Department of Communication

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/17

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 153
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    365 snaps: a digital story
    (2015) Wurfel, Marlene
    The author combines 365 still images of her baby taken throughout the first year of her life with retrospective voiceover narration and music. This digital story, or, multimedia project, was produced at a Digital Storytelling Workshop for Educators at the Center for Digital Storytelling, now the StoryCenter in Berkeley, California. Some themes explored in the post-secondary classroom using this very personal story include humanizing pedagogy, social justice and feminist identity, and voice. To produce this creative research project, Marlene Wurfel explored camera techniques, digital storytelling techniques and the phenomenology of mother as documentarian. Photos were animated using Adobe Premiere Pro. Soundtrack by Frozen Silence via a Creative Commons license.
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    A digital story
    (2020) Wurfel, Marlene
    This video (.MP4 HD) exemplifies the techniques of digital storytelling including layering images with sound and movement, and further, adding a voiced narrative, a subjective point of view, and dramatic tension. Digital storytelling is a research method operating within an interpretive paradigm whereby the storyteller shares insight and experience with an intention towards personal growth and social or organizational change. Stills gathered from various sources (2020), soundtrack (courtesy YouTube audio library), original footage gathered with gratitude to Indigenous communities in Treaty 8 territory using a Pixel 2 smartphone, editing environment is WeVideo, script and narration by Marlene Wurfel.
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    A good dog
    (2016) Wurfel, Marlene
    This Tales From The Lilypad original bedtime story by Marlene Wurfel is a tribute to one of the best dogs who ever lived. We love you and miss you Gus!
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    A Halloween story too: Dave and Nightdash in Grimvale
    (2018) Wurfel, Marlene
    A sequel to Nightdash set in the used-to-be-spooky town of Grimvale. But now, the Candy Cane Committee has put Christmas lights EVERYWHERE. Will Nightdash and Dave the little Monster and his bat friend be able to save Halloween?
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    A qualitative review of literature on peer review of teaching in higher education: An application of the SWOT framework
    (2013) Thomas, Susan; Chie, Quiu Ting; Abraham, Mathew; Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Beh, Loo-See
    The issues of professional accountability, faculty member development, and enhancing higher education quality in universities are gaining importance. A strategy that could increase personal control over teaching practices in addition to improving professional development among faculty members is peer review of teaching (PRT). Five themes that are important in determining the feasibility of PRT are (a) benefits of peer review in developing faculty members, (b) barriers to peer review of teaching, (c) gaps in literature, (d) potential problems to teaching practice, and (e) opportunities. Of the 65 studies identified, 34 were selected for further analysis, and drawing on PRT and the SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat) framework, 27 studies were selected for content mapping. Textual narrative synthesis was used to further categorize the review findings into the four quadrants of the SWOT framework. This analysis highlights a positive strategy in promoting PRT in higher education.
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    A strategic communication model for sustainable initiatives in higher education institutions
    (2017) Mazo, Lucille; Macpherson, Iain
    Communicating sustainable initiatives in higher education institutions presents a challenge, given that few to no universities possess or maintain a strategic communication plan that addresses the need to share this information effectively to stakeholders (students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community advocates). Drawing on secondary and primary research across universities in three countries, each representing distinct regional and national orientations – Canada, Ecuador, and Ukraine – the authors explain a sustainability/environmental communication model designed to be flexible enough for universal application, while providing strategic guidelines tailored to higher education institutions in each of its four described steps. The strategic communication model is informed by the critical synthesis of secondary research into two main areas of literature: (1) strategic communication theory and best practice; and (2) the organizational dissemination of sustainability initiatives, particularly within post-secondary institutions. Such secondary literature informs, and is in turn contributed to by, the authors’ primary research that was conducted, which consists of three parts: (1) discourse analysis of relevant institutional documents and promotional materials; (2) interviews about current practices in sustainability-related communication, conducted with higher education sustainability administrators; and, (3) focus groups with students, examining participant awareness and assessment of their institution’s sustainability communications. Based on such study, the authors advance a strategic communication model for sustainable initiatives, which comprises a four-step process based on a series of eight questions, with the first step providing comprehensive explication of a seven-component strategic planning framework that scales downward from the most abstract considerations to concrete tactics. In summary, the primary- and secondary-research data suggests that most universities, even if they implement sustainability initiatives or officially incorporate environmentalism into their institutional identity statements (mission, vision, etc.), fail to communicate these actions informatively and persuasively, thereby establishing widespread need for this paper’s offered strategic guidance.
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    A trip to Gingerbread Land
    (2017) Wurfel, Marlene
    In this Merry Christmas 2017 episode, three children journey to Gingerbread Land on a Gingerbread Train. Inspired by the a 1934 version by Einar Nerman.
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    American frontier myth and black humour: a study of Marsha Norman’s The Holdup
    (2017) Jose, Soumya; Raj, Sony Jalarajan
    American frontier myth, which can aptly be termed as a relic of the past is intricately woven into the plot of Marsha Norman’s play, The Holdup. This paper attempts to unravel how the playwright has employed black humour to stage the metamorphosis of a naïve teenager to an adult with broader world view. Besides, the paper examines the technique of meta-narration used by the playwright to narrate the events that had happened offstage.
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    Amethyst
    (2016) Wurfel, Marlene
    Amethyst, a cinnamon-coloured black bear, develops a taste for people food at a Kootenay Mountain campsite.
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    An Arctic fairy tale
    (2017) Wurfel, Marlene
    Three little arctic fairies learn from the crow who raised them that they aren't crows and need to make their own way in the world as fairies. Will these siblings work together to make magic?
