This ethnography takes place at four of northern India’s most renowned, all-girls’ private boarding schools, established in reference to the British Public Schooling model mainly during the tail ends of colonialism by Indian queens and British memsahibs on the sub-continent. It is a story told from the points of view of founders, administrators, and teachers, but primarily from that of students, based on fieldwork conducted from July 2013 through June 2014. Schools heralded as historic venues of purported upper-caste girls’ emancipation, this study interrogates the legacies of this colonial-nationalist moment by examining how these institutions and their female students engage in newer processes and discourses of class formation and gendered empowerment through schooling. For one, it considers the dichotomous (re)constructions of gendered and classed personhoods enacted through exclusionary modernities, particularly in terms of who gains access to these schools, both physically and through symbolic forms of belonging. It then examines the reclamation of these constructs within (inter)national development discourses of girls’ empowerment and the role of neoliberal privatization in reconstituting elite schooling experiences with gender as its globalizing force. Here, seemingly paradoxical relationships between such concepts as discipline and freedom, duties and rights, collective responsibility and individual competition are explored, arguing that the pressures of academic success, tensions over the future, and role of high stakes examinations and privatized tutoring are contributing to student experiences of performative or fatiguing kinds of empowerment. Through such frames, extreme binary constructions of empowerment are complicated, demonstrating how female Public School students exist more within middling spaces of “betweenness,” of practiced mediation. Empowerment in this sense is not an achievable status, nor unidirectional process, but a set of learned tools or skills deployed in recurring moments of contradiction or in difficult deliberations, whereby students variously buy in, (re)create, opt-out of, or reject proposed models of “successful” or “legitimate,” female personhood. Overall, this ethnography problematizes assumed relationships between empowerment and privilege, questions the alignments between school and the (upper-)middle class home, and suggests that as the reproductive capabilities of elite schooling are challenged in the face of newer venues of capital, these all-girls’ Public Schools and their students are finding unique ways to remain or become the elite of consideration.

This thesis centers on groups of landscape paintings on sliding doors and wall panels for temples in and around Kyoto by the painter Maruyama Ōkyo (1733-1795), dating to the latter half of the eighteenth century. I discuss Snow Landscape of the Chiba City Museum of Art, presumed to have been painted for the temple Enman’in in Ōtsu (Shiga Prefecture), and the former sliding door and wall paintings of Kiun’in, a subtemple of Nanzenji in Kyoto, now in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum. The analysis is embedded into considerations of underlying genre principles in Ōkyo’s art, the reflection on the relevance of “truthfulness to nature” (shasei) and considerations of how his works relate to established painting conventions in early modern Japan. I attempt to frame Ōkyo’s landscapes as an expression of the painter’s Chinese-inspired outlook on painting. Chapter One centers on Snow Landscape. I use stylistic comparison to argue that the paintings do not match other ink landscapes by Ōkyo of the so-called Enman’in period, but resemble closely another set of sliding doors paintings of similar subject matter at Shōkokuji, dated 1790. Snow Landscape can be understood as part of a small group of Ōkyo works that are thematically and formally related, and that all share obscure provenance and previously unaddressed questions of authorship. This includes sliding door paintings of the temple Daijōji (Hyōgo Prefecture), of Nishi Honganji and of the former Hara collection of Toyooka, all of them with their current whereabouts unknown. In Chapter Two, I provide a detailed reconstruction of the original temple spaces based on the features of the extant paintings, then proceed to disentangle the modalities of Ōkyo’s workshop production as the context from which the Kiun’in paintings likely originated. Comparison of large-scale landscape paintings reveals that much of Ōkyo’s approach relied on reuse of complete compositions, or at least, individual motifs. I argue that the Kiun’in paintings were possibly painted by disciples. Chapter Three provides glimpses on primary source material written during Ōkyo’s lifetime by his most important patrons: Banshi (1761-1773) by Prince Abbot Yūjō, the diary Onjiki nikki (1787) by Imperial Prince Shinnin and the records of the temple Myōhōin, Myōhōin hinamiki. I argue that little in Banshi allows to conceive of Ōkyo’s art as “modern;” rather, the documents character is shaped by Yūjō’s interest in technical matters of studio painting. Yūjō and Shinnin are connected through familial ties at the court; in addition, attendance data from the Myōhōin hinamiki foreshadows the later rift into a Maruyama school and a Shijō school after Ōkyo’s death. Chapter Four provides a concluding discussion of the significance and context of Ōkyo’s landscape paintings in Buddhist temples. I argue that Ōkyo’s multi-room ensembles for temple interiors are based on artistic convention and spatial hierarchies that are comparable to approaches of the Kano school, and suggest that response to nature, such as allusion to topographical surroundings of a building, usually played a subordinate role. Ōkyo’s art depended on the appreciation of ancient Chinese culture, and closely related to the intellectual outlook of the court of Emperor Kōkaku.

