This study presents the grammar of the Lewotobi dialect of Lamaholot, an Austronesian language spoken in the eastern part of Flores Island and neighboring islands of Indonesia. Lamaholot belongs to the Central Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of Austronesian, within which it is in a subgroup with the languages of Timor and Roti. The number of speakers of the Lewotobi dialect is approximately 6,000. Despite its importance in the history and typology of Austronesian languages, this dialect of Lamaholot has not been fully described yet. This study is the first thorough grammar of this dialect. In the absence of available description of the language, the data presented here have been collected through fieldwork conducted at the Nurri village of Kabupaten Flores Timur for a total of eight months. The purpose of this sturdy is two-fold. The first goal is to provide an empirically-based description and analysis of the entire range of the Lamaholot grammar from phonology through morphology to syntax and semantics. It begins with the discussion of phonetics and phonology, proceeds to examine morphological processes and parts of speech and then turns to the form and function of each part of speech: nouns, pronouns, numerals, measure words, verbs, adjectival nouns, adjectival verbs, demonstratives, directionals, the locative, TAM markers and other minor parts of speech. Building upon these foundations, subsequent chapters offer a detailed analysis and discussion of the following syntactic phenomena: (i) agreement, (ii) clause structure, (iii) voice and grammatical relations, (iv) verb serialization, and (v) spatial language. A mini dictionary and texts are provided as appendices to a grammatical description. The second and equally important purpose of this study is to shed new light on issues surrounding the history and typology of Austronesian languages from a perspective of Lamaholot data. Attention is drawn particularly to two grammatical phenomena: (i) the position of Lamaholot in a typology of voice and grammatical relations in western Austronesian languages and (ii) spatial language and frames of reference. It is hoped that this study will help advance both research in Austronesian linguistics and our knowledge of human language in general.

Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery is an important Buddhist monastery on the Southeast coast of China, in Fujian. It was founded in the seventh century and survives with artifacts from every imperial dynasty stretching back more than one thousand years. Today it is the home of more than eighty monks and the site of a vibrant tradition of devotional life. The following chapters examine Kaiyuan monastery from multiple points of view (time, space, inhabitants and activities, discourse and relations with the state) in order to produce a multi-dimensional portrait considering the contributions of each element to the religious and institutional life of the monastery. In shedding light on monastic Buddhism in contemporary China, this study contributes to a small but growing body of knowledge on the revival of religion in post-Mao China. The study begins with a historical survey of the monastery providing the context in which to understand the current recovery. Subsequent chapters chronicle the dual interplay of secular and non-secular forces that contribute to the monastery's identity as a place of religious practice for monastics, laypersons and worshipers and a site of tourism and leisure for a steady stream of visitors. I survey the stages of recovery following the Cultural Revolution (chapter four) as well as the religious life of the monastery today (chapter five). Other chapters examine how material culture (chapter six) and memorials to auspicious events and eminent monks (chapter seven) contribute to the identity of the monastery. Chapters eight and nine consider how Kaiyuan balances demands to accommodate tourists while remaining a place of religious practice.

This dissertation evaluates preksha dhyana, a form of modern yoga introduced by the Jain Shvetambara Terapanth in 1975. Modern yoga emerged as a consequence of a complex encounter of Indian yogic gurus, American and British metaphysical thinkers, and modern ideas about science and health. I provide a brief history of the Terapanth from its eighteenth-century founder, Bikshu, to its current monastic guru, Mahaprajna, who constructed preksha dhyana. I evaluate the historical trajectory that led from the Terapanth's beginnings as a sect that maintained a world-rejecting ascetic ideal to its late twentieth-century introduction of preksha dhyana, which is popularly disseminated as a practice aimed at health and well-being. The practice and ideology of preksha dhyana is, however, context specific. In the Terapanthi monastic context, it functions as a metaphysical, mystical, and ascetic practice. In this way, it intersects with classical schools of yoga, which aim at ascetic purification and release from the world. In its popular dissemination by the samanis, female members of an intermediary Terapanthi monastic order, it functions as a physiotherapeutic practice. The samanis teach yoga to students in India, the United States, and Britain whose interests are primarily in yoga's physical and psychological benefits. In this way, it is a case study of modern yoga, which aims at the enhancement of the body and life in the world. I demonstrate how the samanis are mediators of their guru, Mahaprajna, and thus resolve ancient and contemporary tensions between ascetic and worldly values. I also demonstrate how Mahaprajna and the samanis construct preksha dhyana as a form of modern yoga by appropriating scientific discourse and attributing physiological function to the yogic subtle body. I argue that preksha dhyana can be located at an intersection with late capitalist cultural processes as well as New Age spirituality insofar as its proponents participate in the transnational yoga market. Finally, I conclude with some thoughts on the successes and failures of the Terapanth in its attempt to globally disseminate preksha dhyana.

