Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1995. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-207).

In Creating the Language of Peace: Peace, War, and Art in the Works of Maxine Hong Kingston, I explore how this Chinese American writer pursues the creation of peace in her writings and life. These chapters explore Kingston's discussion of war and her determination to create a language of peace through creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. Her works draw our attention to the ubiquity of war in our lives and furthers her endeavor to highlight this as well as her struggle for peace against the backdrop of an American pro-war political landscape. Creating the Language of Peace will be the first book length treatment of these topics across Kingston's career. It also considers Kingston's oft-expressed intention to create peace through artistic means, in her case, through writing. This dissertation will fill the gap in research and analysis, refocusing the discussion on the themes and issues Kingston has repeatedly indicated are vital to understanding her work: peace, war, art, and the creation of a language of peace. Throughout, I consider Kingston's development of a language of peace, her explorations of war and its consequences, the influence of her Buddhist philosophies, the close compatibility of her works with contemporary peace theory, and the possibility for peace poetics within her poetry. The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980) are the focus of chapter one, an investigation into Kingston's first analyses of war and its consequences for all who are touched by its violence. Chapter two takes the novel Tripmaster Monkey (1989) and compares Kingston's pacifist choices with Johan Galtung's peace theory. Thich Nhat Hanh's version of engaged Buddhism and its influence on both Kingston's The Fifth Book of Peace (2003) and her peace activism is explored in chapter three. The final chapter turns to her two books of poetry, To Be the Poet (2002) and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011), exploring how the role of the American poet as a political voice develops in her poetry.

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University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

Flooding is and remains to be a serious hazard to human society, with about one in five people globally living within 1 in 100 year flood risk areas. Previous research shows that there are social and economic inequalities in flood exposure, with deprived groups often being more at risk. Exposure studies investi- gated a variety of socioeconomic characteristics over the years by overlaying social data with modelled flood hazard areas. New studies reveal, however, that there can be significant socioeconomic differences between populations in theoretical hazard zones, as predicted by flood models, and flooded areas during extreme events. Despite this, case studies are still rare and are mainly limited to the United States. This thesis explores how material deprivation differs between modelled and flooded areas during the 2007 floods in Gloucester and Kingston upon Hull in the United Kingdom. During this extreme event, more advantaged areas experienced more flooding, both inside and outside the modelled flood hazard zones. In Gloucester, more deprived areas were covered by the modelled hazard map but were not flooded during this event. This work sheds light on the importance of using both hazard models and maps of real events when studying flood exposure. Without considering how social and economic factors can interplay with exposure to natural hazards, disaster management strategies will not be able to protect all vulnerable groups.

This study examines the contemporary American memoirs Goat (2004) by Brad Land, Prozac Diary (1998) by Lauren Slater, and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) by Maxine Hong Kingston to reveal how these texts push traditional thematic and genre boundaries as well as conceptions of minority identity. Their inclusion of fictional aspects, episodic structure, narrative excesses, and non-teleological endings work to enhance their status as sociocultural critique and protest. This dissertation utilizes a social oppression angle within disability studies to demonstrate the overlapping processes and experiences of marginalization faced by these disparate protagonists who are dis-abled due to their undesired bodily variations and their failure to meet sociocultural standards of appropriate embodied behavior. Society is ideologically unwilling to accommodate or accept the differences the protagonists possess. Such a frame expands the artificial and culturally constructed notion of disability by illustrating the ways that discourse and ideologies of embodied normalcy intersect to constitute various minority identities as incompetent and unworthy. The texts bear witness to each protagonists’ struggle to cultivate meaningful subjectivity and reject passive victim status; however, their resulting survivor subjectivities are both resistant to and complicit with hegemonic tenets. This literary project augments ongoing work in minority, identity, autobiography, cultural, and disability studies that deconstructs essentialist paradigms while reinforcing the important cultural and literary work of contemporary memoir. Moreover, it fills a critical gap with respect to Goat and Prozac Diary, bringing these two texts into the critical discussion of autobiography. Finally, this dissertation illustrates that memoir is uniquely positioned within literary genres to navigate the interconnectedness of identity, subjectivity, and ideology, thus challenging readers to confront the injustice of a sociocultural structure that sanctions these inequities in the first place / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Department of English

