By the turn of the twentieth century, "rural youth" came to symbolize the spirit of hard work, masculinity, and patriotism. The village youth associations, the seinendan, as well as a number of other youth training programs, carried that ideal and spread it all over the Japanese empire. This dissertation examines how the movement to create "rural youth" unfolded in different parts of the empire and how young farmers responded to this mobilization. By examining three rural areas in Miyagi (northern Japan), Xinzhu (Taiwan), and South Ch'ungch'ŏng (Korea), I argue that the social tensions and local dynamics, such as the divisions between urban and rural, the educated and the uneducated, and the young and the old, determined the motivations and emotional drives behind youth participation in the mobilization. To invert the analytical viewpoint from the state to youth themselves, I use the term "Rural Youth Industry." This indicates the social sphere in which agrarian youth transformed themselves from perpetual farmers to success-oriented modern youth, shared an identity as "rural youth" by incorporating imperial and global youth activism, and developed a sense of moral superiority over the urban, the educated, and the old. The social dynamics of the "Rural Youth Industry" explain why many of these youth so internalized the ideology of Japanese nationalism that they volunteered for military service and fought for the empire. This dissertation offers a new perspective to the study of modern empires in several respects. It provides a new way to dissect the colonial empire, challenging the methodological trap of emphasizing the present-day national boundaries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. It highlights rural modernity, often neglected in the urban-centric historiography of colonial modernity. It also brings together global, regional, and local histories. The seinendan were part of the global waves of imperialism, nation-state building, agrarianism, and the rise of youth. I argue that the spread of the "Rural Youth Industry" most clearly exemplifies a central characteristic of the Japanese empire, which is summarized as its drive to pursue nation-building across its imperial domains, forming a "nation-empire." This dissertation examines the operations of the "nation-empire" at the grassroots level by comparing the social environments of mobilized agrarian youth. Situating the practices of the Japanese empire in these broader contexts as well as the specific local conditions of village societies, this dissertation illuminates the nature of mass mobilization and the shifting relationship between the state and society in the first half of the twentieth century.

This thesis centres on the environmental impact of British colonialism in the Zuurveld during the nineteenth century. Within this context, it addresses the extent to which human-engineered environmental change is dictated by cultural mindset. Consideration of the links between culture and landscape transformation illuminates a little-considered aspect of the colonial experience in the Zuurveld. The British worldview at the turn of the eighteenth century is examined, with special reference to attitudes towards the environment. The changes which occurred in this attitude while the colonists adjusted to a foreign environment are traced. Precolonial societies manipulated the environment to a certain extent, but it was the British colonists who were to have the most profound effect on the ecosystem. The colonists impacted on the Zuurveld in a variety of ways. Much of the environmental change they induced resulted from their attempts to construct a familiar world from the alien landscape surrounding them. Attempts to "re-create home" in the Zuurveld were closely linked to the desire to exert control over what was to the colonists an "untamed wilderness." To this end land was cleared and new land use methods put into practice. Wildlife species threatening productivity were eliminated or forced through loss of habitat to retreat to the peripheries of the settlement. Exotic flora and fauna took the place of indigenes. The introduction of a capitalist economy meant that greater demands were made on the carrying capacity of the land. Conservation legislation introduced to limit increasing environmental degradation and protect commercial productivity simultaneously limited African access to the environment. Control of the land was closely linked to control of Africans: their labour was needed to facilitate the subjugation of the environment. Only through an appreciation of the British colonial mentality can changes to the Zuurveld environment during the nineteenth century be fully understood. Consequently, this study indicates that cultural mindset can play a pivotal role in shaping the environment.

The United States is increasingly populated by first- and second-generation Asian immigrants, while nearly 40% of New York State minors live with at least one immigrant parent. Immigration is a politically-charged topic. There is a persistent lacuna regarding immigration in teacher education, despite the fact that teachers’ attitudes about immigration impact how they teach about immigration and immigrants. Yet, discussions about diversifying the profession rarely move beyond race or include transnationalism or religion. When immigrant teacher voices are amplified, the focus is often on first-generation immigrants’ struggles with acculturation and English language acquisition. Teaching for inclusion and social justice seldom recognizes or incorporates the knowledges of second-generation immigrant teachers. This study is theoretically grounded in transnational feminism, transnational literacy, and decoloniality; it recognizes the United States as an imperialist, settler colonial nation that promotes and forces its image upon other countries and people from other countries, often in the name of multiculturalism, justice, and humanitarianism. Most Indian Americans are not Christian (in contrast to the majority of immigrants from East Asia); this gave significant cause to disaggregate the category of Asian American and discover if the transnational consciousness of second-generation Indian American teachers might offer unique insights into the intersection of immigration, immigrant experiences, and inclusive education. Four New York City-based teachers volunteered to participate in the study. Data was collected over the course of seven months in one-on-one interviews, group dinners, and in a private WhatsApp group. The teachers articulated asset-based views on immigrants, with an emic understanding of the factors that animate acculturation and resistance to assimilation. Their experiences and knowledges were embedded within transnational social fields that were locally grounded. The participants’ transnational consciousness illuminated dominant epistemic norms in school, media, and society, including: individualism; monotheistic, Christian epistemic normativity; and a persistent colonial gaze on Hinduism and India. None of the participants had explored their immigrant knowledges as a part of their teacher education experiences. The study indicates that further engagement with the knowledges and transnational consciousness of second-generation immigrant teachers would enrich teacher education practices and research, and theorizing about social justice education.

This study explores the life of the prominent Russian Orientalist and colonial administrator Aleksandr Semenov (1873-1958). In the course of his long and versatile career in Central Asia - where he came to in 1901 as a low-ranking member of Turkestan's colonial administration, and where he died in 1958 as the first director of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of Tajikistan's Academy of Sciences - Semenov participated in the transformation of the region from a Tsarist colony into part of what Francine Hirsch has called an 'Empire of Nations'. His influence on national historiography and notions of national identity was especially marked in the case of the Soviet Union's only Persian-speaking republic, Tajikistan, with which Semenov was connected through his interest and expertise in Persianate Central Asia. This thesis even goes so far as to argue that Semenov's scholarship and his work as an advisor to the Soviet government facilitated the very establishment of Tajikistan, which Paul Bergne has described as a nation initially promoted by Russian Orientalists. Further research in Russian archives is required, however, to better substantiate this claim. Rather than focussing on the (early) Soviet period and on so-called national territorial delimitation of Central Asia, as scholars such as Hirsch and Arne Haugen have done, the present study, in the vein of scholars like Vera Tolz and Vladimir Genis, highlights the ways in which both Bolshevik nationalities policy and Soviet Oriental Studies grew out of the studying and ruling of Central Asia in the late imperial period. It does so through an examination of Semenov's career, scholarship and personal networks, and on the basis of his personal archive in Tajikistan's Academy of Sciences, which has not been researched in any systematic way since the early 1970s, and in which no scholar from outside the former Soviet Union has ever worked.

Understanding “all policy is health policy,” this dissertation explores Black people’s healing and wellbeing with an abolition mindset. Through the lens of arts and culture in public health, the title denotes a pursuit of “healthful narratives” with ethical storytelling, creating, and performing that is conducive to good health. It manifests as public health dreaming in the midst of COVID-19 and state-sanctioned violence resulting from colonialism and racial capitalism—which contribute to racial hierarchies and millions of cross-generational deaths. This mixed-methods study contemplates the future of health promotion with concern for honoring Black creativity’s role in population health, and reckons with racial capitalism as foundational to health inequities and preventable, premature death. The study asks 1) What socio-cultural pathways do or can exist for theatrical and performance productions for health promotion? 2) In the face of racial, gendered capitalism, how does creativity manifest for Black women and/or gender-expansive people when creating or performing art and cultural work related to health promotion goals? Merging arts and culture into traditional public health infrastructure further exacerbates anti-Black harm, because it risks history repeating itself as our contemporary reality. As practice-based evidence, my Black Feminist Performance Auto/ethnography is research-engaged theatre, accompanied by learnings from research partners practicing contemplative arts-based research methodology. The findings are GriefLove, co-conceived with Des Bennett (director and dramaturg), and a narrative analysis of collage-based health mosaics and definitions of healthful narratives as forecasts of community-driven public health dreaming. The final chapter presents three socio-cultural pathways: “Black Embodiment,” “The Aesthetics of Health,” and “Futurity.” In the spirit of healthful narratives, it closes with a letter to Black Public Health Creatives and Cultural Workers in service of cultural and health equity—markers of “Good Health.”

Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute Indian born around the year 1844, crossed cultural boundaries and became an influential voice within both white and Indian societies. This thesis employs a settler colonial framework that places the sexuality and rape of native women at the center of colonial relations in the settlement of the Americas. Viewed through this lens I perform an in-depth analysis of Winnemucca's gendered critique of colonialism that focused on sexual violence. Rather than the unstable, mixed messages of native resistance and assimilation emphasized by earlier scholars, I argue that Winnemucca purposefully employed a strategy of oppositional conformity to publicize an unwavering political message that championed Paiute sovereignty, exposed white cruelty, and re-wrote the dominant gendered, racial, political and cultural constructs that bound Native American women's identity. The introduction begins with a brief history of Winnemucca's life and accomplishments. In the introduction I also address the authenticity of Winnemucca's published narrative, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883) and identify the constraints of the settler colonial lens through which I view Winnemucca's public voice. In chapter one I argue that Winnemucca's narrative employs the gendered moral rhetoric of the colonizer to cultivate white audience receptiveness, while simultaneously criticizing whites for their brutality against Indians. In chapter two I assert that Winnemucca employed multiple political strategies to cut away at Euro-American settlers' moral justifications for colonialism, and that she articulated a unique vision of Paiute citizenship that rejected complete Indian assimilation. In chapter three I highlight the ways in which Winnemucca used her public voice to articulate rape and the sexuality of Indian women as a foundational part of colonialism hidden from view in the media coverage of the Indian wars of the late nineteenth century. Unlike her biographers, who mostly overlook Winnemucca's public challenge to the negative sexual stereotypes that plagued Indian women during Winnemucca's lifetime, I argue that Indian women's sexuality was a foundational theme in Winnemucca's public discourse. Winnemucca grasped and resisted the gendered dimensions of colonialism and her consistent focus on this theme echoed in her lived reality. Finally, I conclude that ultimately personal accusations as well as her inability to escape the heathen identity forced on Indians by Christian reformers thwarted the success of Winnemucca's political message.

Within a single year -- 146 BCE -- Roman generals had entered the cities of Carthage and Corinth and forever changed the course of Mediterranean history. Although involved in separate conflicts with Rome, these cities and their tragedies became uniquely linked, not only to each other, but also to a perceived trajectory of Rome as an imperial power. Subsequent generations have looked to 146 BCE as an important turning point, and in doing so have attached value-laden interpretations to it as a gauge on Roman imperialism. This dissertation looks at 146 BCE from a different angle, seeking to understand its significance in terms of its contemporary international context, asking how it first became viewed as a turning point. The analysis utilizes international relations theory of normative systems, focusing on collective perceptions and evolving political conceptions within an interstate cultural environment. Exploring contemporary texts and archaeological clues, it sees the second-century BCE as a period in which the Mediterranean was becoming increasingly globalized, drawn together by universalizing ideals. A framework of "Hellenistic" markers communicated networks of legitimacy, Rome being both participant and game-changer. At the same time, the international community was rife with disjunctions, which contributed to a disintegration of relations in North Africa, followed by re-eruptions of nationalistic fervor on the Greek mainland. When coupled with wider perceptions, that the oikoumene was becoming progressively interconnected and was moving toward a new juncture in world-history, the stage was set. The legal punishments to be inflicted by the Roman victor were to be viewed on a whole new plane, as reflections of a groundbreaking world-order. Romans were aware of these implications, made evident in the decisions of Scipio at Carthage, followed by Mummius at Corinth. In a rare and stunning move, both cities were decommissioned as political entities, and their tragedies linked to contemporary visions of cyclical world-history: Carthage burned in reiteration of Troy, and Corinth stripped of cultural Greek heritage. Polybius, uniquely positioned as a commentator on these outcomes, not only captured their ideological ripple effects, but also assured their direction over future generations, as a moment to color Rome as world hegemon. This dissertation looks at 146 BCE from a different angle, seeking to understand its significance in terms of its contemporary international context, asking how it first became viewed as a turning point. The analysis utilizes international relations theory of normative systems, focusing on collective perceptions and evolving political conceptions within an interstate cultural environment. Exploring contemporary texts and archaeological clues, it sees the second-century BCE as a period in which the Mediterranean was becoming increasingly globalized, drawn together by universalizing ideals. A framework of “Hellenistic” markers communicated networks of legitimacy, Rome being both participant and game-changer. At the same time, the international community was rife with disjunctions, which contributed to a disintegration of relations in North Africa, followed by re-eruptions of nationalistic fervor on the Greek mainland. When coupled with wider perceptions, that the oikoumene was becoming progressively interconnected and was moving toward a new juncture in world-history, the stage was set. The legal punishments to be inflicted by the Roman victor were to be viewed on a whole new plane, as reflections of a groundbreaking world-order. Romans were aware of these implications, made evident in the decisions of Scipio at Carthage, followed by Mummius at Corinth. In a rare and stunning move, both cities were decommissioned as political entities, and their tragedies linked to contemporary visions of cyclical world-history: Carthage burned in reiteration of Troy, and Corinth stripped of cultural Greek heritage. Polybius, uniquely positioned as a commentator on these outcomes, not only captured their ideological ripple effects, but also assured their direction over future generations, as a moment to color Rome as world hegemon. / text

This thesis examines the experiences of fairgoers at the Lewis and Clark Centennial, American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair held in Portland, Oregon from June to October of 1905. Historians have framed world's fairs and international expositions as sites of legitimating narratives and restagings of empire and nationhood. This thesis focuses on women, Asian Americans, and Native Americans who interrupted and disrupted the performance and exhibition of U.S. imperialism in the specific case of Portland, Oregon. It considers who benefitted from or endured loss in the demonstrations of imperial culture at the Fair. Following the premises that metropolitan and colonial histories should be considered in the same analytical field and that the systemic power of domestic imperialism in the United States extended beyond Native Americans into the experiences of most nonwhite American communities, this thesis adds a metropolitan approach to Native-American history and, in turn, applies a more colonial approach to the study of African-American, Asian-American, and working-class women's histories. In three chapters, this study explores a range of disruptions at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial - patched over by the Exposition's civic elites and overlooked by previous historians of the Fair - that shed light on the politics of race, class, and gender within the processes of empire and nation building in the turn-of-the-century West.