<p> This dissertation focuses on the religious commitments of the Peng clan of Suzhou. From the early to mid-Qing dynasty (1644-1911) the Pengs were arguably the most successful corporate lineage in the entire empire in terms of civil examination performance. They were also pioneers of a charitable style of status justification in which the Pengs explained their worldly success as divine reward for their good works. By the early eighteenth century, many of the Pengs&rsquo; peers and social inferiors promulgated their claims as well. In the thriving genre of morality books <i>(shanshu)</i> particularly successful Peng patriarchs served as iconic shorthand for the terrestrial reward of civil examination success for philanthropic acts. Examination hopefuls and morality book consumers throughout the empire sought to obtain a portion of the prosperity of the Pengs by emulating their charitable commitments. </p><p> Drawing on source materials ranging from autobiographies and genealogies to the transcripts of spirit-writing sessions, I focus my study on the pivotal figure of Peng Dingqiu (1645-1719). Dingqiu&rsquo;s 1676 <i>optimus</i> distinction and self-presentational strategy were critical in the consolidation of the concrete and symbolic power of the Peng lineage. Exploring the role of spirit-writing altars in intra-elite relations, I argue that Dingqiu&rsquo;s claim of a prophecy of his civil examination success had wide ranging consequences for his descendants and his own posthumous persona. In documenting the collective devotional commitments of the Peng lineage in realms such as a tower complex devoted to the deity Wenchang and local Daoist institutions, I provide a nuanced portrait of elite religiosity and its impact on the late imperial cityscape. Simultaneously, I use attention to the familial lineage in order to explain the centrality of religious modes of discourse in elite self-organization.</p><p> A descriptive catalog of works by Peng lineage members from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries illustrates the scope of members&rsquo; cultural impact and provides a basis for understanding how successive generations represented their ancestors through editorial and publishing endeavors.</p>

<p> Between 1969 and 1972, the Philippines experienced significant political unrest after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos&rsquo; successful reelection campaign. Around the same time, American President Richard Nixon formulated a foreign policy approach that expected its allies to be responsible for their own self-defense. This would be known as the Nixon Doctrine. This approach resulted in Marcos&rsquo; declaration of martial law in September 1972, which American officials silently supported. American officials during this time also noted Marcos&rsquo; serving of American business and military interests. Existing literature differed on the extent Marcos served what he thought were American interests. Stanley Karnow&rsquo;s <i>In Our Image</i> noted that Marcos did not adequately serve American interests, noting that he sent an insignificant amount of soldiers to Vietnam. Karnow also did not mention business interests. Raymond Bonner&rsquo;s <i>Waltzing with a Dictator </i> mentioned that Marcos was effective for serving American business and military interests. James Hamilton-Paterson&rsquo;s <i> America&rsquo;s Boy</i> agrees with Bonner&rsquo;s assessment, also noting that Marcos served American business and military interests. Materials from the <i>Digital National Security Archive</i> (DNSA) and <i> Foreign Relations of the United States</i> (FRUS) series affirmed Bonner and Hamilton-Paterson&rsquo;s position, while noting that Karnow&rsquo;s work was outdated because of the limited information he had when <i>In Our Image</i> was published. There are three issues that concerned the U.S.-Philippine relationship under President Marcos during this time. The first issue was the societal and political unrest that threatened to undermine Marcos. The second issue concerned U.S. officials&rsquo; application of the Nixon Doctrine to the Philippines. The third regarded President Marcos&rsquo; serving of military and business interests in the Philippines. Marcos supported maintaining America&rsquo;s Filipino bases, which were important hubs of American military operations during the Vietnam War. In addition to military interests, President Marcos also aided American businesses in the Philippines, by removing restrictions that threatened American business activity. Each of these concerns led to President Marcos&rsquo; declaration of martial law. American officials&rsquo; tacit support for Marcos reflected their commitment to the Nixon Doctrine, which ensured political stability that preserved American business and military interests.</p>