This thesis focuses on a study of the female voice and silencing as well as on the use of the supernatural in selected works of literature from three different cultures: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, and Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Thesis (MA (English Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Drawing on theories of gender and subjectivity, this thesis explores the way in which constructions of modernity as well as tradition are mapped onto geographical localities and thus expressed through gender acts. The female protagonists in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Sindiwe Magona’s To My Children’s Children and Forced to Grow, as well as Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation undergo either transnational translocation or imagined translocation where they straddle multiple cultural contexts concurrently. The role of globalism and modernity amplifies the female’s ambiguous position and therefore challenges her gender identity as she takes on additional gender characteristics. This challenge, a result of translocation, causes both the individual and collective nature of the subject to be emphasised and placed in multiple cultures concurrently. The female’s subjectivity is under much tension as the cultures she immerses herself in interlace but also clash. As a result of this, her sense of self is constantly in flux as she attempts to achieve stability and coherence. This sense of a gendered, stable and located self will, I argue, both dissipate and transmutate upon undergoing physical or imagined translocation. In addition, this thesis examines the manner in which globalism allows for the dissolving of boundaries and explores the extent to which the ambiguous position these female protagonists occupy enables them to reformulate and refashion their gender identity as well as write themselves away from the marginalised positions they inhabit. I will further explore how female subjects are compelled to take on additional feminine or masculine attributes upon translocation, seeming to become androgynous in the reformulation of their gender identity for a certain period of time. I will argue that protagonists supplement their gender in order to obtain a sense of belonging in a specific cultural context which requires this alteration of gender, and argue that this is also a means by which they liberate themselves from the marginal positions they occupy in their ethnic culture where sexism and prejudice are prevalent. However, I will demonstrate that modernity does not only provide them with liberation and autonomy, but that simultaneously it is also restrictive on the subject’s gender identity. Finally, this thesis explores whether the female protagonists are able to use their ambiguous positioning strategically in order to generate coherence of the self yet, concurrently, maintain fluidity between multiple cultural boundaries of the self. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling gebruik geslags- en subjektiwiteitsteorieë om ondersoek in te stel na die maniere waarop konstruksies van moderniteit en tradisie uiting vind in geslagshandeling. Dieselfde teorieë word gebruik om ondersoek in te stel na die invloed van geografiese plasing op geslagshandeling. Die vroulike protagoniste in Maxine Hong Kingston se The Woman Warrior, Sindiwe Magona se To My Children’s Children en Forced to Grow, sowel as Eva Hoffman se Lost in Translation, ervaar elkeen óf transnasionale translokasie, óf verbeelde translokasie, waardeur hulle vele kulturele kontekste tegelykertyd in die dwarste beset. Die rol van globalisering en moderniteit versterk sonder twyfel die vroulike protagonis se dubbelsinnige posisie, en haar geslagsidentiteit word in twyfel getrek soos sy addisionele geslagseienskappe aanneem. Hierdie vertwyfeling – die gevolg van translokasie – veroorsaak dat beide die kollektiewe sowel as die individuele aard van die subjek benadruk word, en gelyktydig in meervoudige kulture geplaas word. Die protagonis se subjektiwiteit verkeer onder baie spanning omdat die kulture waarin sy haarself verdiep onderling vervleg is, maar tog ook bots. Derhalwe is haar beskouing van haarself voortdurend vloeibaar en veranderend terwyl sy probeer om samehorigheid en stabiliteit te bewerkstellig. Ek is van mening dat hierdie sin van 'n “geslaghebbende”, stabiele, gelokaliseerde self verdwyn en/of transmuteer wanneer dit fisiese of verbeelde translokasie ondergaan. Gevolglik ondersoek hierdie verhandeling dus ook die manier waarop globalisme die ontbinding van grense tot gevolg het, sowel as die mate waartoe die dubbelsinnigheid van die vroulike protagoniste se posisie hulle toelaat om hul geslagsidentiteit te herformuleer en te herontwerp, en hulself weg, of uit, die gemarginaliseerde posisies wat hulle beset te skryf. Ek wil ook kyk na die maniere waarop die vroulike subjek genoop is om, as gevolg van translokasie, addisionele vroulike of manlike karaktertrekke aan te neem, met dié dat dit blyk dat die protagoniste vir 'n ruk lank androgene eienskappe in hul geslagsidentiteit toon. Ek argumenteer dat die protagoniste hul geslag aanvul, nie net sodat hul aanklank binne 'n spesifieke kulturele konteks kan vind nie, maar ook as 'n manier waarop hul hulself kan bevry van die marginale posisies waarin hulle hul in 'n etniese kultuur, waar seksisme en vooroordeel gedy, bevind. Nietemin wil ek ook aantoon dat moderniteit nie bloot net bevryding en selfstandigheid aan die vroulike protagoniste bied nie, maar dat dit ook tegelykertyd beperkings op die subjek se geslagsidentiteit plaas. Die uitkoms van hierdie tesis is om te bepaal of die vroulike protagoniste in staat is tot die strategiese gebruik van hul dubbelsinnige posisionering, wat koherensie van die self sal meebring, en tog terselfdertyd vloeibaarheid tussen verskillende kulture sal behou.