Tesi sul tema "Asian studies"

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.

This thesis examines Japanese writer Saotome Katsumoto and his efforts to create a pacifist message in his 1991 film Senso to Seishun (War and Youth). The story presents multigenerational viewpoints on the Pacific War, and is significant for being the first film to depict the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 9–10, 1945. I discuss how Saotome's use of fiction, metaphor, and autobiographical techniques assist the film in creating a pacifist narrative. The film's pacifist message continues to hold relevance today, as nationalist and conservative groups push strongly for revisions to Article 9 of the Japanese Peace Constitution in order to remilitarize the nation.

This thesis explores Japanese society through the lens of cultural hybridity and liminality to understand the shift towards nonconformity and hyper-individualism among post-postwar Japanese. This shift reflects an important point in Japan's transculturation process whereby post-postwar Japanese have developed a cultural hybridity of inbetweenness (liminality) juxtaposing their native Japaneseness (wakon) against their adopted Westernness (y okon). This wakon-yokon hybrid construct is posing a challenge to Japan's longstanding hybrid modernity philosophy of wakon-y osai (Japanese spirit- Western things), which perpetuated the pre-modern core values and collectivist ethics of Japaneseness for nearly 150 years below its façade of Western modernity. The dilemma inherent in Japan's wakon-y okon in-betweenness is foreshadowed in the pioneering works of Abe Kob o and Murakami Haruki, who both illuminated the conflicting juxtaposition of the core values and ethics of Japaneseness (wakon) and seken-Other (the jury-surrounding- the-Self) against the pursuit of the individualist ethics of Westernness (y okon) and Selfhood ( shutaisei) within their imaginaries.

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.

My dissertation explores a cultural history of the body as reflected in meditative and therapeutic forms of the Chinese martial arts in nineteenth and early twentieth-century China. Precursors of the more familiar present-day taijiquan [special characters omitted] and qigong [special characters omitted], these forms of martial arts techniques focus on the inward cultivation of qi [special characters omitted] and other apparently ineffable energies of the body. They revolve around the harnessing of “internal strength” or neigong [special characters omitted]. These notions of a strength derived from an invisible, intangible, yet embodied qi came to represent a significant counterweight to sports, exercise science, the Physical Culture movement, physiology, and other Western ideas of muscularity and the body that were being imported into China at the time.

What role would such competing discourses of the body play in shaping contemporary ideas of embodiment? How would it raise the stakes in an era already ideologically charged with the intertwined issues of nationalism and imperialism, and so-called scientific modernity and indigenous tradition? This study is an inquiry into the epistemological and ontological ramifications of the idea of neigong internal strength, tracing the popular spread of the idea and its impact in late Qing and Republican China vernacular discourse. I pay particular attention to how the notion of “internal strength” might shed light on thinking about the body in the period. Using the notion of neigong as a lens, this project examines the claims of the internal forms of Chinese martial arts, and the cultural work that these claims perform in the context of late Qing and Republican China. I locate the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the key formative period when the idea first found popular conceptual purchase, and explore how the notion of neigong internal strength became increasingly steeped in the cultural politics of the time.

Considering the Chinese internal martial arts not only as a form of bodily practice but also as a mode of cultural production, in which a particular way of regarding 'the body' came to be established in Chinese vernacular culture, may additionally yield rich theoretical fodder. How might such claims about a different kind of “internal strength” revisit or disrupt modernist assumptions about the body? The project highlights the neglected significance of the internal martial arts as a narrative of the Chinese body. More broadly, it suggests fresh avenues for scholarship on the body, in showing how these other-bodily "ways of knowing" took on meaning in the period and beyond.

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) disproportionately affects Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. They account for more than half of infected individuals with HBV. Untreated HBV may ultimately lead to liver failure. Asian Americans have the lowest HBV screening rates; yet, they have the highest incidence of liver disease. A better understanding of HBV among Asian Americans is needed. This study explored factors associated with knowledge of HBV and perceived risks of HBV. A convenience sample was recruited at a faith-based organization and through the Asian Pacific Islander Network in Long Beach, California. Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire. Bivariate correlation coefficients were computed. Results indicated that knowledge of HBV was moderately low, even amongst the sample with a high level of education. Programs are needed to increase HBV screening for Asian Americans from all levels of education. Public health social workers can lead the charge.

The issue of southern Thailand becoming the next battleground for international jihadist terrorist organizations—such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Jemaah Islamiyah—has reemerged as a prominent security concern following the defeats sustained by ISIS in the Middle East and the dispersion of its fighting force. While the prospect was hotly debated a decade ago, the majority of contemporary scholarship contends that jihadism will find little audience with the Malay Muslims in Thailand’s Deep South, whose Shafi’i population does not espouse the conservative Salafist beliefs underlying global jihad—a religiously-charged violent campaign against infidels (non-believers), munafik (traitorous Muslims), and bastions of state secularism and Western liberal values. It is furthermore believed that because southern Thailand’s armed groups are fighting a nationalist struggle for independence, as opposed to fighting for more ideological reasons, they would not be amenable to jihadist involvement in their conflict.

