JEWLScholar @MTSU

JEWLScholar@MTSU is the digital repository for Middle Tennessee State University. JEWLScholar@MTSU contains scholarly and research material from MTSU faculty, staff and students.

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Recent Submissions

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    The Optimum Wound Profile: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as Atrocity Exhibition
    (Bright Lights Film Journal, 2011-01-31) Harris, Stephen
    This essay examines John McNaughton’s *Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer* (1990) through the theoretical frameworks of J. G. Ballard’s *The Atrocity Exhibition* and Mark Seltzer’s concept of “wound culture,” arguing that the film exposes the intersections of violence, spectatorship, identity, and mass-mediated representation in late-capitalist American society. Drawing on film theory, cultural criticism, and psychoanalytic interpretations of trauma, the analysis positions serial murder as both an expression of fractured individual subjectivity and a manifestation of broader cultural anxieties surrounding violence and its technological reproduction. Henry’s unstable identity, traumatic history, and compulsive violence are examined alongside the film’s detached, pseudo-documentary aesthetic, which formally reproduces the psychological disconnection of its protagonist. Particular attention is given to the film’s use of videotaped murder, through which spectators become implicated in the consumption of violence as entertainment. The essay argues that McNaughton systematically subverts conventional horror-film expectations, withholding psychological explanations, moral resolution, and stable points of identification. In doing so, *Henry* transforms cinematic violence into a critique of the cultural mechanisms through which atrocity becomes spectacle. Ultimately, the film functions as an atrocity exhibition in Ballard’s sense: a disturbing representation of a society in which the boundaries between private trauma and public spectacle, reality and simulation, and violence and entertainment have become increasingly unstable.
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    A World Like This Deserves Contempt: Adapting Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog
    (Bright Lights Film Journal, 2020-08-21) Harris, Stephen
    This article examines the transformation of Harlan Ellison’s 1969 post-apocalyptic novella *A Boy and His Dog* into L. Q. Jones’s 1975 film adaptation, situating both works within the political, cultural, and ideological upheavals of Cold War America. Emerging from the nuclear anxieties, Vietnam War protests, and countercultural movements of the late 1960s, Ellison’s novella offers a bleakly satirical critique of human civilization, exposing the violence, hypocrisy, and moral bankruptcy underlying both social anarchy and institutional authority. Through comparative textual and historical analysis of Ellison’s novella, Jones’s early screenplay *Rover Blood*, the completed film, and its promotional materials, this article traces how the demands of cinematic adaptation and commercial appeal altered the original narrative’s thematic and ideological significance. Particular attention is given to representations of gender, sexuality, violence, and the tension between individual survival and social conformity. Whereas Ellison’s novella presents an overwhelmingly misanthropic vision of post-apocalyptic existence, Jones’s adaptation introduces an explicitly misogynistic conclusion that undermines the source material’s broader critique of human behavior. An examination of the film’s marketing campaigns and subsequent cult reception further demonstrates how changing audience expectations shaped its cultural identity. Ultimately, the article argues that *A Boy and His Dog* occupies a foundational position in post-apocalyptic science fiction, illustrating both the ideological consequences of literary adaptation and the enduring influence of Cold War apocalyptic imagination on American popular culture.
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    The use of Demo Sites on Student Retention
    (ProQuest Dissertations Demo Site, 2025) Test, Test; Test, Test; DeWald, Marylou
    this is an abstract test box for ETD.
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    Poisoned Pigments
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2026) Cupp, Brittney
    Nineteenth century bookbinding involved the use of many heavy metals. These heavy metals were used in the production of pigments. This poster delves into the different popular pigments used during this time period. These pigments include chrome yellow, Prussian blue, vermillion, and Scheele’s green.
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    Poisoned Pages: Testing for Toxic Elements in 19th-Century Book Bindings
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2026) Cupp, Brittney; Sanders, Olivia; Thompson, Laurel; Weatherly, Jessie; Pierce, Sarah; Martin, Susan; Hanson, Susan
    Book binding in the 19th century used a number of pigments that contained toxic elements. Inspired by the Poison Book Project, started by the University of Delaware, our project aimed to identify potential toxic elements of 19th century books housed in MTSU’s Walker Library Special