9 research outputs found

    When Tiger Mothers Meet Sugar Sisters: Strategic Representations of Chinese Cultural Elements in Maxine Hong Kingston's and Amy Tan's Works

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    This thesis examines how Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan use Chinese cultural elements as strategies to challenge stereotypes of Chinese Americans in the United States. The project combines literary and cultural studies approaches to explore how these Chinese elements in the two authors’ works interact with mainstream U.S. culture. This strategy enables Kingston and Tan to articulate resistance against racism and open new spaces for later writers, although it might also risk reinforcing stereotypes

    Imagining Taiwan : the making and the museological representation of art in Taiwan's quest for identity (1987-2010)

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    This thesis probes and analyses the critical role of art in the shaping of Taiwan's national identity during the period 1987-2010. With the rise of democratisation and national identity consciousness (bentu yishi), Taiwan's quest for national identity intensified after the lifting of martial law in 1987. The thesis challenges the view that art has played an inconsequential role in this identity discourse by demonstrating that artists, curators and art museums have significantly contributed towards the processes of identity formation, particularly during the peak period of the early-mid 1990s. Focusing on the nature and extent of the contribution of artists, curators and art museums to Taiwan's quest for identity, the thesis explores how national identity narratives were imagined, interpreted, projected and transmitted, nationally and internationally, through the production, selection and exhibition of art from Taiwan. Structurally, the thesis contextualizes each socio-political period, providing the backdrop for a series of case studies. These demonstrate how artists, curators and art museums became active agents in the processes of national identity formation, not only promoting but also critiquing and contesting identity narratives revolving around the concept of a 'Taiwan nation'. Given that national identities are relational and fluid constructs, the thesis reveals how identity discourses in art had diminished in significance by the early twenty-first century when globalisation, the rise of China, and art market forces transformed identity discourses in art from a Taiwan-centred narrative into one embracing not only regional and global perspectives but, most critically, dialogue and exchange with China

    The Warrior Women of Transnational Cinema: Gender and Race in Hollywood and Hong Kong Action Movies

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    In The Warrior Women of Transnational Cinema, I consider the significance of transnational Asian action women in the post-1997 Hong Kong cinema; more specifically, I explore how Pan-Asian (e.g. Michelle Yeoh, Pei Pei Cheng, Ziyi Zhang), Asian American (Lucy Liu, Maggie Q, Marsha Yuen), and Asian Canadian (e.g. Francoise Yip, Charlene Choi, Kristy Yang) warrior women function as a source of transnational female identity for local, Pan-Asian (i.e. East and Southeast Asian), and diasporic Asian audiences. I argue that the post-1997 Hong Kong cinema—and not Hollywood—has offered space for the development of Pan-Asian and Asian North American screen identities which challenge the racial stereotypes historically associated with the Asian female body in the West. In the new millennium, Hollywood has redefined its representation of transnational Asian action women by incorporating Hong Kong choreographers, action aesthetics, and/or female stars into its blockbusters. In these films, however, the representation of Pan-Asian and Asian North American action women caters to the tastes of American/Western audiences and relates American/Western ideals of gender, race, and heroism. Furthermore, I argue that Hollywood’s recent investment in Hong Kong and/or Mainland Chinese co-productions reflects America’s attempt to tap into the burgeoning Asian film market and wield significant political, economic, and social power particularly in Mainland China

    The Emergence of Dialogic Identities: Transforming Heteroglossia in the Marquesas, F.P.

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    Te \u27Enana \u27the people\u27 of the Marquesas, French Polynesia, have been engaged for some time in the dialogic negotiation of their heteroglossic identity. Based on an ethnographic study of language socialization in the Marquesas, this dissertation examines how communicative forms are acquired within a changing socio-cultural matrix, as well as on how cultural habits and beliefs are produced and reproduced via verbal interaction. My first two months of fieldwork were spent in Tahiti (the capital of French Polynesia), living and studying the language use and cultural patterns of an \u27enana family. Subsequently, I spent ten months in a village in the Marquesas, taping at regular intervals the everyday interactions of children and their caregivers within four families and transcribing these with the aid of the caregivers. The transcripts and the caregiver metalinguistic commentary were analyzed for the contexts and functions of code-switching between francais (the local variety of French), \u27enana (including several dialects of the language, spoken in the Marquesas), and sarapia (a stigmatized \u27mixed\u27 code); the communicative genres laden with cultural expectations as to how people ought to think, feel, and act; and the socializing routines influencing these beliefs and practices via participant-observation and informal interviews, I also collected a wide range of information concerning everyday social interactions, routine verbal practices, and cultural notions concerning the value, use, learning, and potential loss of the language. My findings are as follows. Despite the flowering of a cultural revival movement, a complex political economic situation (beginning with the establishment of the French nuclear testing facility in 1963) is responsible for an increase in code-switching and decrease in the acquisition and use of \u27enana by children. Nonetheless, the language continues to be learned and used by many as both medium and marker of an ethnolinguistic identity which is the syncretic product of indigenous reactions to two centuries of foreign influence and rule. Furthermore, while bearing the partial imprimatur of western thought and practice, \u27enana ways of structuring verbal interaction and the acquisition of communicative resources reveal some deeper systemic commitments to pan-Pacific cultural and communicative practices

    The United States of the World: Human Rights, Political Entrepreneurship, and U.S. Foreign Policy via Affective and Rational Politics

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    This study examines how Political Entrepreneurs in the United States Congress responded to human rights abuses in six countries during the 1970s and 1980s: Cambodia, El Salvador, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Taiwan, and Uganda. It presents a four-point model for approaching the study of United States human rights policy. The key element in all the cases is bonding social capital, also called affective politics. American policy towards the Soviet Union and Uganda both demonstrate the integration of international, transnational, and domestic politics. Taiwan receives special attention because U.S. Taiwan policy continues to exemplify the integration of international relations, transnational relations, and domestic politics. The Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) represents Taiwanese-Americans who care about promoting democracy on Taiwan and, ultimately, Taiwan\u27s legal status as an independent country. FAPA cultivates and sustains relationships with members of Congress and their staff to create the Taiwan Caucus in the House and Senate, second in influence only to the Israel Caucus, which is cultivated by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This study investigates how the Taiwan Independence Movement (TIM) learned, in part from AIPAC, to become politically viable as an ethnic lobby in the 1980s after limited success in the 1960s and 1970s, despite lacking the voting power and financial resources of Jewish-Americans. This study examines how bonding social capital (affective politics) is used to compensate for deficiencies in financial capital and voting power (rational politics), thus creating the political capital that political entrepreneurs use to shape U.S. foreign policy. Political entrepreneurs include citizens, congressional staff, and members of Congress, who have an impact on U.S. foreign policy that is greater than we would expect if we studied their resources by using only a rational choice framework. This study demonstrates that scholars of international relations, transnational politics and American politics can analyze the biographies of political entrepreneurs and their emotional relationships to more fully understand U.S. foreign policy

    Massachusetts Domestic and Foreign Corporations Subject to an Excise: For the Use of Assessors (2004)

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