Although it is true that Malay-Muslim militants in Thailand have declined offers of foreign fighters from international terrorist organizations, the cooperation between various separatist movements in Mindanao and global jihadist groups reveals that ethno-nationalism and ideological dissonance are insufficient causes for a rejection of jihadism. Rather, I argue that secessionists develop ties with jihadist groups when they are in need of political, financial, or military support they cannot secure from a legal entity, such as a state. This often occurs when one militant faction breaks away from its state-sponsored parent group following the signing of a peace deal it considers unappealing. Insurgent groups in Thailand have been inclined to distance themselves from jihadism because they have already acquired state patronage from Malaysia, and association with terrorist organizations would likely undermine that relationship. Strategic decisions to cooperate with jihadist organizations are thus executed according to a cost-benefit analysis and are not exclusively determined by ideological predilections.

This thesis research examines changes in food culture as a means of adaptation for Cambodians, who migrated to Long Beach, California after the Cambodian genocide (1975- 1979). This research examines how ?place,? defined as experience and neighborhood, influences the ability or desire to maintain certain cultural food practices of the homeland such as passing down the knowledge to the Cambodian younger generation in order to sustain their cultural heritage. An array of qualitative methods was employed for this thesis research which included participant observation, structured interviews, and semi-structured interviews in both Cambodia and Long Beach. For the older Cambodian generation, adaptation of their food culture has occurred through home gardens, shopping at Asian markets in the Long Beach area, and importing certain dried ingredients from Cambodia. The translation of the Khmer food culture transpires when the Cambodian youth takes an interest and they watch their parent(s) prepare the meals. Overall, their place of residence and the willingness to travel a certain distance to shop were influencing factors for Cambodians in the Long Beach area in terms of what types of meals they prepared which included dishes from Asian influences in the surrounding area.

South Asian same-sex attracted women in the United States experience discrimination and marginalization that puts them at an increased risk for mental health issues. Research shows their rates of counseling and psychotherapy use are low due to perceptions of stigma, lack of knowledge, and concerns about culturally insensitive treatment plans. Mental health providers lack the literature needed to inform culturally sensitive treatment plans to address these concerning gaps in services, and an extensive literature review found no studies on the lived experiences of this population. Guided by feminist theory, this research study examined how discrimination, oppression, and marginalization mold women’s lived experiences; this knowledge aims to serve as a means to advocate for social and political change for this population. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of this population. An emergent hand coding analysis, using experiential anecdotes, of data collected from interviews of 10 participants generated 10 major themes and 25 subthemes of experiences. Themes included importance of cultural values; familial relationships; marital life plan; intersectionality; and discrimination from gender disparity, patriarchal hierarchy, and sexual modesty. The study contributes to social change initiatives by providing culturally and contextually practical information to mental health professionals, counselor educators, and educational institutions that provide services to this population.

In traditional narrative of Chinese literary history, Du Fu (712–770) is arguably the “greatest poet of China,” and it was in the Song (960–1279) that his greatness was finally recognized. This narrative naturally presumes that the real Du Fu in history is completely accessible to us, which is not necessarily true.

This dissertation provides another perspective to understand Du Fu and the “greatness” of his poetry. I emphasize that the image of Du Fu that we now have is more of a persona that has been constructed from his available poetic texts. Poets in the Song Dynasty, especially those in the eleventh century, took initiative to construct this persona, and their construction of Du Fu was largely conditioned by their own literary and intellectual concerns.

The entire dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 investigates how Du Fu’s poetic collection emerged. His collection, as it was compiled and edited, not only provided a platform, but also set restrictions, for the construction of Du Fu. Chapter 2 examines how Du Fu used to be remembered before his collection took form. Memory of him before the eleventh century was considerably different from his received image. The remaining chapters focus on three major aspects of Du Fu’s persona—namely his images as a poet-historian, a master of poetic craft, and a Confucian poet—to analyze how and why Du Fu was constructed as such in the Song. Song poets accepted poetry as a medium loaded with valuable information, and they thus explored Du Fu’s poetry for history; they concerned themselves with issues pertaining to poetic craft, and retrospectively looked for examples in Du Fu’s poetry as established standards; they, as scholar-officials, committed themselves to the state, and declared Du Fu as their model. In sum, Song poets provided particular readings to Du Fu’s particular poems, and claimed these readings as the result of Du Fu’s intentional production. Through interpretation of Du Fu’s surviving poems, they constructed Du Fu as China’s greatest poet.

