China has speeded up modernization since the reform and open-door policy was introduced in 1978. After accession to the World Trade Organization in 1999, China has been further incorporated into the global track. The national policy of economic development requires a continuing exploitation of natural resources and intensive labor from the rural sector, and over the last few decades, there has been a ceaseless wave of rural women going to the cities and working mainly as assembly-line workers, domestic helpers and sex workers. Developing a subaltern and feminist perspective, this thesis examines representations of rural women in academic research and literary works, as well as in films, documentaries, TV dramas, photography and popular magazines. The thesis attempts to outline and invoke a spectral figure of the subaltern as the rural woman demonstrably haunting dominant regimes of representations of modernization. In the prevailing mentality of development, a mega-city is portrayed as the ultimate destination; meanwhile, the rural is depicted as residual and as a repository of the past. There is a system of negative equivalences attached to the rural, which is always positioned as the unspoken, invisible or stereotyped other of overwhelming cosmopolitan values. The thesis reviews how urban intellectuals represent rural women in the contemporary cosmopolitan settings. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s discussion of the two kinds of representation—proxy and portrait—the thesis aims to read how urban intellectuals speak for as well as draw a portrait of rural women. The thesis also tries to read against the grain of the texts to trace the irreducible figure of the rural woman. As the readings will demonstrate, there are contradictions, paradoxes and ambivalences in narrating and portraying rural women as actors of modernization, victims of industrialization, agents of proletarian struggle, consumers purchasing commodities, and as the residual from agrarian society. From such incongruities within the texts, one can posit the figure of the rural woman as a symbol of resistance to the predominant discourse of modernization. This is not necessarily to suggest a nostalgic return to the past, that is, to the statist industrialization of Mao Zedong’s period and the patriarchal tradition; or an orthodox ruralism that everyone should go back to ancient society; or a romanticization of the primitive. Rather, this figure operates like Stuart Hall’s concept of “black”, referring to a way of referencing the widespread experience of marginalization in contemporary China, and an organizing category of a new politics of resistance among different groups. This research not only negotiates but also re-adjusts the notion of urban superiority by exploring the spectral figure of the rural woman. Gendering the rural vision means not only making a difference from the present capitalist and patriarchal values and practices, but also taking the excluded majority into serious consideration. It is hoped that this exercise, in the end, will help us to imagine a communal society in which we can recognize the practice of care of others as care of the self.

本文借助並修訂了布爾迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的理論框架，透過對中國大陸二十世紀九十年代以來文化明星的製造進行研究來理解變動中的文化生產場 (field of cultural production)，並探討在其間知識分子作為的新可能。文化明星問題之所以值得特別研究，首先是由於它處於當代中國文化生產的中心，涉及到電視、圖書、平面媒體、互聯網等不同的文化生產次場域（sub-field），以及製作人、 出版人、文化明星本人、“粉絲” (fans) 和批評者所代表的不同力量。考察圍繞著製造文化明星的複雜的關係網絡，正可以勾勒出當代中國變動的文化生產場域的概貌。其次，文化明星的產生和生產是對九十年代以來知識分子危機的一種回應，是知識分子問題的變奏。理解了文化明星的製造機制，有助於尋找在當下的文化生產場中知識分子作為的新可能。 本文選取余秋雨、易中天、于丹和韓寒四個個案進行深入分析。余秋雨是公認的第一個最成功的文化明星，對其案例進行研究揭示了文化明星產生的歷史轉變。易中天和于丹的案例則代表著著一種可以複製的成熟的文化明星製造模式的出現。韓寒的形象及製造是一種有別于以上主流文化明星的另類模式。 本文綜合運用多種研究方法，包括對十幾名相關的文化生產者進行訪問，組織了一個針對粉絲的焦點小組（focus group），並且到電視節目錄製現場、出版 社和大型書店進行參與式觀察。此外亦有歷史檔案梳理和文本、話語分析。 最終，本文繪製出了不同的文化明星在當代中國文化生產場中的位置，反思了現有文化明星生產模式的後果，並對知識分子/文化生產者參與文化生產提出有針對性的建議。

