Browsing Communication & Culture, Joint Program with Ryerson University by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 50
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Transient Vogue: The Commodification and Spectacle of the Vagrant Other
(2014-07-09)As creative director of Christian Dior, John Galliano received substantial press attention in early 2000 when he debuted his haute couture collection portraying models dressed as if they were homeless. Galliano’s couture ... -
Abandonware, Commercial Expatriation and Post-Commodity Fan Practice: A Study of the Sega Dreamcraft
(2014-07-09)This thesis explores the nature of digital gaming platforms once they have been expatriated from the consumer marketplace and have been relegated to obsolescence. In this state, abandonware becomes a site for creative ... -
Black Diasporic Disasters and the Africanization of Poverty in Western Print Media: a Case Study of Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian Earthquake in the New York Times
(2014-07-09)Thousands of poor, mainly black Americans were plastered across the news in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. Correspondingly, after the devastating Haitian earthquake in January 2010, images and readings ... -
Picturing Life Stories in a Biomedical Setting: A Phenomenological Analysis of Neonatal End-of-Life Photography
(2015-01-26)This dissertation explores End-of-Life (EOL) photography, a common practice in North American hospitals whereby nurses facilitate photography for families around the death of their newborn. It is based on a qualitative ... -
Exhibiting Climate Change: An Examination of the Thresholds of Arts-Sciences Collaborations in the Context of Learning for a Sustainable Future
(2015-01-26)This dissertation probes the cultural and political thresholds of arts–sciences collaborations in the context of the development of public pedagogy about a sustainable response to climate change. The dissertation is an ... -
Playing Games with Art: The Cultural and Aesthetic Legitimation of Digital Games
(2015-01-26)Like other popular cultural forms before them, digital games are undergoing a process of cultural and aesthetic legitimation; the question of digital games’ legitimacy as art is being raised with increasing urgency in a ... -
The Life Cycle of the Computer: A Study in the Materialities of Risk
(2015-01-26)The environmental effects of personal computers, from dangerous chemicals used in chip production to e-waste, have largely been ignored in pop culture, mainstream media, and much academic research. In order to take up these ... -
Capoeira as a Resource: Multiple Uses of Culture Under Conditions of Transnational Neoliberalism
(2015-08-28)This dissertation explores the shifting meanings and values attached to capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian ‘martial game’, as it circulates as a ‘cultural resource’ in the context of neoliberal globalization. Since the 1970s, ... -
Augmented Reality as a new Medium: Remediation and Novel Form
(2015-08-28)This dissertation is a pioneering exploration and mapping of the vast terrain of Augmented Reality (AR) as a new medium experienced from the unique perspective of being both a practitioner and academic researcher working ... -
This Project can be Upcycled where Facilities are Available: An Adventure Through Toronto's Food/Waste Scape
(2015-08-28)At the intersection of food, regulations, and subjective experiences is a new way of understanding the intersection of wasted food—a new category of edibility. This project investigates the reasons for, and impacts of, ... -
Transnational Divorce: The Violation of Immigrant Japanese Mothers' Rights an the Hague Abduction Convention
(2015-08-28)As a counterpoint to existing discussions of how Western fathers’ rights can be secured in the context of transnational divorce, this study raises the important question of how immigrant Japanese mothers’ fundamental rights ... -
Me, Myself, and Interface: The Role of Affordances in Digital Visual Self-Representational Practices
(2015-08-28)A growing number of digital games and virtual worlds allow users to create a virtual self, commonly referred to as an ‘avatar.’ Essentially, the avatar is a digital entity which is controlled by the user to attain agency ... -
Confess the Gay Away? Media, Religion, and the Political Economy of Ex-Gay Therapy
(2015-08-28)The “ex-gay” movement does not encourage people to pray the gay away but confess it away. As a loose organization of mostly Christian ministries and psychotherapy practices offering “freedom from homosexuality,” the movement ... -
Mangos with Chili: Two-Spirit, Queer and Trans People of Colour Performance as Social Movement Building
(2015-08-28)Mangos with Chili (MWC) is a two-spirit, queer and trans people of color (2-QTPOC) performance arts cabaret based in the San Francisco Bay Area. This research focuses on MWC performance content and personal interviews with ... -
One Nation Under the Market: Mediated Narratives of the 2008 Crisis in America
(2015-12-16)This dissertation examines the construction of the 2008 economic crisis in American media through a comparative analysis of three case studies, each involving a different medium and each involving a distinct implied public. ... -
Pathways to the Eighth Fire: Mapping Indigenous Knowledge in Toronto
(2015-12-16)A considerable body of scholarly research now accords with long-held Indigenous prophecy in affirming the ongoing importance of Indigenous knowledge for the health and wellness of contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous ... -
Turkey's Internal Other: Embodiments of TASRA in the Works of Orhan Pamuk, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Fatih Akin
(2015-12-16)In Turkey, the concept of taşra connotes much more than its immediate spatial meaning as those places outside of the city center(s). Its extensive circulation as a trope that indicates externality to modernity is inextricably ... -
Individualised Environmentalism(s): The Deadly Sins of Environmental Organisations
(2015-12-16)This study utilises the theories of Harold Innis to discern how environmental organisations in Toronto, Ontario are impeded by consumer capitalist biases toward mechanisation, individualisation, quantification, and the ... -
Modernist Urbanism in the Age of Automobility: Producing Space in the Suburbs of Toronto and Prague
(2015-12-16)Theorizing the effects of the expanding system of automobility has been an important area of inquiry in urban studies. What remains largely absent, though, are concrete investigations into the relationships between ... -
Network Narrative: Prose Narrative Fiction and Participatory Cultural Production in Digital Information and Communication Networks
(2015-12-16)In this study of prose narrative created explicitly for participatory network communications environments I argue that network narratives constitute an important, born-networked form of literary and cultural expression. ...