Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Studies of Asian society'

To live in contemporary Korean society as a Highly Educated Woman has multiple meanings. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the HEKW's identity and explore their identity construction process from a holistic perspective.

Data were collected through in-depth interviews, which gave participants voice by allowing the opportunity to tell their stories. The study revealed that HEKW discover and confirm their identity by balancing and harmonizing actualization of their Personal Aspiration (PA) and fulfillment of Social Expectations (SE).

When society's needs harmonize with the "real me," HEKW experience well-being and security in their identity. Moreover, this dynamic identity construction process continues until reaching the "transformed-contribution stage," in which HEKW actualize their PA by contributing to society's well-being. Nevertheless, this is not the end. HEKW's identity continues to develop as they engage in their context of choice.

Based on the research findings this study's implications touched on: (a) Adult identity construction, (b) Koreans' global role, (c) Education and identity, (d) Character development education—from feminine virtues (care, relatedness) to universal virtues, (e) The need for community, (f) Life-long learning, and (g) Social participation.

Recommended topics for further research included: (a) the role of marital status in identity construction, (b) the effect of socio-cultural context on identity construction, and (c) the role of religion in gendered identity construction and confirmation.

This paper examines the role of the pioneer Filipino filmmaker Jose Nepomuceno and his films in the Philippine quest for independence and in the process of nation-building. As all of Nepomuceno's films are lost, most of the information was gathered from old newspaper articles on microfilm in different archives in Manila. Many of these articles were hitherto undiscovered. Nepomuceno made silent films at a time when the influence of the new coloniser, United States, was growing, and the Spanish language was what unified the intellectual opposition. Previous research on Nepomuceno has focused on the Hispanic influences on his filmmaking, as well as his connections to the stage drama. This paper argues that Nepomuceno created a national consciousness by making films showing native lives and environments, adapting important Filipino novels and plays to the screen and covering important political topics and thereby creating public opinion. Many reviews in the newspapers connected his films to nation-building and independence, as the creation of a national consciousness is a cornerstone in the process of building a nation and defining "Filipino". Furthermore, the films of Nepomuceno helped spreading the Tagalog culture and language to other parts of the Philippines, hence making Tagalog the foundation of the national Filipino language.

This dissertation outlines the literature and methods used to create the Women’s RAISE Circle, a culturally-specific intervention for Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) women in a university or college setting. The term Asian American/Pacific Islander women is used to indicate inclusivity of women from all of the AAPI ethnic communities. The acronym RAISE represents the rationale and purpose of the circle: “ Reclaiming our Asian American/Pacific Islander Identity for Social justice and Empowerment.” Thus, the RAISE Circle provides a space for AAPI women to voice their concerns related to experiences of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. Included activities also seek to promote an exploration of personal and interpersonal experiences with intersecting identities and engagement in difficult conversations about oppression, power, and privilege. As an empowerment group, the RAISE Circle aims to help participants feel empowered to bring their concerns to the broader community and continue working for social justice for AAPI people. This dissertation includes the RAISE Circle Facilitator’s Handbook and Primer, indications for use, limitations, and implications for the future.

The social behavior and stigma of epilepsy in Korean nationals and Korean Americans throughout California are studied. This study seeks to explore the cultural differences in the social behavior of participants, their thoughts about epilepsy, their familiarity, social order, stigma, and educational knowledge about epilepsy between the Korean national and Korean American society. It argues that Americanization has influenced a positive change in the portrayal of neurological disorder and disease. The method of data collections and analysis were done through convenience sampling with the use of mixed methods. 56 face to face semi-structured audio recorded interviews were done to collect data. The findings of my study came to be of little difference between the two cultures. My hypothesis of the more Americanized a person is the more understanding, less stigmatic with fair social behavior towards epilepsy was correct but only at a baseline level. The key findings that education, cultural outlook and time gap were the main reasons of these results. Link and Phelan’s model of stigmatization holds strongly toward the outlook of stigmatism and Americanization in the Korean national and Korean American cultures. In this research paper my created hypothesis will be backed up by theories and history of epilepsy, the methods of how I approached the interviews, the questions asked, how the results came to be, and the conclusion of if my hypothesis was correct or incorrect.

Bruce Lee is a martial arts action star whose enduring screen image has lasted many decades beyond his death, and this is partially due to the numerous clones that came out after the star's premature death in 1973. These clones and various spin-offs of Lee's life's works resulted in the phenomenon dubbed "Bruceploitation." As time passed, the Bruceploitation phenomenon slowed down, but more recently there has been an interest in Bruce Lee's life with various films and television series that attempt to tell the life story of the actor, especially with his family's involvement. While earlier forms of Bruceploitation films strove to exploit Lee's image for financial profits, these more recent works do not seem to exploit Lee in the same way. In particular, Bruceploitation in more recent works aims to exploit the martial arts star's narrative to associate his persona with specific ideologies. I argue, however, that the more recent television series by China Central Television, The Legend of Bruce Lee, is in fact following in the legacy of Bruceploitation in that this category of texts is not only about making money without the consent of the star, but it is rooted in the act of exploitation, which redefined the image of Bruce Lee in a national Chinese context. Although the CCTV series may not look for financial profits as its main goal through the perpetuation of Lee's narrative, it is exploiting his image for ideological purposes. In particular, the series exploits Lee's image to assert national Chinese power in a global context, which can be seen through the production practices, circulation of the series, and the construction of specific scenes throughout the series.

