Describing historical accounts of Canadian Nikkei1 experience, historian Midge (Michiko) Ayukawa (1996) writes that these accounts represent "history in the passive voice, and that it is necessary to retell it with the eyes and ears of the people who were directly involved" (3). For Nikkei women, "history in the passive voice" has either completely overlooked their experiences or narrowly defined their social role in terms of domesticity and submission to a patriarchal authority. The dominant image of the Japanese Canadian woman has been that of the "good wife, wise mother" (Ayukawa 1995). This ideal image of womanhood emerged as a component in the dramatic processes of social reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). Both Caucasian and Nikkei historians have sustained the power of this mythical image by characterizing those experiences that exceed its conceptual boundaries as merely idiosyncratic. Simultaneously, however, Nikkei women have been weaving narratives of their history which both duplicate and subvert this image of quiet domesticity. This study contrasts processes of identity formation in twentieth-century writing by and about Canadian Nikkei women. I approach these narratives by first analyzing the categories of race, class, ethnicity, culture, and gender that historians, anthropologists, literary theorists, and theorists of ethnicity have constructed in order to interpret and contain them. I then examine how the narratives engage with three dominant discourses of being, namely those concerned with food, sexuality, and the transmission of culture. For several reasons, I treat this body of writing from an interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical perspective. My sources include published and unpublished texts from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, and geography. These texts embrace a wide range of genres, among them fiction, poetry, autobiography, the essay, the journal, the letter, so-called conventional scholarship, and responses to an ethnograhic questionnaire that I have collected. The texts are also informed by both Japanese and "western"2 cultural ideas and practices, and sometimes by several additional cultural influences. Their writers create a complex interrelation of textual identities which invites a range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Thus I examine the texts by engaging with a number of theories, including deconstructive postmodernism, deconstructive feminism, feminist anthropology, feminist history, and close textual analysis. I base this study on the theoretical premise that to treat narratives of experience rigorously, the researcher must regard the texts as both objects of study and authoritative critical voices (Cole and Phillips 1995; Chow 1993; Trinh 1989; Clifford and Marcus 1986). Therefore, I look to writing by Nikkei women for its reflections on Nikkei women's experiences, but also for guidance in interpreting the texts under study. As well, I read these texts for their critical comment on the conceptual categories that conventional scholarship has used to manage the unruliness and ambiguity of Nikkei women's narratives and experience. By welcoming the categorically disruptive, my analysis offers a theoretical perspective that may help to ensure a creative interrelation of theory and praxis. [Footnotes] 1 "Nikkei" are individuals of Japanese descent living outside of Japan. 2 Some researchers favour the upper case "Western" to describe North American and European theoretical traditions across disciplines (Mennell 1985). I include in the category of "western" all those ideas that become a body of thought as they are used to distinguish them from "eastern" or "oriental." With the success of European and American imperialist projects from the nineteenth century to the present, this "setting-off against the Orient," as Said calls it (Orientalism 3), exceeds national boundaries. One can say, then, that there are critics of Japanese ancestry, residing in Japan and elsewhere, who write from a western point of view. Thus, I depend on the lower-case "western," to emphasize the constructed nature of western ideology, as opposed to the stricter geographical or political connotations suggested by the proper noun. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

霍玉英. / 論文(博士)--香港中文大學, 2000. / 參考文獻 (p. 215-274) / 中英文摘要. / Available also through the Internet via Dissertations & theses @ Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Huo Yuying. / Lun wen (bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2000. / Can kao wen xian (p. 215-274) / Zhong Ying wen zhai yao.

Diese Dissertation bietet eine Darstellung und Analyse der Handlungsfelder serbischer Frauen. Dabei werden die Frauenbildung, das Engagement von Frauen in sozialkaritativen und patriotischen Frauenvereinen, sowie ihre Teilnahme an den zwischen 1876 und 1918 geführten „Befreiungskriegen“ thematisiert. Das Problemfeld von Nation und Geschlecht ist für Serbien fast völlig unbearbeitet. Die vorliegende Untersuchung geht den folgenden Fragen nach: Wie partizipierten Serbinnen am Prozess der Nations- und Nationalstaatsbildung? Welche Weiblichkeits- und Männlichkeitsbilder wurden im Nationsbildungsprozess verwendet? Auf welche Art und Weise partizipierten sie an den Kriegen und unterstützten das Militär? Wie wirkte sich der „Große Krieg“ auf die Geschlechterordnung in Serbien bzw. Jugoslawien aus? Da die für Frauen zentralen politischen, kulturellen und ökonomischen Wandlungsprozesse im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft der Städte stattgefunden haben, konzentriert sich auch diese Darstellung auf den städtischen Raum und seine Bewohnerinnen. Das bäuerlich-ländliche Frauenleben wird nur kurz angerissen. Die Arbeit nimmt den weiblichen Gruppenbildungsprozess in den Blick, der innerhalb einer schmalen bürgerlichen Schicht stattfand. In den westeuropäischen Ländern entstanden die ersten Frauenvereinigungen am Ende des 18. bzw. zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts. Serbien, dessen Bevölkerung mehrheitlich lese- und schreibunkundig war und von einer ländlichen Subsistenzwirtschaft lebte, folgte mit einer zeitlichen Verzögerung von mehreren Jahrzehnten. Um 1900 war in allen diesen Ländern ein dichtes Netz unterschiedlichster Frauenvereine anzutreffen. Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts stieg auch in Serbien die Zahl der Frauenvereine, die sich in einem Dachverband zusammenschlossen. Dieser Bund trat den internationalen Frauenorganisationen bei.

published_or_final_version / History / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

This thesis looks at the status of women in Russia from the time of the Tsars to the present.

No description available.