<p> This dissertation presents an analysis of the reconstruction of urban folk arts as cultural heritage in China. Focusing on material culture and folk performances revived in two Beijing folklore markets, the dissertation discusses the neoliberal marketization that coincides with urban commercial zoning in China since the 1980s. The dissertation examines the intertwined cultural and economic dimensions of collective nostalgia, urban marketization and heritage developmentalism. Based on ethnographic and archival research in Beijing from 2010 to 2015, the dissertation addresses China&rsquo;s collaboration with UNESCO in world cultural heritage program. It looks closely at the process of cultural heritage marketization, which is geared toward a developmental agenda. Such a heritage construction appears in conjuncture with the rise of the new Chinese cultural industry and cultural entrepreneurship, reconfiguring the sociopolitical role of folk arts and folk artists in China. </p><p> Through the ethnographic lens, the dissertation focuses on depicting the everyday life in contemporary Beijing surrounding folklore marketplaces. In particular, it describes material engagements established by connoisseurs and collectors in two major folklore markets, the Shilihe and the Panjiayuan market, demonstrating a new Chinese folklore connoisseurship that ascends and reconfigured in contemporary Beijing. This dissertation argues that the desire, and the collective effort, to overcome the post-Mao social and cultural transformation have materialized in the revival of folk traditions as marketized cultural heritage. It contends that the ascending cultural market propels the hope of national rejuvenation while bringing about a new form of possessive individualism alongside the process of privatization.</p>

<p>The work of Japanese contemporary artist Aida Makoto (1965-) has been shown internationally in major art institutions, yet there is little English-language art historical scholarship on him. While a contemporary of internationally-acclaimed Japanese artists Murakami Takashi and Nara Yoshitomo, Aida has neither gained their level of international recognition or respect. To date, Aida?s work has been consistently labeled as otaku or subcultural art, and this label fosters exotic and juvenile notions about the artist?s heavy engagement with Japanese animation, film and manga (Japanese comic book) culture. In addition to this critical devaluation, Aida?s explicit and deliberately shocking compositions seemingly serve to further disqualify him from scholarly consideration. This thesis will argue that Aida Makoto is instead a serious and socially responsible artist. Aida graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music in 1991 and came of age as an artist in the late 1980s during the start of Japan?s economic recession. Since then Aida has tirelessly created artwork embodying an ever-changing contemporary Japanese identity. Much of his twenty-three-year oeuvre explores the culturally significant social sign of the shojo or pre-pubescent Japanese schoolgirl. This thesis will discuss these compositions as Aida?s deliberate and exacting social critiques of Japan?s first and second ?lost decades,? which began in 1991 and continue into the present.

For more than five decades the British government suppressed the work of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in India during 1941--1946. The SOE was a secret body engaged in sabotage, subversive activities, and black propaganda in enemy, enemy controlled, and neutral countries during the Second World War. Through the perspective of subalternity, this study reconstructs the career of Shottyendro K. Ghosh, an Indian member of the Indian Civil Service, a tiny administrative elite, overwhelmingly British in composition that was responsible for overseeing all government activity in British India. Ghosh became a quisling and leader of a fierce guerilla force for the SOE during World War II in order to protect his homeland from Japan's imperial conquests. Much of Ghosh's life continues to be an untold story. This study also examines the current World War II curriculum at a flagship university in Bengal, India, where much of the SOE operations were based, to evaluate the state of curricular affairs, the level of familiarity and scholarly activity amongst active historians and to learn to what extent SOE operations in India is included in the World War II curriculum that is taught to undergraduate history students at this institution. The contextual framework for this examination is nested in the sociology of knowledge. This study will illuminate both a precise historical moment and the ways it has been narrated in academic discourse. In doing so, it will fill a gap in Indian history.

No description available.

In this essay, the concern is feminism in the writings of the two revolutionary women, Germaine de Stael, who lived and wrote during the French revolutionary era, and Ding Ling, who lived and wrote during the Chinese Communist revolutionary era. The main theme of the essay is to determine whether the feminism in their work is of a similar nature despite the vast differences in the times and places in which they each lived. Concomitantly, the theme is also an attempt to discover through such similarities if feminism is of a universal nature. Through biographical sketches and analysis of selected works, the two women are compared within their historical context. The conclusion is, despite many differences in their lives and works, there are significant similarities which seem to indicate that many aspects of feminism do indeed cross lines of time and space.

<p> Of the thousands of Buddhist manuscripts discovered at Dunhuang, there are many examples of non-official <i>s&umacr;tras</i> and <i> dh&amacr;ran&dotbelow;&imacr;</i> collections more difficult to identify than those with titles identical to canonical <i>s&umacr;tras</i>. Manuscript collection catalogs are the first sources consulted when one undertakes research involving manuscripts and in order to be a truely valuable resource, they need to reflect current scholarship. This thesis studies the Dunhuang manuscript, Pelliot <i>chinois</i> 3538, from different perspectives, examining its ritual, iconography, and textual variances. It compares its iconographical program to manuscript <i>s&umacr;tras</i> and canonical scriptures, uncovering new information regarding the content of multiple manuscripts. From this research it is apparent that P.3538 is an Avalokite&sacute;vara <i> dh&amacr;ran&dotbelow;&imacr;</i> ritual that is iconographically informed from a variety of canonical texts: <i>s&umacr;tras</i> in the <i> N&imacr;lakan&dotbelow;t&dotbelow;ha</i>/Qianshou cluster, the <i> Mah&amacr;pratisar&amacr; dh&amacr;ran&dotbelow;&imacr;s&umacr;tra</i> and its corresponding amulet culture, and <i>s&umacr;tras</i> connected with the bodhisattva&rsquo;s narrative history. In examining other manuscripts from Cave 17, we have found that it is a member of a Dunhuang manuscript cluster and is visually represented in an ink on paper altar diagram, Stein no. Ch.00189, from the British Museum. Integrating these findings would enrich descriptive catalogs for future research.</p>

<p> My research examines how the writers of the <i>Granada Pioneer</i>, a newspaper published in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II, used the editorial column of that publication to shape the community identity of that camp. The newspaper was published by Japanese America internees living in that camp, but their readership was composed of Japanese American internees and also non-interned non-Japanese Americans. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, I found that the internee writers were using the editorial column to shape a community habitus within the internment camp while at the same time attempting to reshape the imagined community of "America" within the minds of all their readers. In addition, I found that though the internee writers were subject to administrative censorship, they were able to circumvent that censorship by reprinting editorial columns from mainstream newspapers and thus express sentiments that they themselves were not permitted to published. </p>

This dissertation uses the textual materials found in several villages in Pingnan, northeastern Fujian, from 2008 to 2011, to examine the use of texts in rural China during the imperial period. The discussion focuses on the texts produced by local people and used locally. The central theme of the dissertation is to contextualize the rise of textual culture and the spread literate mentality in a marginal society, and explore the relationship between text and society. The dissertation consists of two major parts. Part I covers the period when Pingnan was the northern part of Gutian County, and Part II covers the period around and after the establishment of Pingnan County in 1734. Part I consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 traces the early textual practices in northern Gutian during the Song-Yuan period, and suggests a local perspective of textual culture. Chapter 2 discusses the establishment of official documentation system in the early Ming and its influence on local communities and the production of local texts. Chapter 3 uses a case of a rising family in the late Ming to illustrate the use of textual construction to promote one's social and cultural status. Part II consists of four chapters and each chapter investigates the use of texts in one realm of village life. Chapter 4 starts with the penetration of genealogy compilation and the transformation of social structure. Chapter 5 discusses the political background for the proliferation of stone stelae and other "texts for public display." Chapter 6 examines various kinds of textual materials used in economic activities, from managing lineage properties to land-exchanges and long-distant trades. Chapter 7 explores the creation within the transmission of ritual texts and their responses to the changing requirement of ritual performance. In the conclusion, this dissertation discusses the significance of textual culture in the general transformations and social integrations in northeastern Fujian, and also reconsiders the question of "literacy" in the context of local society. / East Asian Languages and Civilizations