<p>This dissertation examines the intersection of experimental art, literature, performance, photography, and architecture, as Japanese artists and intellectuals grappled with political disillusionment after the end of the protests against the ratification of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960. I focus on the work of the sculptors Miki Tomio and Kudo Tetsumi; photographs of late 1960s protests by Tomatsu Shomei and the self-portraits of the novelist Mishima Yukio; the collaboration between photographer Hosoe Eikoh and butoh dance founder Hijikata Tatsumi in the photo album <italic>Kamaitachi</italic> (The Sickle-Weasel, 1969); and depictions of the urban periphery in Hosoe's unfinished <italic>Private Landscape</italic> series (1970-) and the visionary urban planning of the architect Tange Kenzo. All shared an interest in portraying peripheral spaces, the detritus of the everyday, and the sexually perverse, cultivating a rhetoric of marginality that allowed them to explore their ambivalent feelings towards post-Anpo Japan.</p> / Dissertation

The Mekong River is a crucial shared resource that flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Over 80 million people have traditionally depended on the river to sustain their livelihoods. However, recent large-scale dam projects present serious consequences to the environmental security of the riparian states. In particular, dam construction by upstream countries poses negative socioeconomic and environmental externalities to downstream countries. Such a dynamic has incited regional tension and set a precedent for river management along national lines rather than as a collective good. Given such circumstances, this paper investigates whether the Mekong countries can transition to a cooperative regime that prioritizes the sustainable development of the river. In particular, this paper assesses the feasibility of achieving sustainable river cooperation by (i) analyzing the conditions that enable or hinder river cooperation, and (ii) investigating the extent that bargaining and benefit-sharing strategies can promote the long-term well-being of the river. The paper finds that the lack of credible commitment to the river’s sustainable development at both the regional and domestic levels renders cooperation for Mekong sustainability unlikely at this time.

Following rapid economic growth in the 1980s and subsequent rising urbanization in the 1990s, urban centers of India have undergone a “nutrition and lifestyle transformation” regarding dietary choices, cooking methods, food accessibility, and average daily activity level. These changes have been pivotal in the increasing prevalence of obesity and lifestyle–related diseases for Indian adults. With an estimated 71.4 million people living with diabetes, India represents the largest diabetes population worldwide—and numbers are expected to continue growing. These health conditions are not affecting all populations of India; they are affecting the urban middle and upper classes. This thesis will examine the contributing causes behind shifts in food distribution, marketing and consumption in urban parts of India and how the diets and lifestyles of the middle and upper classes have changed, or reacted to such changes, as a result. It will analyze changing patterns of food consumption, as well as corresponding topics, such as lifestyle shifts and emerging health concerns that have developed as a result of rapid urbanization and globalization. My research will primarily focus on how these issues have impacted women. Women, in their roles as wives and mothers, largely control the domestic sphere, central to which is food; thus, they are the primary determiners of their respective “household nutritional status,” as they are responsible for providing food for, as well as shaping the dietary choices of, their husbands and children. I also argue that recent processes of globalization have transformed the food consumption culture of India’s urban middle and upper classes. Following the liberalization of India’s economy in 1991 that resulted in the global integration of international food trade, India’s urban female populations are not only reconsidering what they eat, but when, where, and how they eat. Now, they are facing the repercussions of the food choices and corresponding lifestyle changes that they have made irrespective of the increasing health problems and associated risks. Consequently, India’s urban youth has also begun to reevaluate their consumption habits as a result of globalization processes catalyzed by India’s economic liberalization. These changes in consumption habits have resulted in the emergence of a distinct “youth culture,” in which India’s younger generations are challenging traditional practices and attitudes that older generations have made regarding food and lifestyle choices, with the influence of media at the forefront. India has undergone a nutrition transition, but at what cost to consumer health and well–being, specifically affluent? This thesis will examine how globalization has led to an emerging consumer, specifically affluent urban females significantly impacted by both the introduction of new technologies and the process of globalization that is affecting cultures around the world.

