Graduation Year

2022

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Media Studies

Reader 1

Rachel Mayeri

Reader 2

T Kim-Trang Tran

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2021 Sophia M Navratil

Abstract

My thesis animation, Kudzu Kingdom, is an allegorical yet informative video about kudzu, the invasive vine that covers my home in Maryland. The animation follows a girl who pursues a white butterfly into a grove of kudzu, falls down a hole, and discovers a brilliant world beneath the vine. In this world, she learns about kudzu and the native species that it shrouds.

My project is a drop in a sea of literature, poems, art, essays, and films involving kudzu, but I hope that by using a unique combination of fact and fantasy I will give viewers a version of the kudzu story that augments their ecological knowledge of kudzu and native plants without disparaging their emotional associations with the vine. Because I am covering kudzu specifically as it affects Marylanders and nature native to Maryland, I am filling a gap in the large library of art pertaining to Kudzu. While kudzu has completely consumed southern art and literature, it has yet to completely permeate mid-Atlantic Maryland’s artistic archives. My animation will be part of an emerging Northern voice in the conversation about kudzu.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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