Gide, and Cocteau implies suicide’s broader association with art and its production within varying factions of the avant-garde during the 1920s. In this way, this project situates itself in the fields of modernist studies and literary suicidology through its evaluation of the suicide as an allegory for the fragmentation of the work of art. To the existing body of research on suicide in modernist literature, which primarily addresses the psychological narrative of the suicidal individual, this project contributes a reading of suicide as a vehicle for the avant-garde criticism of art in French literature from 1919 to 1929.Item Understanding the impact of college sponsorships on student athletes’ brand loyalty(2021-12-03) Gibson, Alison A.; Love, Brad (Ph. D. in media and information studies)In recent years, the brand sponsorship industry has continued to grow, and with the emergence of the new Name Image Likeness (NIL) rules in college sports, it is essential for brands to understand how their sponsorships are impacting athletes. Athletes’ voices, followings and opportunities are growing and brands need to evolve to remain relevant. This thesis investigates the mental frameworks of student athletes as well as their perceptions of and affinity towards their sponsors to better understand the impact of brand sponsorships on student athletes’ long-term loyalty. Athletes were interviewed using a standard questionnaire, which was created based on concepts from Social Identity Theory and the consumer decision-making process. It accounts for consumer vs. brand loyalty, as well as functional, symbolic, and experiential variables. Using the standardized questionnaire, 23 athletes were asked about their college experiences, thoughts, memories, and feelings as they pertain to brand sponsorship. Five key findings resulted from this research: athletes feel connected to their university brands, but disconnected from their university sponsorship brand, aesthetic is a very powerful variable that affects self-concept, external perception, identity, and in some cases performance, branded clothing (aesthetic) can create exaggerated feelings of team connectivity as well as connections to strangers – this relationship becomes more complex as the clothing becomes more unique or requires more work to acquire, performance enhancement and brand trust are potentially related and inclusion, input and individuality impact athlete-brand connection. In relation to the overarching research question, over three fourths of the postgraduates interviewed said they still occasionally purchase gear from the brands they wore in college and over three fourths of the current athletes said that they will continue to purchase; however, no concise conclusions can be made that college sponsorship leads to long term brand loyalty