2003 年中國內地與香港簽訂《內地與香港關於建立更緊密經貿關係的安排》(Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, 簡稱CEPA)。其中關於電影的條款放寬了香港電影進入內地的條件，加之龐大的市場需求，香港電影工業的跨境活動變得日益頻繁, 並開啟了新一輪的中港「合拍片」潮流。電影產業及其市場環境的轉變背後是更為深層的中港經濟、政治與文化的融合。香港從「九七」前後至今在新的政治空間及身份脈絡中不斷尋求「本土」位置顯得日益困難。電影作為流行文化文本和社會實踐曲折地表述「本土」、「自我」、「身份」，其中「懷舊」（nostalgia）便是近十年香港電影文化想像中一個顯著的憶述工具和路徑，亦即通過處理「過去」、歷史、集體記憶等來書寫「現在」的某種情感、經驗、欲望。 本論文以後CEPA 時期的香港電影為研究對象，檢閱以合拍片為主導的電影工業體制下，和香港近十年來文化政治脈絡中，不同類型、風格、主題，以及不同生產方式、製作規模、市場面向的香港電影懷舊想像與「本土」身份的互構關係。以及後CEPA 時代香港電影的懷舊想像與此前懷舊電影相比下的延續與新變。

Hardcore music is intrinsically anarchistic. The hardcore music scene represents a radical departure from contemporary society. Rejecting the materialism, militarism, and hedonism of the mainstream music scene—and, by extension, modern culture—hardcore music presents an alternative lifestyle rooted in solidarity, equality, and liberty. Indeed, the culture of the hardcore scene approaches a transitive, nomadic model of an anarchistic commune built on resistance as a way of life. In this study, I identified the ways music and lyrics craft attitudes and environments for revolt and rebellion, cultivating critical thinking and disobedience in equal measures. In order to understand the hardcore community, I conducted interviews, studied political theory, analyzed the lyrics of hardcore bands, and synthesized the data to draw connections between major thematic elements of this community. I've found that hardcore music has created a countercultural ethos that subverts and defies political apathy and instigates direct action in order to revolutionize the political process and erect spaces of anarchic solidarity.

This thesis aims to re-categorize Chinese independent films from a region-based perspective as a critical response to existing literature on Chinese independent films. This thesis analyzes three independent films made in three different regions of China in order to investigate regional Chinese independent cinema as a recently rising phenomenon: respectively, Jia Zhangke’s Xiaowu (1997) made in Shanxi Province, Ying Liang’s Taking Father Home (Bei yazi de nanhai, 2006) in Sichuan Province, and Robin Weng’s Fujian Blue (Jinbi huihuang, 2007) in Fujian Province. By using Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope (literally time-space) as the fundamental framework and exploring the many aspects of it, I will develop three major theoretical points to study selected regional Chinese independent films: first, chronotope enables the evaluation of texts of Chinese independent films; second, the documentary impulses prevailing Chinese independent films serve as the chronotopic linkage between the world in the film text and the world the film text represents; three, the mediation function as one aspect of chronotope is characterized by the negotiation between regional Chinese independent films and many social relations, for example, filmmakers, casting, audiences. This thesis also explores many issues related to Chinese independent films, for example: How do we value the unique film practice of Chinese independent filmmakers instead of viewing them as a unified whole? How do we relate Chinese independent films as aesthetic practices to the region-specific reality they are embedded in? How can Chinese independent cinema as a social practice play an effective role in society? The exploration of these questions does not only enlighten new research perspectives on Chinese independent films, but also provide reflections on the geographical, cultural and social diversity of Chinese regions.

本论文针对 1990 年代以来中国社会在经济文化方面的巨大改变，归纳并指出一种新的“消费意识形态”在中国业已历史地形成并取代日渐式微的传统 意识形态，成为宰制当代中国社会的主导力量。论文批判地回顾了1949 年以后中国大陆语境中意识形态涵义的历史嬗变，以四个具有典型意义的时尚报刊和广告案例、广告事件为例，从不同侧面解析了广告形象以及广告产业如何作为 中介与以时尚报刊为代表的文化工业一起，参与当代中国“消费意识形态”建 构的社会过程。 论文通过对“消费意识形态”所遮蔽的当代中国社会问题的揭示，对“消费意识形态”在当代中国社会发生影响的深度和广度的阐释，回应了九十年代以来在中国思想界有较大影响的“后六·四”文化论争中的一些重要问题，展现了文化研究在中国大陆介入现实社会思考和批判的可能空间。

