Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Datsu-A Ron is a relic of Japan’s modern nationalism. Since its’ publication in the year of 1885, arguably, it had been branded as the very seed that led Japan onto the war path in the Pacific War. Yet, this rather short and dense pre-war Japanese nationalistic theory contains complex layers that may easily complicate its readers’ comprehensions. The purpose of this thesis is to decode the key words that were used in this theory and dissect the layers of this theory’s intentions to the general public for a clear and objective understanding.

This thesis explores the affect of the emperor-centred visual culture on Sōseki’s use of visual methodologies in his travel writing in London and Manchuria, as well as his novel Sanshirō. In Part I of this thesis, I argue that Sōseki’s anxiety and ambivalence was in part due to the visual culture created around an imperial image infused with symbolic power. Part II of this thesis is almost a reversal of the first, as it discusses Sōseki’s use of deliberately visual methodologies to express his anxiety and ambivalence towards modernity. In light of my discussion of these complex visual techniques, I conclude by briefly addressing the allegations of Sōseki’s complicity in Japanese imperialism and the (non-)politicization of his work. While Sōseki’s anxiety and ambivalence may have been caused by the extremely visual culture centred on the emperor, it also provided him with a means and methodology for expressing his pessimism.

Critical Indigenous scholars and their explicit allies have emphasized the need for curriculum and pedagogy in teacher education to address settler colonialism in Canada (Cannon, forthcoming(a); Cannon and Sunseri, 2011; Dion, 2009; Friedel, 2010a; Haig-Brown, 2009; Schick, 2010; Schick and St. Denis 2003, 2005; & St. Denis, 2007) . This thesis is primarily concerned with the existence of and possibilities for such a curriculum. In this thesis, I analyzed the curricula used in the three required courses of the secondary consecutive Initial Teacher Education (ITE) program in the 2011-2012 year at OISE for representations of settler colonialism in Canada. This study finds that while the curriculum in the ITE program at OISE focuses broadly on social justice, it shies away from addressing the ways that Canadians are complicit in ongoing colonialism. The thesis ends by highlighting some clear possibilities and challenges for a curriculum of settler colonial responsibility.

Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Datsu-A Ron is a relic of Japan’s modern nationalism. Since its’ publication in the year of 1885, arguably, it had been branded as the very seed that led Japan onto the war path in the Pacific War. Yet, this rather short and dense pre-war Japanese nationalistic theory contains complex layers that may easily complicate its readers’ comprehensions. The purpose of this thesis is to decode the key words that were used in this theory and dissect the layers of this theory’s intentions to the general public for a clear and objective understanding.

This thesis explores the affect of the emperor-centred visual culture on Sōseki’s use of visual methodologies in his travel writing in London and Manchuria, as well as his novel Sanshirō. In Part I of this thesis, I argue that Sōseki’s anxiety and ambivalence was in part due to the visual culture created around an imperial image infused with symbolic power. Part II of this thesis is almost a reversal of the first, as it discusses Sōseki’s use of deliberately visual methodologies to express his anxiety and ambivalence towards modernity. In light of my discussion of these complex visual techniques, I conclude by briefly addressing the allegations of Sōseki’s complicity in Japanese imperialism and the (non-)politicization of his work. While Sōseki’s anxiety and ambivalence may have been caused by the extremely visual culture centred on the emperor, it also provided him with a means and methodology for expressing his pessimism.

Critical Indigenous scholars and their explicit allies have emphasized the need for curriculum and pedagogy in teacher education to address settler colonialism in Canada (Cannon, forthcoming(a); Cannon and Sunseri, 2011; Dion, 2009; Friedel, 2010a; Haig-Brown, 2009; Schick, 2010; Schick and St. Denis 2003, 2005; & St. Denis, 2007) . This thesis is primarily concerned with the existence of and possibilities for such a curriculum. In this thesis, I analyzed the curricula used in the three required courses of the secondary consecutive Initial Teacher Education (ITE) program in the 2011-2012 year at OISE for representations of settler colonialism in Canada. This study finds that while the curriculum in the ITE program at OISE focuses broadly on social justice, it shies away from addressing the ways that Canadians are complicit in ongoing colonialism. The thesis ends by highlighting some clear possibilities and challenges for a curriculum of settler colonial responsibility.

This study explores the practice of alternative medicine among a group of senior, transnational Indian immigrants. I analyze how cross-cultural ideologies influence aging and immigrant experiences in healthcare. I explore the ways in which transnational networks nurture social relations and aid in acquiring healthcare resources. This study also examines the developments that alternative medicine underwent during the colonial rule and how those developments affected the trajectory of biomedicine. I focus on the practice of alternative medicine as a significant contributor to immigrant health. Finally, I argue that we need to strive for a symbiosis between alternative medicine and Western biomedicine based on multicultural sensibilities and socio-economic factors that call for a pluralistic medical system in a globalized world.