The diagnostic category of PTSD does not capture culture-relevant symptomatology, that is, somatization, for Cambodian refugees in the United States. Somatization may function as a buffer against chronic PTSD symptomatology in Cambodian refugees because somatization represents a culture-specific coping strategy for this population. The purpose of the present study is to assess the correlation between somatization and degree of PTSD symptoms. The study also addresses the mental health disparities in the Cambodian refugee population in order to inform the literature on access to better trauma-informed mental health services.

Participants were recruited from community mental health agencies in Oakland, CA and Long Beach, CA. Two "data-gathering" groups of Cambodian refugees (N = 26) were administered a demographic questionnaire, the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire-Revised (HTQ-R) and the Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire-20 (SDQ-20) in Khmer and English. The correlational relationship between demographic variables was also analyzed in order to explore contextual factors behind the findings of the study's main research question. Recommendations for assessment and treatment of PTSD in Cambodian refugees were then discussed based on the study's findings. Health care utilization by Cambodian refugees was examined and recommendations were suggested for improvement in public policy and health care services.

The hypothesis of this study that the level of somatization was inversely related to degree of PTSD symptomatology in Cambodian refugees was not supported. The Pearson Correlational Coefficient analysis produced a statistically significant positive relationship (r = .34) between somatization and traumatization in Cambodian refugees as measured by scores on the SDQ-20 and the HTQ-R. The role of specific somatoform symptoms in the chronicity of PTSD symptomatology was explored. The positive correlation found between the SDQ-20 and HTQ-R supported previous research, demonstrating the relationship between somatoform dissociation and higher PTSD symptomatology in Cambodian refugees.

Following the 1975-1979 genocide, Cambodian exiles in the U.S. recreated cultural institutions through music. Music remains significant in rebuilding cultural life in diasporic Cambodian communities. Live bands perform contemporary and classic ballads during Cambodian New Year in April, at wedding parties and in restaurants on weekend nights. Live rock bands continue to dot community celebrations as survivors collectively create musical repertoires and schedule practices to perform at festive community events. Despite the ubiquity of live musical performance in Cambodian communities, this aspect of Cambodian American cultural formation has been scarcely addressed in the literature. This Thesis addresses the deficiency in the literature through ethnographic fieldwork with a Southern California rock band called the Soriya Band, comprised of three guitarists, a keyboardist, a drummer and two vocalists who are all first generation Cambodian survivors. Music persists as a vehicle for cultural creation and change for Cambodian American refugee-survivors.

This study aims to understand Asian American students’ postsecondary STEM education pathways. It examined Asian American students as a whole and as geographical and generational subgroups. It studied postsecondary STEM education as a whole and as five different fields. It examined STEM pathways through six research topics. And, it explored factors that related to Asian American students’ STEM education pathways. This study contributes to the current research body by focusing on an important matter that needs more exploration, by offering justifiable definitions and classifications of Asian Americans and STEM education, and by suggesting related factors of STEM education.

An US national representative and longitudinal data set, Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002), was utilized in this study to explore the intended research topics. SPSS, R, and AM were used for the analyses. Missing data imputation was applied. When analyzing the data, the nested structure of ELS: 2002 was considered. And, both descriptive and inferential analyses were carried out. The descriptive analyses were used both as a preparation for inferential analyses and as ways to answer the research questions. The inferential analyses were realized through stepwise logistic regressions. With three regressions for Asian Americans as a whole and three regressions for Asian Americans as subgroups, six stepwise regressions were conducted for the research topics of postsecondary enrollment, STEM choice as a whole, and STEM completion as whole. Due to the limitation of the analytic sample sizes, the research topics of STEM as an individual major choice, STEM individual major completion, and STEM individual major persistence were not examined by using regressions.

This study found that Asian American students were generally more likely to receive postsecondary education and major in STEM fields than White students. Among the five STEM fields, Asian American and White students both favored the fields of biological/agricultural sciences and engineering/engineering technologies. Both Asian American and White students were likely to obtain STEM degrees and persist in the same STEM fields they originally chose. More importantly, examination of the within-Asian American differences indicated that basically no difference was found among Asian American subgroups at certain stages of STEM education: receiving postsecondary education, choosing a STEM major, obtaining a STEM degree, and persisting in the same STEM fields. Nevertheless, Asian American subgroup disparities were found in choosing and obtaining a degree in different STEM fields. On the other hand, different stages of Asian American students’ postsecondary STEM education pathways did not involve the same related factors. Moreover, the same factors did not exhibit the same relative status at different pathway stages. The results imply the importance for future research to examine the within- Asian American and STEM education differences. Also, they have implications for ways to increase postsecondary enrollment, STEM major choice, and STEM degree obtainment.