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    Arachne gets revenge
    (2017) Wurfel, Marlene
    This Tales From the Lilypad original by Marlene Wurfel is a mash-up of new story and ancient Greek myth. There are bits from Theseus and the Minotaur, bits from Arachne and Athena's story, bits from Charlotte's Web, and entirely new bits, all woven together for contemporary heros and princessess. Warning: contains lots and lots of spiders.
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    Between the borders of life and art: Roman Polanski’s transgressive negotiations
    (2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
    Roman Polanski’s films are noted for their subversive psychological style that explores themes of sexuality, desire, alienation, and violence. His narratives often reflect a dark sense of humour through which the director perceives the absurdity of the human condition in relation to his own cultural dislocations and artistic eccentricity. This article investigates how different connotations of transgression play a major role in defining Roman Polanski as a filmmaker. It specifically explores how the polysemy of transgression structures Polanski as an artist whose real and cinematic negotiations are often intertwined. Through the constant subversion of moral, cultural, and social discourses, his visual style and narrative ideology maintain a notorious affinity that disturbs the notion of reality and manipulates it with new narrative texts. It is the idea of transgression that changes the way Polanski’s auteur status is perceived, appreciated, and rejected for his actions and creations in the past and their repercussions in the present. Polanski’s works use historical, social, and personal realities to renegotiate his transgressive image in real life by incorporating his contested victim status and persecuted selfhood in narratives that manipulate both the past and present.
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    Bodies that need queering: the queer hetero-topias in Malayalam cinema
    (2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
    This edited volume offers a comprehensive understanding of the queer space in tandem with the transforming socio-cultural-political relationships in a country that exhibits diversified shades of ideologies and history – that is, India. The featured essays deal with the presence of queerness in visual media, particularly in films and the digital arena, from multilingual and multicultural perspectives, thus creating an exhaustive discourse encompassing argument and analysis. This book aims to depict the plurality and complexity of the Indian scenario, fostering mass acceptance of queerness, a rare scholastic endeavour.
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    Bollywood self-fashioning: Indian popular culture and representations of girlhood in 1970s Indian cinema
    (2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
    This article investigates how Bollywood cinema represented girlhood experiences in India in the early 1970s. It argues that the films during this time focused on representing girls who displayed a variety of new fashion styles and attitudes, some of which were borrowed from western cultures. This was a sign that there was a new way of representing girls which broke with the submissive, dull and melancholic sari-wearing Indian female stereotype entrapped within domestic settings. The immediate result of this was the emergence of new style leaders and popular icons in Indian popular cinema. This study uses Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning and Guy Mankowski’s idea of self-design to examine how Indian girlhood was renegotiated in the 1970s as an individual-centric idea with more agency and power. Here, self-fashioning refers to the way girls adopt new elements of fashion, styles and attitudes to distinguish their identity from earlier archetypal modes of representation in film and culture. It specifically analyses the emergence of Jaya Bhaduri in Guddi (1971) and Dimple Kapadia in Bobby (1973) as case studies to understand the transformation of girlhood representations in early 1970s Bollywood that opened a new space for girls to redefine their selfhood through the assimilation of consumerism, western culture and fashion styles.
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    Buttercup cools down
    (2016) Wurfel, Marlene
    This mindfulness story was recorded in a pond full of little froggies. It's about the littlest frog in the pond, Buttercup, and how she learns to calm down.
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    Canadian post-secondary players in India: obstacles, issues, opportunities
    (2008) Scherf, K.; Macpherson, Iain
    In November 2007, the Canadian Bureau of International Educationorganized, along with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, a Forum on Canada-India Higher Education Linkages. At that Forum, it became evident that Canadian post-secondary institutions conducting academic business with and in India are facing a number of problems, both operational and policy-related. This paper seeks to identify those common problems, discuss remedies, and suggest the best ideas for moving forward with a view to improving the situation for Canadian institutions that wish to work in and with India. Findings, while drawing on secondarysource readings, are based especially upon 17 interviews, conducted during Spring 2008 with key figures in the field, from professors and postsecondary administrators to promotional agents and political officials. An interesting range of problems emerged, but most striking is the fragmented, scattershot approach to conducting academic business in India, both by the government and academic institutions. This lack of coordination is uncharacteristic of countries whose international education portfolios run sleekly and effectively. The federal government’s recent changes to visa policy related to international education is a very positive move, however. Our recommendations focus on continuing improvements to visa service and, especially, on addressing the lack of co-ordination in and between governments and post-secondary institutions.
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    Cat and mouse in partnership
    (2018) Wurfel, Marlene
    A rearrangement and retelling of a Brother's Grimm fairytale: Cat and Mouse in Partnership. Cat and Mouse are in love. Can they make it work?
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    Cat castle III: Primrose escapes
    (2019) Wurfel, Marlene
    A Tales from the Lilypad original bedtime story for kids by Marlene Wurfel in which Primrose the Mouse must escape from the Cat Castle to perform a heroic task. Cats! Alicorns! Razzle Dazzle! An Enchanted Clock Tower!
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    Cat Castle part I: fairytale
    (2019) Wurfel, Marlene
    A Tales from the Lilypad retell of Grimm's The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat. This fairytale has it all: romance, adventure, comeuppance, revenge, enchanted forests, and a magic castle where all the servants are kittens.
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    Cat castle part II: sleepytime in the Enchanted Castle
    (2019) Wurfel, Marlene
    This is a sequel to the Tales from the Lilypad's version of Grimm's The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat. In the Grimm's fairytale, a poor boy is rescued by a cat who brings him to her enchanted castle in which all the servants are kittens. Inspired by the fairytale, this original 20 minute sleepycast or sleep meditation by Marlene Wurfel is to help kids fall asleep or to just rest and relax at naptime. Welcome to sleepytime at the Enchanted Castle where the sweetwater river flows past all the sleepy little kittens in the sleepy fortress in the enchanted forest.