Author: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard
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Wrestlers’ Nipples
In the United States, women’s nipples are not allowed to be seen in the media. These natural, life-sustaining features are deemed inappropriate — even to the point where pictures of breastfeeding were banned from Facebook. But men’s nipples, those rather meaningless holdovers from at one point being a female zygote in the womb? Those are…
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Chris’s Cult Catalogue: No Way Out (1973)
In Cult Catalogue, I offer my thoughts on cult movies, and try to determine whether or not they are essential, forgettable, or somewhere in between. Throughout this series I will endeavor to focus primarily on cultish, lesser-known, or largely forgotten films, though in the age of the Internet, nothing is ever truly forgotten, so occasionally…
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Deliver Us From Evil: The Danger of Possessing Men
As we have repeatedly seen during this project we are calling Tensions in Exorcism Cinema, there appears to be a narrative made popular by the success of The Exorcist (1973). There is a reason we like to say that the 1973 movie is the one that started it all, even though there had been films…
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From Reaffirming to Challenging Traditions: A critical comparison of The Last Exorcism and The Last Exorcism Part II
Christopher Olson and I presented our first analysis for the exorcism cinema project at this year’s Midwest Popular Culture Association conference. We subsequently wrote the presentation as a paper that would go in a book we are developing. We just submitted the book proposal last night, and now this morning you can read this analysis…
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The Pop Culture Lens Podcast Goes Live!
Christopher Olson (of the blog Seems Obvious to Me) and I present a new podcast, The Pop Culture Lens, where we discuss the media of the past through the lens of today to understand how relevant it is to our modern lives. You can follow the podcast on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, or get the…
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Avatars, Audiences and Interactive Television
This presentation was given at the 100th National Communication Association Conference in Chicago on November 21, 2014. This presentation reflects the work I have done with Pooky Amsterdam to understand the nature and potential of virtual world television as reported in the Journal of Virtual World Research. This presentation was awarded one of the Top…
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On Online Education and Catholic Social Teaching
Earlier this fall, I attended the annual EDUCAUSE convention in Orlando, Florida. I have written about my experience at the convention as it relates to my ongoing project investigating the relationship between online learning communities and Catholic social teaching as an approach to designing higher education. As part of my attendance at the convention, I…
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Community in Online Learning: Thoughts from EDUCAUSE
Every year, there is a special gathering of individuals interested in improving the technologies of higher education. Faculty, IT administrators, inventors, entrepreneurs, the Big Dogs (i.e. Google, Microsoft, Dell, etc) convene for several days of talks, presentations, pitches, sales, and ideas. This get annual, international together is sponsored by EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit dedicated to improving…
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5 Things People Believe About Demons, Exorcisms and The Spirit World
As All Hallow’s Eve approaches, and the dark veil between the land of the living and the land of the dead lists, we in the Western world turn to concerns of all things supernatural. But it is not just Halloween that propels people to be worried about how the spiritual plan can impede in this…
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Legion: Or, the Exorcism Movie that Makes Me Sad for Roddy Piper
I recently came to be interested in professional wrestling. For awhile there — as in most of my life — I thought wrestling to be beneath me, an entertainment that degrades those who do it and those who watch it. I was wrong: there are many layers to this sports entertainment, and it is quite…
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