This thesis analyzes Shirin Neshat’s Women of Allah photographs by exploring key socio-political events that have shaped Iranian history since the reign of Cyrus the Great, ca. 600 B.C. Since Neshat’s photographs have been largely intended for a Western audience, it is important to explore the concept of colonialism that has created East/West polarities and so greatly influenced our modern era. This paper intends to demonstrate that Neshat’s images perpetuate Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, which allocates the Oriental to an inferior position vis-à-vis his Occidental counterpart. For a Western audience, Neshat’s consistent use of the Muslim veil, illegible Persian calligraphy, and guns symbolizes Islam’s violence and degeneracy; additionally, these elements position the Muslim woman as a subaltern entity in an archaic society. As a result, the Iranian Muslim woman remains restricted by her social, cultural, and religious praxis, as well as by Neshat’s formal and contextual depiction of her.

This thesis focuses on the interrelationship between Canadian colonial histories and Indigenous healing. I begin by problematising how colonialism is invoked in contemporary scholarship on Aboriginal health and healing, and arguing for more precise historical methods and a more relational understanding of colonial processes. Historicising Indigenous agency is integral to this analysis. Whilst colonial continuities in contemporary Canadian public policy discourse is an important theme, I also attend to social movements, institutions, professions, and political and economic forces beyond the state. Indigenous healing as a socio-political movement itself has a history dating at least to the late 1960s. Urban Indigenous healing discourse is characterised by linking present-day suffering to collective historical losses, and valorizing the reclamation of Indigenous identity, knowledge and social relations. Drawing on urban Indigenous social histories from Kenora and Toronto, I consider the urban healing movement as an example of Indigenous resistance influenced by the international decolonization and North American Red Power movements, but which over time has also engaged with dominant institutions, professions, policies, and discourses, such as the concept of trauma. My analysis considers professionals and patients invoking historical trauma as political agents, both responding to and participating in broader shifts in the moral economy. These shifts have created the conditions of possibility for public victimhood to become a viable strategy for attracting attention and resources to suffering and injustice. The thesis highlights the centrality and complexity of self-determination in urban Indigenous healing, drawing on historical and ethnographic analysis from three southern Ontario cities. I analyse how the liberal multiculturalism paradigm dominant in health policy and health care settings contributes to mental health professionals’ failure to recognise Aboriginal clients and issues. I argue that characterising pan-Aboriginal and ethno-national healing as approaches in opposition to one another produces an insufficiently nuanced analysis in the context of urban Indigenous subjectivities and social relations, where both approaches are valuable for different reasons. The thesis urges greater attention to the role of languages and local histories, and to the threat which dominant policy discourses on residential schools and mental health pose to the maintenance of distinct ethno-national histories, epistemologies and traditions in urban Indigenous healing.

This study considers religion and mimetic violence in the work of four contemporary Canadian Native writers: Maria Campbell, Beatrice Culleton, Thomas King, and Basil Johnston. The mimetic violence examined is both social (the colonial attempt to remake the colonized into a reflection of the dominant culture) and personal (inter-Native conflict in which participants mirror one another in their struggle for a mutually covetted object). In order to investigate the former, I rely on the work of Homi K. Bhabha on colonial mimicry and hybridity; to examine the latter, I employ René Girard’s model of mimetic desire and violence. The principal academic contexts to this work are the study of Native literature and the academic study of religion, including the sub-field of Religion and Literature. After reviewing the relevant literature in these fields, and examining mimetic violence in key texts by the Native authors listed, I make several concluding points. First, I argue that a causal link between colonial violence and inter-Native mimetic violence is evident in the category of Native literature labelled by Thomas King as “polemical.” This includes Campbell’s Halfbreed, Culleton’s In Search of April Raintree, and King’s own Green Grass, Running Water. Second, I find that Johnston’s Moose Meat & Wild Rice and Indian School Days generally take care to separate colonial mimesis from Native mimetic conflict. This work fits King’s “associational” category of Native literature, and the disconnect evident in Johnston’s stories between the two forms of mimesis might stand as a defining feature of this category. Third, I assert that in none of the Native literature examined is religion viewed in a positive, idealist manner that assumes in its “true” manifestation it cannot be the cause of violence, which is the position taken by most religion scholars. I argue that the emphasis the Native texts place on the historic, material actions and effects of Christian individuals and institutions complements similar work being done by a minority of academics in the study of religion. Fourth, I propose possible avenues for the further investigation of mimesis in Native literature, which would use/focus on: metaphor-centred hermeneutical models; trickster figures and theories; and the conception of both Native and colonial identity. Finally, I argue that critics of Native literature have tended to idealize Native cultures, and that inter-Native mimetic violence offers a humanizing corrective to this perspective.