This dissertation examines Japanese conceptions of and devotional attitudes toward Śākyamuni (the historical Buddha) during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. It focuses in particular on a new interest in Śākyamuni that arose in the twelfth century, and argues that this interest was a response to two developments: the appearance of the belief that the world had entered Buddhism’s final age, and the increasingly acute sense that Japan existed at the periphery of the Buddhist world. These two developments evoked in some clerics a sense of distance from the origins of Buddhism and a feeling of helplessness since the final age was a time when soteriological progress was thought to be particularly difficult. Japanese Buddhists were thus faced with a problem: how to proceed given these disadvantageous circumstances? Some clerics found comfort in theories about the Buddha Amida’s ability to take humans away from this world to his pure land, while others turned instead to the Mahāyāna Buddhist idea that humans are born enlightened (and thus need not worry about their personal salvation after all). The monks and texts at the center of my research instead looked to Śākyamuni in an attempt to reconnect with the source of the Buddhist tradition, thereby countering the inevitable decline of Buddhism by linking themselves to, and in some cases recreating, the imagined golden age that Śākyamuni and his Indian environs represented.

In Buddhism birth is regarded as the origin of suffering and impurity, whereas it also forms the physical basis indispensible for seeking and attaining awakening. Birth is both the starting points of incuring defilement and achieving sanctity. Pointing out this paradox on birth in Buddhism and situating the issue within the context of Chinese religion and history, this dissertation extensively investigates Buddhist discourses and practices of reproduction in medieval China. It anwsers how Buddhist discourses and practices of childbirth were transmitted, transformed, and applied in medieval China, and how they interacted with indigenous healing resources and practices in both Chinese religious and medical realms. Through examining the primary sources such as the excavated Day Books (Chapter One), Buddhist hagiographies (Chapter Two), Buddhist obstetric and embryological discourses (Chapter Three and Four) and healing resources preserved in Tripiṭaka and Dunhuang manuscripts, Dunhuang transformation texts and tableaux, and miracle tales and anecdote literature (Chapter Four and Five), I argue that not only was there a paradoxical dualism at the heart of Buddhism's relationship with reproduction, but also Buddhism provides abundant healing resources for dealing with childbirth on the practical level. Overall I contend that Buddhist healing resources for childbirth served as an effective channel through which Buddhist teaching, worldview and concepts of gender and body were conveyed to its supplicants. Through this investigation, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of the association of Buddhism with medicine, the influence of Buddhist discourses and practices of reproduction on China, and the transmission of Buddhist views of gender, the body, and life to China through its healing activities related to childbirth.

This study examined the prevalence rate of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) as an independent variable in association with hypertension as an outcome. Studies conducted outside of the United States suggest that differences in craniofacial features among middle-aged Asians increase the prevalence of OSA in comparison to Caucasians with similar age and lower BMI. No similar study had been conducted in the United States. The sufficient component cause theory guided this study and was able to describe the association between OSA and hypertension among middle-aged Asians. The objective of this cross sectional retrospective study was to determine the prevalence rate of OSA and the association between OSA and hypertension among a sample of 462 middle-aged Asian patients. Also, the study evaluated the association of 8 clinical parameters: age, gender, smoking, body mass index, Mallampati score, Epworth Sleepiness Scale and Apnea-Hypopnea-Index, and hypertension. The logistic regression analysis showed that OSA is associated with hypertension. The model containing the 8 variables was statistically significant, x2 (8, N = 462) = 139.59, p < .000). Age was the strongest predictor among the 8 variables. This study showed that OSA is common among middle-age Asians. This research may necessitate the need to evaluate to change current medical awareness, diagnosis, and treatment of OSA and hypertension among Asians, which could reduce the cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality.