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, known colloquially by the shorthand "3.11," claimed at least 16,000 lives and caused extreme damage to landscape and property, also triggering one of the most serious nuclear crises in history. These events were of great social, economic, cultural, and political consequence and are therefore in need of study from multiple perspectives. Sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander, as a leading theorist of the model of cultural trauma, sees the work of "trauma drama" as crucial to the collective creation and negotiation of claims toward large-scale trauma. My dissertation seeks to investigate Alexander's insight more thoroughly. This dissertation seeks not only to broaden the field of view of collective trauma studies with a new case study, but to deepen the understanding of how performance functions as a part of the collective trauma creation process. To that end, this dissertation has a topical organization that analyzes space, time, and the body as nodes of intersection between post-3.11 anxiety sites and aspects of stage and film performance. Closely reading film and stage plays while examining the specific formal mechanisms by which they manipulate space, time, and the body in the aftermath of disaster, I argue that stage and film performances are especially powerful means through which to stake and (re)negotiate claims regarding trauma, particularly in response to the specifics of the 3.11 disaster. Inspired by the socially contextualized approach to performance studies pioneered by Richard Schechner and Victor Turner, this dissertation accesses a wide array of cultural and theoretical sources, including the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre, the temporal Deleuzian scholarship of D.N. Rodowick, and Erin Manning's theory on the political impact of touch, alongside trauma theory and a multiplicity of readings on the significance of 3.11.

The Dark Valley Period and its resultant Asia Pacific War remains an open question in Japan; this era is consistently revisited in both public debates over textbooks and state apology as well as in popular culture and literature. The discussion of the Dark Valley Period and the conflicts it generated also exists within manga, a widely consumed media, and has shifted genres multiple times in the decades following the Japanese surrender. Some genres, such as early senki-mono, portrayed the war as a heroic, although ultimately futile, action undertaken by self-sacrificing youth. Semiautobiographical works, such as those created by the late manga artist Mizuki Shigeru, countered this narrative by showing the war as brutal, senseless, and useless. Often, the popularity or decline of a genre skewed closely to the general attitude concerning the wartime period.

Due to its wide-scale consumption by youth, manga has the potential to both represent and forward shifts in public perception. Additionally, historical revisionists and anti-Article 9 proponents have shifted their discourse into manga in order to appeal to and influence a younger audience. This strategy is further strengthened by previous genre works, such as the Space Battleship Yamato series, which reframed the Dark Valley Period and the Asia Pacific War in a positive light indirectly through their narrative. This dissertation posits that the discussion has recently shifted into sh?nen/seinen fantasy manga and that this discussion reflects a level of sympathy with revisionist historians that would normally cause a public backlash against the series in question if this sympathy was not masked by genre.

Li Deyu (787-850) is known to history as a powerful minister, a cultivated aristocrat with a taste for the rare, a military strategist of uncommon perception, a wily participant in court factionalism, and an exile. He was all of these things. He was also a poet of singular abilities. His chosen style of poetry was the fu.

The genre fu is often translated with the English "rhapsody." Specialists now prefer to romanize it simply as fu, for it is a complex and irreducibly Chinese form of writing. Fu are poems written in rhymed couplets, predominately composed of tetrasyllabic and hexasyllabic lines. They can range from four lines to hundreds of lines in length. The majority of Li Deyu's extant fu are between fifty and seventy lines long. In the ninth century, fu can be lyrical, descriptive, philosophical, historical, or any combination of these. They may contain interspersed prose sections or even whole dialogues. Often they are preceded by a prose preface which describes their circumstances of composition. They are aurally rich, as is all poetry.

In short the fu is a style of poetry as complex and many-faceted as the man which this dissertation investigates. This is the first specialized study of Li Deyu's fu in any language which treats them in depth. I show that, in addition to their artistic value, Li Deyu's fu poetry offers a window into the world of ninth century China that affords a different view from other genres of poetry. My examination also reveals that medieval manuscript culture may be more reliably durable than hitherto supposed.

Chapter One places Li Deyu in a biographical setting which portrays his formative experiences with his father. In the process of composing a fu, Li Deyu then reenacts those experiences for his young son.

Chapter Two examines the blossoming of lotuses in medieval China. The lotus, ever a divine symbol of Buddhism, has an unexpected alter-ego in fu poetry. Its use by medieval poets, wed to both the bloom and the gathering of the plant, is most handsomely seen in the fu. Li Deyu's two fu on different lotus flowers are intimately attached to his personal life. This chapter explores the aspect of feminine sensuality connected to the lotus.

Chapter Three, conversely, scrutinizes the masculine sensuality attached to lotus flowers in medieval China. How male poets treat this topic can only be understood with reference to the feminine typology explicated in Chapter Two.

Chapter Fur recreates Li Deyu's poetic guidebook to birds. All of the species which he describes live into modern times. They have not biologically evolved in a way which we can notice in that short span of a little more than one thousand years. Yet, if one desires to see their glory as Li Deyu perceived it, one must consult his poetry. As we watch Li Deyu watching birds, we see extinct poetic avian fauna reanimated.