For many years industrial buildings in Hong Kong have formed some of the city’s most vibrant cultural clusters by providing local artists with low-cost space to pursue their creative work. However, recent efforts by the government also targeted these areas for commercial revitalization. By 2020 the industrial part of Kwun Tong, a densely populated district in Kowloon East, will not only have been transformed into the city’s second Central Business District, but also seen the majority of the current cultural workers leaving due to the rapid valorisation of land. Nevertheless, these ongoing struggles over spatial power have also opened up a new space for a critical debate on Hong Kong’s urban planning and cultural policy strategies. This research uses the non-compliant Kwun Tong livehouse Hidden Agenda as a case study to shed light on the prospects for Hong Kong’s cultural diversity in its material, social and symbolic form of cultural clusters. By critically investigating research across different disciplines, I argue that—although the mere exposure of the contradictions between cultural planning and urban creativity discourses is significant—the governmental conditions that have been enabling the emergence of such spaces in the first place are often neglected by scholars and planners alike. Therefore, in order to understand both the destructive and productive impact of spatial power on Hong Kong’s cultural production, this thesis aims to examine the room for maneuvers within planning and policy discourses by expanding the Foucauldian approach of cultural policy studies to the domain of space.

The island state of Singapore in Southeast Asia has a history of film censorship, one of several techniques in state repression it uses as a furtherance of state power. Yet, Singapore's success also depends on being open to global information and cultural flows. Drawing from queer theory, this thesis examines a recent case study of film censorship in Singapore, the 2010 film, The Kids are All Right. The thesis examines laws and regulations in Singapore to understand how films are interpellated into objects of moral danger, and also the reaction of some progressive Singaporeans to the censorship. The thesis also discusses the contradictions between state censorship and the recognition of its circumvention through copyright infringement and piracy. Finally, the thesis makes some suggestions about steps that can be taken to resist against film censorship, as well as directions for future research.

<p>This dissertation argues that humour not only constitutes a central aesthetic strategy within contemporary mass media, but can also be understood as a form of cultural production that is central to how we understand our world as a site of value and politics. Drawing on an understanding of liberalism as a politics of “reasonable dissent,” I investigate how humour is thought to operate as an exemplary form of this politics through a consideration of popular and scholarly literature. I then complicate this theoretical and lay consensus regarding humour-as-dissent, through a consideration of the ways in which a range of specific filmic and televisual texts – <em>Jackass</em>, <em>The Office</em>, <em>The Sarah Silverman Program</em>, <em>The Chappelle Show</em>, <em>The Simpsons</em>, <em>South Park</em>, <em>Family Guy</em>, <em>The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</em>, <em>The Colbert Report </em>and <em>Four Lions</em> – produce an aesthetic of humour through the manipulation and mobilisation of textual strategies and affective registers, such as discomfort, absurdity and provocation. Questioning the easy understanding of humour as a means to challenge existing power structures, I instead argue that the currently dominant forms of media humour are better understood as a political aesthetic that opens up new avenues of understanding and critique even as it shuts down and short circuits previously tenable forms of political interpretation. Through an intertwining of close-reading of popular cultural texts and a critical engagement with wider theoretical models of media production and consumption, I thus propose that the aesthetic aspects of mass media, such as humour, can be understood as cultural precursors that inflect the ways in which we can imagine the problems and possibilities of contemporary politics.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Book Summary: In Indians Illustrated, John M. Coward charts a social and cultural history of Native American illustrations--romantic, violent, racist, peaceful, and otherwise--in the heyday of the American pictorial press. These woodblock engravings and ink drawings placed Native Americans into categories that drew from venerable "good" Indian and "bad" Indian stereotypes already threaded through the culture. Coward's examples show how the genre cemented white ideas about how Indians should look and behave--ideas that diminished Native Americans' cultural values and political influence. His powerful analysis of themes and visual tropes unlocks the racial codes and visual cues that whites used to represent--and marginalize--native cultures already engaged in a twilight struggle against inexorable westward expansion. Fascinating and provocative, Indians Illustrated reopens an overlooked chapter in media and cultural history. / https://dc.etsu.edu/alumni_books/1022/thumbnail.jpg