There are more than 3.4 million South Asians in the United States. Among this subgroup, Bangladeshis in New York have a high prevalence of Type 2 diabetes ranging from 15 to 24% compared to the general population. This study examined the effect of acculturation through length of stay in the United States and understanding of the English language, and the role of gender on self-efficacy (SE) and diabetes self-management among 336 New York Bangladeshi immigrants between the ages of 21 and 75 who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes with A1C -‰¥ 6.5%, as verified by their medical record for inclusion criteria in the original DREAM study. Health belief model was used as a theoretical framework. The key findings showed a significant relationship between gender and SE levels (p ¤ .0001). Bangladeshi women were 79% less likely to have high SE levels compared to their male counterparts (OR= .212; 95%CI: .099 -.453). Additionally, those who had low education attainment were 68% less likely to develop high SE levels (OR = .323, 95%; CI: .105 -.998). The findings demonstrate the need to understand the influence of social and contextual factors on SE and underscore the importance of integrating a systems approach and ontological lens in the implementation of gender-specific innovative strategies. Such an understanding might help destigmatize diabetes, improve medication adherence, and enhance SE and coping skills for Bangladeshi women across the life span. The findings of this study might provide knowledge to public health practitioners that would help create gender-specific diabetes education and lifestyle management for equity-centered capacity building to alleviate the disproportionate burden of diabetes in Bangladeshi minority women in the United States, ultimately improving health outcomes and reducing healthcare expenditures.

Today‟s globalization enables people to move across borders for various reasons. When people move there are consequences they need to face; local customs that need to be taken into consideration. As individuals undergo the process of adapting to a new culture, acculturation occurs. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the degree of acculturation and preference for American food. The study is applied on East Asian students residing in Texas, USA. Length of residence in the U.S. and sex are two demographic factors that are used to measure the influence on the degree of acculturation. The results show that these two factors are not statistically significant to explain the degree of acculturation. However, it was observed that there is a tendency that a longer length of residence indicates a higher degree of acculturation. The results also show that marginalization and integration are the two most frequent degrees of acculturation. Finally, even though there is a slight relationship between the degree of acculturation and preference for American food, it was not statistically significant. This thesis fills the gap of limited research of acculturation among East Asians and contributes to the theoretical explanation of how the degree of acculturation affects food consumption. It also helps businesses and market practitioners to better understand the East Asians as a target group.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-111). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Anthropology, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Modern transportation has given rise to and facilitated the movement and mobility of populations. While much critical attention has been drawn to the permanent migration of the mobile population, very few scholars in the field of sociolinguistics have stressed the temporary movement of the group of travelers who are subsumed under the appellation, “the sojourner”. In addition, previous research predominantly focused on non-English speakers sojourning to English-dominant countries (Haneda and Monobe, 2009; Lee, 2008; Own, 1999), thus largely neglecting the multilingual contexts in Asia. To fill this scholarly gap, small-scale research was conducted by employing two frameworks, Social Network Theory (Milroy, 1980) and Community of Practice (Wenger, 1998; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992), to examine linguistic practices and identity positioning of Southeast Asian (SEA) sojourners when they interact with Hongkongers and other sojourners. In particular, it tackles a more complex language contact situation in which two major lingua francas, namely English and Mandarin, are available. This study was conducted in a higher education dance school in Hong Kong and three SEA sojourn students were recruited. Multi-faceted identities and multiple communities of practices are found: (1) at Communal Level: Cantonese is the shared linguistic repertoire of this dance community and three SEA sojourn students form the weakest ties with local students; (2) at Group Level: both Mandarin and English are adopted and stronger ties are established with other overseas sojourn students; and (3) at Individual Level: Singapore English is the dominant code choice used among these three SEA sojourners and they are bound together by the strongest ties. Instances of trilingual code-mixing and code-switching are also found in the interaction among the sojourners and Hong Kong locals. The two theories, Social Network Theory and Community of Practice, are complementary in accounting for the social organization of multilingual communities. Ultimately, this study demonstrates the complexity of multilingual communities with the aforesaid language contact in Hong Kong as a case in point. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy