<p> Inspired by the recent approaches of the New Qing History school centering on ethnicity and empire and the South Chinese Studies school focusing on local societies, this dissertation probes into Han Chinese and Manchu becoming Mongols in Qing Mongolia using the Qing archives in Mongolian, Manchu, and Chinese preserved in Mongolia, China and Taiwan. This research focuses on two case studies: 1) Descendants of Han Chinese settlers in Outer and Inner Mongolia; 2) Offspring of Manchu bondservants as human dowry in Inner Mongolia. These groups of Han Chinese and Manchu settlers migrated, legally or not, to Mongolia since the seventeenth century. They married with local Mongolian people, raised children, and learned the Mongol way of life in Mongolia. Ultimately, they and their offspring even acquired Mongol status, which is considered the most important marker of mongolization. The Great Shabi as the estate of the Jibzundamba Khutugtu and the Manchu-Mongol marital alliance are also discussed in this dissertation as the main mechanisms facilitating the identity and status changes. Intermarriage and Buddhist belief were the two criteria for those Han Chinese and Manchu settlers and their offspring to be integrated into Qing Mongolian society. The immigration of those Han Chinese and Manchu settlers into Mongolia was initiated by the Qing government, but the Qing government wanted to keep the occurance of mongolization at a minimal level. This research draws a parallel between the problems of nativization faced by the Qing and Russian empires, and provides a case study to compare Han Chinese settlers in Inner Asia and Southeast Asia to explore different modes of Han Chinese migration. In the end, this dissertation argues that the ethnicity in late imperial and modern China is a negotiation between the religious and livelihood decisions for the Han Chinese settlers or state service for the Manchu settlers, the social institution of the Mongolian local authority, and the rules of the Qing state.</p><p>

As a strategy of subversion and domination, recodification was deployed by the colonizer and the colonized under colonialism to reach their goals. In either case, the result was a deep impact of the other on the agents involved in recodification. In early nineteenth century, institutionalizing Persian was a product of colonial devaluation of vernacular languages, which recodified Persian as a classical language used for literature administration and law-making. As rewriting the cultural codes became a way for historiography to display the arguments and discursive models, it combined “useful” adaptations with the question of power, as we also notice in the case of the reform movement, the Arya Samaj. A return to origins of Hindu theories was an attempt by the Aryas to frustrate hegemonic models of colonialism. Recovery in this case led to an image of the Hindu woman that was at the intersection of tradition and modernity. Can new models replace colonial epistemologies? Can the nation indeed allow redefinitions to include everyone? These are among the questions that Ismat Chugtai's “Lihaaf” brings up. The heterogeneous nature of the nation may challenge patriarchal scripts only to be rewritten in re-positioned scripts that attempt to redefine the nation in dominant voices. Through the act of recodification, marginal positions intersect with hegemony where both are changed and marginality never takes center stage.

No description available.

<p>Upon their arrival in China, priests of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, quickly began writing their opinions and observations of the Ming Dynasty, of the Manchu invasion, and of the subsequent Qing Dynasty. These priests arrived in China with both secular and religious goals, and these goals created the context for their comments, coloring their writings. However, when the Jesuits praised the Qing Dynasty, they began to use particularly European metaphors in their descriptions of the Manchus, from appearance and mannerisms to policies. While the Jesuit descriptions serve as informative material, they are not objective, detached observations. In terms of their opinions, Jesuit writings offer historians critical information about the Jesuits themselves and about the Manchus as a distinctively non-Chinese dynasty, despite their efforts to Sinofy themselves in the eyes of the Han Chinese majority. </p>

This thesis discusses six fictional works by Banana Yoshimoto (Tsugumi, Kitchen, Moonlight Shadow, N. P., Kanashii Yokan, Amrita) in light of their depiction of different areas of societal change in Japan such as feminism, the dissolution of the nuclear family, the focus on the individual instead of society and contemporary literary tendencies such as postmodern ideas. Yoshimoto describes her characters' feeling of instability and of being lost in a world of rapid social change. Her stories often start in a postmodern setting and with characters who resemble those of shojo manga, and then turn to depict (quite un-postmodern) the individual's search for the own identity and meaning in life. Interestingly, the new meanings her protagonists find and the new bonds they form are based on modern concepts which include a redefinition of the family and of gender roles as well as spiritual connections which have their roots in traditional Japanese religion.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.