Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-113). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

<p> When an object is introduced to a new culture for the first time, how does it transition from the status of a foreign import to a fully integrated object of that culture? Does it ever truly reach this status, or are its foreign origins a part of its identity that are impossible to overlook? What role could the arts of that culture play in adapting a foreign object into part of the culture? I propose to address these questions in specific regard to early modern Japan (1550&ndash;1850) through a black lacquered <i> &omacr;tsuzumi</i> drum decorated with a gold powder motif of intersecting arquebuses and powder horns. While it may seem unlikely that a single piece of lacquerware can comment on the larger issues of cultural accommodation and appropriation, careful analysis reveals the way in which adopted firearms, introduced by Portuguese sailors in 1543, shed light on this issue. </p><p> While the arquebus&rsquo;s militaristic and economic influence on Japan has been firmly established, this thesis investigates how the Kobe Museum&rsquo;s <i> &omacr;tsuzumi</i> is a manifestation of the change that firearms underwent from European imports of pure military value to Japanese items of not just military, but also artistic worth. It resulted from an intermingling of Japanese-Portuguese trade, aesthetics of the noble military class, and cultural accommodation between Europeans and Japanese that complicates our understandings of influence and appropriation. To analyze this process of appropriation and accommodation, the first section begins with a historical overview of lacquer in Japan, focusing on the Momoyama period, and the introduction of firearms. The second section will go into the aesthetics of lacquerware, including the importance of narrative symbolism and use in the performing arts with a particular emphasis on the aural and visual aesthetics of the drum. Finally, I will discuss this drum in the global contexts of the early modern era, which takes into account the tension between the decline in popularity of firearms as well as the survival of the drum. Pieced together, these various aspects will help to construct a better understanding of this unique piece&rsquo;s place in the Japanese Christian material culture of early modern Japan.</p>

<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> This is a study of the rise of science fiction as a subculture in the 1960s through an analysis of the first and longest-running commercial science fiction magazine in Japan: <i>SF Magazine.</i> Much of the research on science fiction in Japan focuses on the boom in the 1980s or on the very first science fictional texts created in the early years of the twentieth century, glossing over this pivotal decade. From 1959-1969, <i>SF Magazine </i>&rsquo;s covers created a visual legacy of the relationship of the human body to space that reveals larger concerns about technology, science, and humanity. This legacy centers around the mediation of human existence through technology (called the posthuman), which also transforms our understanding of gender and space in contemporary works. I examine the constellation of Japanese conceptions of the body in science fiction, its manifestations and limits, exploring how the representation of this Japanese, posthuman, and often cyborgian body is figured as an absence in the space of science fiction landscapes. <i>SF Magazine</i> was used by consumers to construct meanings of self, social identity, and social relations. Science fiction illustration complemented and supported the centrality of <i>SF Magazine,</i> making these illustrations integral to the production the of science fiction subculture and to the place of the body within Japanese science fiction. Their representation of space, and then in the later part of the 1960s the return of the body to these covers, mirrors the theoretical and emotional concerns of not just science fiction writers and readers in the 1960s, but the larger social and historical concerns present in the country at large.</p><p> The horrifying and painful mutability of bodies that came to light after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki manifests, in the latter years of the 1960s in science fiction, as the fantastically powerful mutating bodies of super heroes and cyborgs within the science fictional world. The bombed spaces of the postwar (largely ignored in mainstream 1960s media) were reimagined in productive ways on the covers of <i>SF Magazine,</i> mirroring the fiction and nonfictional contents. It is through this publication that a recognizable community emerges, a particular type of identity becomes associated with the science fiction fan that coalesced when the magazine began to offer different points of articulation, both through the covers and through the magazine&rsquo;s contents. That notion of the science fiction fan as a particular subjectivity, as a particular way to navigate the world, created a space to articulate trauma and to investigate ways out of that trauma not available in mainstream works.</p><p> My work seeks to build on literary scholarship that considers the role commercial and pulp genres fiction play in negotiating and constructing community. I contribute to recent scholarship in art history that investigates the close relationship of Surrealism to mass culture movements in postwar Japan, although these art historians largely center their work on advertising in the pre-war context. Furthermore, my project reconsiders the importance of the visual to a definition of science fiction: it is only when the visual and textual are blended that a recognizable version of science fiction emerges &ndash; in the same way the magazine featuring the work of fans blurred the boundary between professional and fan. Hence, although the context of my study is 1960s Japan, my research is inseparable from larger investigations of the visual and the textual, the global understanding of science fiction, the relationship between high art and commercial culture, and contemporary media studies. This work is therefore of interest not only to literary science fiction scholars, but also to researchers in critical theory, visual studies, fan studies, and contemporary Japanese culture.</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.

