Blush (2021) Bending the Elementary: Queering Gender and Sexuality in Avatar: The Last Airbender and Beyond

Looks at the role of television in constructing gender for children and reinforcing traditional gender roles, especially Judith Butler’s “heterosexual matrix”, with lexical analysis of how characters do and don’t escape it. Investigates the ways in which Avatar: the Last Airbender (2005-2008) either upholds or subverts the dichotomies of gender and sexuality, by analyzing the … Continue reading Blush (2021) Bending the Elementary: Queering Gender and Sexuality in Avatar: The Last Airbender and Beyond

Halttunen (2022) “She’s the greatest earthbender I’ve ever seen!”

Examines the presentation of female agency in two characters (Toph and Azula) in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, looking particularly at multimodal features. Mostly qualitative analysis incorporating both visual and linguistic features through a critical stance. Linguistically, specific vocabulary and politeness strategies were analysed and evidenced with script excerpts. This thesis would be … Continue reading Halttunen (2022) “She’s the greatest earthbender I’ve ever seen!”