In China, to go to college one must first pass the entrance exam commonly known as the gaokao . The test is grueling, but also seen as the key in China to becoming elite and successful in China's competitive job market, no matter what walk of life a person comes from. This paper examines the images society has created around the gaokao's status in China, and seeks to understands the dualities between these images and the realities that exist in China today- realities sometimes far different than what the gaokao promises.

Much of the literature pertaining to North and South Korean reunification is written under the presumption that the two nations will—and more importantly, that they should— eventually reunify. Rather than assuming that reunification is inevitable and hypothesizing how it might come about, I examine political, social, and economic ramifications of reunification in order to discuss why Korean unification should occur, if it all.

My thesis explores the effect of tourism and the opportunities it is providing for Nepalese women who are actively looking for waged, high skilled, high status employment. These jobs include but are not limited to trekking guides, hotel/guesthouse managers, and upper level management positions, both within and outside of the tourism sector. I am focusing on women whose education and skill levels enable them to seek jobs above low skill, low status employment, such as farm workers and low level clerical staff. I am studying the shifts in Nepalese society that enable a specific market to emerge for participation for educated and ambitious women, and if such a shift is happening, whether or not Nepalese women are taking advantage of this opportunity to lead the way toward gender equity.

<p>My dissertation interrogates the figure of the priestly charlatan in colonial India. It begins in a theoretical register by arguing that the unmasking of charlatans serves as a metonym for the secularizing procedures of modernity. Tales of charlatans' exposure by secularist skeptics promise a disenchanted world freed from the ill-gotten influence of sham divines; such tales evacuate the immanent frame of charismatic god-men, thereby allowing the extension and consolidation of secular power. I trace the trope of charlatanic exposure, beginning with Enlightenment anxieties about "priestcraft," continuing on to nineteenth century criticisms of religion, and then making a lateral move to colonial India. I suggest that by the 1830s it had become difficult for many English critics to extricate the problem of priestly imposture from the broader problematic of empire and, more specifically, from the specter of the "crafty brahmin." I track the cultural crosscurrents that conjoined English and Indian anticlericalisms, not only to insist on the centrality of colonial thinkers to the constitution of modernity, but also to reconsider modernity's putative secularity. The "anticlerical modernity" that I identify brings religious and secular skeptics together in a shared war on sacerdotal charisma, best observed at the interstices of empire.</p><p>The dissertation disperses the intellectual lineage of the "imposture theory of religion" by rerouting it through colonial India. The imposture theory, or the notion that religion is but a ruse concocted by crafty priests to dupe gullible masses, was central to the emergence of secular modernity and its mistrust of religion. Closely associated with the English and French Enlightenments, it was also pervasive in British polemics against Indian religions. My dissertation demonstrates how in its colonial redeployment the imposture theory came to abut Indic imaginaries of religious illusion, ranging from folkloric spoofs of gurus' authority to philosophical debates about the ontological status of "maya." Starting from religious controversies of the colonial era, my interrogation of Indic illusion extends from the ninth century philosopher Shankaracharya to the sixteenth century saint Vallabhacharya to the twentieth century guru Osho. Its focus, however, is on three nineteenth century religious reformers: Karsandas Mulji, Dayanand Saraswati, and H.P Blavatsky. Through archival research, textual analysis (in Hindi, Gujarati, and English), and theoretical inquiry, I insinuate these three colonial thinkers into the history of the imposture theory of religion. In doing so, my aim is to contribute to scholarship on the genealogy of religion, particularly in colonial contexts.</p> / Dissertation