<p>This thesis research examines changes in food culture as a means of adaptation for Cambodians, who migrated to Long Beach, California after the Cambodian genocide (1975- 1979). This research examines how ?place,? defined as experience and neighborhood, influences the ability or desire to maintain certain cultural food practices of the homeland such as passing down the knowledge to the Cambodian younger generation in order to sustain their cultural heritage. An array of qualitative methods was employed for this thesis research which included participant observation, structured interviews, and semi-structured interviews in both Cambodia and Long Beach. For the older Cambodian generation, adaptation of their food culture has occurred through home gardens, shopping at Asian markets in the Long Beach area, and importing certain dried ingredients from Cambodia. The translation of the Khmer food culture transpires when the Cambodian youth takes an interest and they watch their parent(s) prepare the meals. Overall, their place of residence and the willingness to travel a certain distance to shop were influencing factors for Cambodians in the Long Beach area in terms of what types of meals they prepared which included dishes from Asian influences in the surrounding area.

<p> The issue of southern Thailand becoming the next battleground for international <i> jihadist</i> terrorist organizations&mdash;such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Jemaah Islamiyah&mdash;has reemerged as a prominent security concern following the defeats sustained by ISIS in the Middle East and the dispersion of its fighting force. While the prospect was hotly debated a decade ago, the majority of contemporary scholarship contends that <i> jihadism</i> will find little audience with the Malay Muslims in Thailand&rsquo;s Deep South, whose Shafi&rsquo;i population does not espouse the conservative Salafist beliefs underlying global <i>jihad</i>&mdash;a religiously-charged violent campaign against <i>infidels</i> (non-believers), <i> munafik</i> (traitorous Muslims), and bastions of state secularism and Western liberal values. It is furthermore believed that because southern Thailand&rsquo;s armed groups are fighting a nationalist struggle for independence, as opposed to fighting for more ideological reasons, they would not be amenable to <i>jihadist</i> involvement in their conflict. </p><p> Although it is true that Malay-Muslim militants in Thailand have declined offers of foreign fighters from international terrorist organizations, the cooperation between various separatist movements in Mindanao and global <i> jihadist</i> groups reveals that ethno-nationalism and ideological dissonance are insufficient causes for a rejection of <i>jihadism</i>. Rather, I argue that secessionists develop ties with <i>jihadist</i> groups when they are in need of political, financial, or military support they cannot secure from a legal entity, such as a state. This often occurs when one militant faction breaks away from its state-sponsored parent group following the signing of a peace deal it considers unappealing. Insurgent groups in Thailand have been inclined to distance themselves from <i>jihadism</i> because they have already acquired state patronage from Malaysia, and association with terrorist organizations would likely undermine that relationship. Strategic decisions to cooperate with <i>jihadist</i> organizations are thus executed according to a cost-benefit analysis and are not exclusively determined by ideological predilections.</p><p>

<p> The social behavior and stigma of epilepsy in Korean nationals and Korean Americans throughout California are studied. This study seeks to explore the cultural differences in the social behavior of participants, their thoughts about epilepsy, their familiarity, social order, stigma, and educational knowledge about epilepsy between the Korean national and Korean American society. It argues that Americanization has influenced a positive change in the portrayal of neurological disorder and disease. The method of data collections and analysis were done through convenience sampling with the use of mixed methods. 56 face to face semi-structured audio recorded interviews were done to collect data. The findings of my study came to be of little difference between the two cultures. My hypothesis of the more Americanized a person is the more understanding, less stigmatic with fair social behavior towards epilepsy was correct but only at a baseline level. The key findings that education, cultural outlook and time gap were the main reasons of these results. Link and Phelan&rsquo;s model of stigmatization holds strongly toward the outlook of stigmatism and Americanization in the Korean national and Korean American cultures. In this research paper my created hypothesis will be backed up by theories and history of epilepsy, the methods of how I approached the interviews, the questions asked, how the results came to be, and the conclusion of if my hypothesis was correct or incorrect.</p><p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves191-199).