The main purpose of this study is to examine a popular Thai genre of the novel, romance fiction, with a focus on the modes of subjectivity and discourses of femininity and masculinity to be found in Thai romance novels between the 1940s and 1990s. The thesis also seeks to locate the various socio-cultural contexts of Thai society, which influence the constitution of Thai gender relations and the transformation of gender norms. Additionally, it attempts to address the issue of the usefulness of Western theories of gender and romance, which are widely regarded in Thailand as tools of Westernization and new forms of colonialism. This study suggests that Thai gender relations are complicated, since there are several disparate aspects that influence the constitution of male and female subjectivity. Western influence is one of these aspects that help define femininity and masculinity, while domestic beliefs also play a salient role as palimpsests that are not easily erased. Thus, the representation of various modes of gendered subjectivity in romance fiction concurrently indicates both changes in and the reproduction of discourses that define an „essence‟ of gender identity that accords with traditional Thai cultural beliefs including the deep-rooted idea that the primary purpose of writing is didactic.

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Nedostup / As my friends and I look forward to graduating this 2004, we are burdened with the task of carrying ourselves as delegates and agents of our respective societies. The challenge is even more exhaustive in the sense that the global landscape has been significantly altered as such so that we now live in a world which runs on a new breed of geopolitics; theories of interdependence perpetually interlock nation states in enduring fellowships of cooperation. Keeping this and the lessons that we've learned (both in the classroom and otherwise) in mind, there is an urgency to prevent and avoid future mass conflicts and ensure peaceful change. While this remains a worthy objective, the scope and complexities of modern-day world politics demands an understanding of a much wider range of issues. Moreover, new conceptual frameworks and theories are required to improve our understanding and assist in the development of better policies and practices. By human nature there naturally exists self-imposed obstacles and boundaries, which threaten to hinder progress. A more sophisticated knowledge and thorough education become essential countermeasures to safeguard growth and development. Within the realm of a research paper, the investigation and analysis of this subject can hardly be brought to a satisfactory conclusion within a reasonable amount of time. Therefore I choose to concentrate on the mechanisms, which shape the relationship between two highly visible, dominant and powerful global antagonists: the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. With the end of the Cold War era and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States was solidified as the most potent contender in the international arena. This title endured relatively undisputed and has remained fairly unchanged for the next decade thereafter. Interestingly enough though it was during this same period that China was concurrently grabbing headlines with its rapid development in many sectors. Analysts, professionals and experts are all in concurrence when they predict that by the first half of the 21st century this traditional Asian powerhouse will have met or surpassed the United States in stature and influence. It is reasonable, and accurate, to assume that US-Sino relations will have an unparalleled influence within the spectrum of international cooperation politically, culturally, and economically. Presently nations are vigilantly forming implicit alliances as they conceptually allocate themselves in favorable positions for the resurrection of a bipolar global infrastructure. From my delimited personal experience, I have unfortunately discovered a significant number of my peers are ignorant of these developing trends and the implications of this interrelationship. The purpose of this thesis is to converse with an audience comprised of individuals similar to those that I have met in these past four years, namely: intelligent and educated young Americans who are simply not informed of the nature, potential and circumstances surrounding US-Sino relations and policy. In this light, I intend to further specify the concentration of this study largely on the relationship that western media has with US-Sino relations. There will be a special emphasis and focus on the modern issue of human rights and trade. Furthermore, the bulk of the analysis will be limited within the timeframe of the three most recent American presidencies: George Bush (1989-1993), Bill Clinton (1993-2001), and George W. Bush (2001-present). The purpose of the first chapter is to give the reader a solid idea of the general issues that have plagued US-Sino relations in recent modern history. Again from personal experience it has come to my attention that the average American student has a narrow education concerning US-Sino relations often pervaded with misconceptions, which are not compensated for in personal readings. This recess of knowledge is particularly apparent concerning all episodes and trends that took place prior to the birth and maturation of our generation; mainly everything that took place before the early post-Cold war era of the 1980's. I feel that in order to have a solid grasp of current US-Sino relations, one must construct a respectable appreciation and foundation of knowledge concerning the historical events that took place from 1971 to the present.After this brief history lesson the thesis will explore the composite components that make up the media. It is from these resources that most college students in American draw their first and sometimes, only, impression of US-Sino relations. This section attempts to create a framework by which the media is broken down into its fundamental and more understandable elements. It is necessary to analyze the fabrics of the media; from the concept of self-perception, stereotypes, propaganda, and interest groups to the purpose that it serves as a median by which images of diplomatic-strategy are marketed. In short, the second chapter attempts to place the western media in a comprehensible light, enough so that the reader may continue with the remainder of the thesis with enough insight to make educated judgments. The dilemma between trade incentive and democratic moral ground is the key example that this thesis will use to illustrate the behavior of the mass media and the manners in which it can exert pressure on policy-making. Thus, a more mature understanding of the human rights debate is required. The third chapter explores the human rights issue in depth; tracing the evolution of the issue through contemporary history whilst highlighting this narrative with headlines from the press and mass media. The third chapter will additionally explore economics and trade relations in a similar manner using samples taken from primary sources. Finally, the core debate concerning these two issues will be scrutinized, analyzed and illustrated with headlines and proper examples from the media. In this realm analysis will naturally require some elements of subjective interpretation to hold any meaning. It is my hope that my audience will be able to walk away with that cultivated and deeper understanding not only of the media's capacity in shaping US foreign policy towards China but also the misleading conclusion that are often drawn from such a habit. It is important to keep in mind that perceptual gaps whether based on diverging cultures, histories, ideologies or all three, can be dangerous mental barriers. Because a significant portion of this thesis will also be concentrating on the manner in which lucrative trade and investment potential more often than not edge out the human rights concerns in modern US-Sino relations debates, the moral of the story will have to be interpreted by the reader him/herself. However, due to the fact that these issues, as well as the periphery issues that surround it, are so new and in a state of constant re-evolution, the fluidity of the subject makes it fairly difficult to draw conclusions. Moreover, it is also rather problematic to make firm stances and opinions either for one side or the other but I will write briefly on my own thoughts and opinions. Thus, ultimately I write this thesis in hopes to raise the issue of US-Sino cooperation into the consciousness of the young American mindset by providing an intelligent background upon which they may draw their own summations while being conscious of the influential ideas propagated by the media and the press around them. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

It is generally assumed that educational expansion has positive effects on economic growth. This assumption has been challenged by recent theoretical and empirical sociological studies. It is argued that the effects of education on economic growth are conditioned by broad social conditions in which the relationship between education and economy is embedded. This studies uses two cases, the Meiji Japan (1890-1914) and post WWII Taiwan (1953-1985), to specify the conditions under which promote economic growth. Specifically, this study attempts to answer two related questions: Did the educational expansion actually promote the economic growth in the Meiji Japan and Taiwan (1953-1985)? And if so, under what conditions did the educational expansion promote economic growth? To answer the first question, the Cobb-Douglas production functions are estimated; to answer the second question, historical analyses of state's policy, economic developments and educational expansion in each case are conducted. / The findings and analyses show that education did not have uniform and automatic effects on the remarkable economic growth in these two countries; rather the effects can be understood in terms of how the state, educational and economic systems interact to produce human capital, status competition and class reproduction processes at different levels of education. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-02, Section: A, page: 0702. / Major Professor: Jill Quadagno. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

Linguistic research showing dependence on context in deriving language meaning discloses the integral linking of the Luo language with their departed ancestors and the upholding of customary laws. Meaning and impact being transformed in the process of translation from one context to another explains the severe limitations found in previous attempts at cross-cultural understanding between Western and Luo (African) peoples. Studying Luo people’s understanding of ‘bad’ in the light of the above reveals much that often remains invisible to Westerners. ‘Bad’ arises from the activities of ghosts acting through people’s hearts often as a result of breaking taboos. Cleansing, especially of ghosts, through prayer, keeping customary laws and salvation are used to counteract such ‘bad’. Conventional Biblical and mission hermeneutics are, in failing to account for pragmatic linguistics, found seriously wanting. Forces and powers being spiritually based in a monistic worldview amongst the Luo render clear cross-cultural communication with a rationalist and monotheist West impossible. Theological education based on African languages is advocated as the way to engage the challenges of Christianity with Luo ways of life in a way that will result in a deeply rooted African church, and a moral, vibrant, intellectually and economically active African society.

Since the transition from apartheid, there has been much discussion of the possibilities for the emergence of a truly ‘national’ literature in South Africa. This thesis joins the debate by arguing that Black Consciousness, a movement that began in the late 1960s, provided the intellectual framework both for understanding how a national culture would develop and for recognising it when it emerged. Black Consciousness posited a South Africa where formerly competing cultures sat comfortably together. This thesis explores whether such cultural equality has been achieved. Does contemporary literature harmoniously deploy different cultural idioms simultaneously? By analysing Black writing, mainly poetry, from the 1970s through to the present, the study traces the stages of development preceding the emergence of a possible ‘national’ literature and argues that the dominant art versus politics binary needs to be reconsidered. Emphasising the long-term influences of education and language policy, and of publishing, the thesis documents the continuous dialogue of art and politics in South Africa, and in the process unpicks the paradox of South Africa’s (un)national literature.

The Yuanshi (Yuan History)- a Chinese-language account of Mongol rule in East Asia compiled in haste between 1368 and 1370-presents hundreds of liezhuan biographical narratives on imperial subjects. Vital primary sources for reconstructing Mongol and Chinese history, these are viewed as chaotic texts receiving limited rhetorical input Taking the 4 7 subjects of an influential fourteenth-century biographical collection as a sample, this study demonstrates the considerable rhetorical fashioning undergone by some of these biographies, exposing narrative tools employed by the fourteenth-century Chinese historian-compiler. Starting from a case study on the biographies of Yelü Chucai (1189-1243), we identify three themes to the compilers' edits, which three thematic chapters follow across the sample texts. The first of these sees narrative scope narrowed, marginalizing non-'Chinese' elements of the imperium to impose a 'Yuan' shape on Mongol East Asia. The second situates bureaucratic governing institutions as a moral good, imposing a negative positioning on rival approaches. Finally, we demonstrate the characterization of the deserving populace as beneficiaries of moral rule. Though none of these themes emerge in full coherence across the work, the broad tendencies are clear, as is the all-embracing, shaping influence of the storytelling imperative toward vivid juxtaposition of ideal and deviant.

This thesis traces the history of Anglo-Australian racial science between 1850 and 1960, and examines evolving anthropological constructions of interracial marriage, as a lens through which we can re-evaluate gold rush histories and changing attitudes to East Asian migration throughout the British World, the British Empire’s geo-political relationship with China and Japan, and the transnational dissemination and contestation of the ‘‘yellow peril’’ trope. By decentring the histories of racial science and the British Empire from their North Atlantic moorings, and looking to anxious perceptions of East Asians emanating from antipodean Britons of the ‘global south’, the thesis builds a more trans-hemispheric narrative of the rise and fall of racial thinking. It does this by utilising two case studies. One examines the Sydney geographer Professor Griffith Taylor’s interwar problematisation of the White Australia Policy and the ‘transnational biopolitics’ of Asian immigration restriction in the Anglosphere, through his positive pronouncements about Eurasian intermarriage. Secondly, analysing the latter career of outcast former Kings College London racial scientist Professor Reginald ‘Ruggles’ Gates, and his ‘race crossing’ research in 1950s Australia and Japan, the thesis complicates histories of the global decline of racial thinking and survival of marginal scientific racists after the fall of Nazism.

Scholarship on twenty-first century Nigerian female-authored novels has long been dominated by womanist readings, regardless of the fact that these modern narratives represent feminism in strong terms. The readings often subsume subversive femininity within non-aggressive liberation, resulting in an insufficient narrative of the intricacies of the novels of the period. This thesis challenges such representations by proposing subversion as the hallmark of twenty- first century Nigerian female-authored novels through a textual analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow. Through a gynocentric approach, the analysis of the novels foregrounds a feminist view of domination, resistance and solidarity, espousing the premise that the contemporary heroines are understandably rebellious in asserting female agency. The thesis draws three fundamental conclusions: that the feminist paradigm is useful to the comprehension of the nuances of twenty-first century Nigerian female-authored novels, that dissidence is a remarkable feature of contemporary texts, and that this revolutionary tendency contrasts with the conservative attitudes of the previous epoch.

This thesis argues that a nuanced understanding of Egyptological writing across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can only be achieved through the consideration of the broader literary and artistic culture in which these texts were produced, and that an understanding of contemporary cultural artefacts requires a complementary awareness of Egyptology. It demonstrates the wealth of generic and material exchange between Egyptological and literary texts, and reveals cultures of mythmaking in which Egyptologists embellished their accounts, while those who collected Egyptian objects invented supernaturally-charged fictions in a bid to establish their own authority. It establishes the inflation in Egyptian iconography not merely in textual form, but across material culture, claiming that the growing availability of texts addressing ancient Egypt encouraged linguistic experiment among writers of fiction, and the domestication of hieroglyphs. It argues that interests in Egyptology and psychology often went hand-in-hand, shifting the understanding of hieroglyphs as something ‘other’ to a product of the ‘self’. Finally, it charts the commercialisation of Egyptian iconography, increasingly connected to products that drew upon Egypt’s glamour (and the glamour of theatre and cinema), but also obverses a counterculture that harnessed ancient Egypt’s fascination and connected it to more meaningful spiritual experiences.

Wars and conflicts have no recognised linguistic boundaries as they break out irrespective of differing languages and cultures. However, verbal negotiations for truce, ceasefire, and peace conventions still need to be engaged in between the conflicting sides. Consequently, the need for interpreters to overcome language barriers in war zones has recently increased significantly as even local conflicts are given a global dimension in the contemporary political scene. Despite all this, there has been a lack of studies submitted in the field for which this thesis is a focus: the roles that war-zone interpreters can play in framing narratives of conflicts. The contribution this study attempts to achieve is in developing a new model to assess how narratives are framed in the field of interpreting. This model can be used as an analytical framework in order to collect and analyse oral interpreting data; in addition, it is designed to be used in other conflict interpreting studies. This thesis examines the roles that Libyan interpreters played in framing narratives of Libyan conflict in the Libyan uprising during the period from the first days of the uprising on the 17th February 2011 to the implementation of the intervention on the 19th March 2011.