Browsing by Subject "Reception"

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A movie full of arsenic : evolving reception and canon formation through Sweet smell of success
(2019-05-09) Margolis, Katrina Gray; Fuller-Seeley, Kathryn
This thesis examines how and why a film’s reception can change over time, focusing on the case study of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957). In investigating the film’s production, this project aims to demonstrate the shared and dispersed authorship of the film. Utilizing trade journals, popular press, archival materials, and biographies and memoirs, this project traces the reception of the film from its initial release to the present, focusing on the period of the Hollywood Renaissance when Sweet Smell of Success was re-evaluated by audiences. To this end, the project additionally investigates the notion of canon, interrogating how canons are made and the ways in which they evolve. Drawing from work in production studies and reception studies, this project aims to understand the importance of historical context and resonance in a film’s cultural placement, and the implications this has on film canonization.
Exploring the singing style in five lyrical first movements from Beethoven’s piano sonatas
(2016-05) Liu, Peng, M. of Music; Tusa, Michael Charles; Hatten, Robert S.
Although Beethoven’s so-called “heroic” style dominates perceptions about the composer, he also composed a number of pieces that have a less heroic, more intimate or “lyrical” style. Up to now, the most extended discussion of this lyrical strain has been written by Carl Dahlhaus (1980), who, however, treats the topic primarily from the perspective of thematic unification. Drawing on the discussion of the singing style in recent writings on topic theory, particularly on the semiotic approach of Sarah Day- O’Connell (2014), the present paper explores multiple musical and semiotic parameters of the singing style in the first movements of five of Beethoven’s piano sonatas: Opp. 14/2, 28, 78, 101, and 110. As shown in my analysis, these five movements not only exhibit surface musical elements that signify of the singing style--conjunct melody with narrow range and long note values, continuous and flowing contours, less impetuous rhythms, soft dynamics, simple harmony, and homophonic (melody-and-accompaniment or chorale/hymn) textures--but also reveal how Beethoven solves the structural and formal problems by mitigating contrasts between principal and subsidiary themes and lessening goal-directed processes in the development. In addition, the exploration of the signifieds of the singing style--nature, beauty, simplicity; the amateur and the feminine; and private domains as well as sociability--helps us understand how Beethoven’s singing-style sonata-form first movements function in their socio-cultural and historical contexts, while also revealing a significant humanist value—loving communication and brotherhood—that is worthy of further research. The investigation of the singing style in Beethoven’s music contributes to a better understanding of Beethoven as an artist, especially as a countermeasure to the dominance of the heroic in Beethoven reception.
Mexican research on the consumption and appropriation of foreign media contents in Mexico
(2003) Lozano, José Carlos
Over the last three decades, research and analysis of transnational communication flows and their reception by different publics, has increased and consolidated. However, scholars have not answer yet many of the fundamental questions about these processes, especially of the reception of foreign contents. There are two main reasons for this situation: on the first hand, dependency and cultural imperialism theories favored flow studies over reception studies (cf. Biltereyst, 1995; De la Garde, 1993; Fejes, 1981). On the other hand, the sectional nature of most of the studies, and their focus on particular countries or cities (except for the few comparative world or regional flow studies like the ones coordinated by Nordenstreng & Varis, 1974; Straubhaar et al., 1994; Varis, 1984), have not been sufficient for a wider understanding about the magnitude of the supply over the years, and about its reception and consumption by publics belonging to different countries. In sum, of the four axes identified by Biltereyst (1995) for the classification of the studies about the role and power of transnational communication (see Figure 1), the one explored the most has been the one related to the flow of transnational messages, while the other three have been scarcely studied empirically (p. 254). If this is the case at the world level, the situation is even more so in the case of Latin America, where for a long time the dependency and cultural imperialism approaches prevailed.
Performing unreachable bodies : the politics of encounter in Alison Bechdel's Fun home
(2010-05) Francica, Cynthia Alicia; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-; Moore, Lisa L.
Readings of Fun Home thus far have tended to focus on the representation of Alison Bechdel’s traumatic life experiences and on the ways in which the memoir bears witness to that trauma. While Jennifer Lemberg explores the role of drawing in overcoming the difficulty or impossibility of naming the traumatic experiences Alison undergoes (135), Ann Cvetkovich draws attention to the cultural and political work the memoir performs by making space for everyday life histories of trauma and for accounts of forbidden, pathologized desires (111). I would like to explore the ways in which Fun Home foregrounds those illicit desires, and performs that political work, not only through the telling of Alison’s story but, more specifically, by mobilizing the reader’s affective capabilities in the face of what may be read as surprising, emotionally charged objects and situations. I suggest that Bechdel’s memoir boldly sets the stage for an affective and cognitive encounter with out-of-bounds, unapproachable bodies and histories. Our assumptions about hetero and homonormativity, as well as our conception of home and the family as heterosexual, normative spaces, are interrogated in and through those encounters. I analyze the fundamental role of the graphic narrative form, and the employment of archival objects and elements of performance in particular, in setting the stage for the reader’s affective encounter with Alison’s family history.
Reviewing the purpose novel : reception, social reform, and the limits of persuasion in turn-of-the-century American fiction
(2013-12) Bufkin, Sydney Marie; Barrish, Phillip; Murphy, Gretchen, 1971-; Hutchison, Coleman; Smith, Mark; Winship, Michael
“Reviewing the Purpose Novel” addresses the relationship between novels and public opinion by recovering an understudied category of nineteenth-century American fiction and analyzing the reception of four examples of the genre. Though narratives about how novels can change history are popular, my research indicates that there were far more barriers to a novel impacting public opinion than critics generally recognize. Drawing from a wide range of newspaper, magazine, and archival material, “Reviewing the Purpose Novel” constructs thoroughly contextualized accounts of each novel’s publication history and reception to show the ways that reviewers established generic expectations that limited the persuasive power an individual purpose novel was granted. Rather than locating the purpose novel’s disappearance in the modernist disdain for literature that engaged too explicitly with political or social issues or with the New Critical insistence that critics focus on aesthetic and formal qualities over social and historical ones, “Reviewing the Purpose Novel” offers a counter-narrative that engages mass and popular reading modes to show that by the turn of the century, reviewers, writers, and readers may have liked to imagine that a novel could effect concrete social change, but the models reviewers offered for reading the novels tended to limit or resist the persuasive process.
The dynamics of Roman honorific arches: space, design, and reception
(2018-09-13) Rodriguez, Gretel; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-; Muntasser, Nayla; Papalexandrou, Nassos; Riggsby, Andrew; Udovicki, Danilo
This dissertation reconsiders Roman freestanding honorific arches as essential shapers of Roman cities and as communication vehicles between ancient patrons and viewers. I explore a select corpus of well-known monuments that include the Arch at Orange in Gaul and the Arch of Trajan at Benevento, as well as Roman arches including the Arch of Titus on the Velia, the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Forum, and the Arch of Constantine. By looking at these monuments from a comparative perspective, I reveal specific topographical and visual strategies ancient patrons employed to communicate a wide variety of messages. I also investigate how those messages were perceived by their intended audiences. The study begins with an exploration of the urban context of arches showing how their location was crucial in evoking a network of symbolic associations. The analysis follows with a consideration of design strategies typical or arches to include their form, their architectural ornamentation, and the style of the associated sculpted reliefs. The last chapters of this dissertation consider, for the first time, issues of reception of ancient architecture with a particular emphasis on freestanding arches. I explore how the messages constructed through topographical siting and design were perceived by a multitude of viewers according to their individual visual and cultural horizons.