Semper floreat

Title varies: Gamut; Time off: Semper; The press. Numbering system very erratic

Southern Accent September 1989 - April 1990

Southern Adventist University\u27s newspaper, Southern Accent, for the academic year of 1989-1990.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/southern_accent/1065/thumbnail.jp

Mum, dad & international relations : a true story about grand theories & ordinary Vietnamese people

This thesis examines the tyranny of grand theories and the efficacy of everyday resistance in international relations via alternating politico-biographical accounts of the author's father (Thiết) and mother (Vân). Three grand theories, defined as totalising ideas for emancipation based on a positivist approach to knowledge, are critiqued in the context of the First and Second Indochina Wars and their aftermath. These grand theories are the French civilising mission, American liberal-capitalism and Vietnamese Marxism-Leninism. Under a veil of idealised bipolarisations such as barbarism/civility, subjectivity/objectivity and Other/self, the proponents of these grand theories facilitated the destruction of nonconforming belief systems, greedily exploited natural and human resources, and facilitated horrendous conflict in Việt Nam despite and indeed because of their hubristic claims to universal liberation and optimal progress. There are three inter-related ways to view the objectives and processes of this thesis. Firstly, as a deconstruction of the three grand theories stated above by way of destabilising, inverting and subverting the bipolarisations upon which they depend. What is revealed in this process is the less than objective metatheoretical underpinnings of these grand theories and their frequently brutal and marginalising consequences on ordinary lives. Secondly, in conjunction with and as a product of this deconstruction, a rich mosaic of little narratives and knowledges is illuminated and analysed. In this sense, this thesis also represents a genealogy, a systematic study of subjugated knowledges. It is emphasised, however, that these knowledges are not simply and wholly subjugated from the top-down. They are also concealed and wielded as a means of everyday resistance. Specifically, Vân and Thiét's stories demonstrate the ability and means by which ordinary people resist the tyrannical policy derivatives of twentieth century grand theories such as pacification, assimilation, containment theory, land reform, strategic hamlets, winning hearts and minds and reeducation. And so thirdly, these biographical essays constitute a qualitative study of everyday resistance as influenced by the work Michel de Certeau and James C. Scott. The efficacy and dangers of everyday resistance are further explicated via an intertwining analysis of Thiết's obstinately subversive and decadent sister Huang. By drawing upon Vietnamese literary works (including the folktales of Trang Quỳnh, The Tale of Kiều, modem novels from the Self-Strength Literary Group and many popular proverbs and songs) Van's story in particular offers an historical and empathetic means of understanding both self and Other in personal and global contexts which counters narrow positivist understandings. The courage and resilience that Vân and Thiết demonstrated while growing up, attaining an education, getting married and providing for their families encourage us to contemplate over how we might practise everyday life and/ as international politics in more virtuous and effective ways

The globalised village: grounded experience, media and response in Eastern Thailand

Drawing on the fieldwork in a village community in Eastern Thailand, Ban Noen PutsaPluak Ked, this thesis explores the complex relationships between processes of globaIisation, representations in the mainstream media and activist media; and villagers' responses to change. The research, summarised here has three interrelated objectives: First, to examine how globalisation and industrialisation are represented in the mainstream and activist media. Second, to investigate the role played by the activist media in promoting counter visions of possible futures. Thirdly, to investigate the practices and ideas that local people have developed to resist or accept globalisation. The research employs a multi-method approach combining ethnographic methods, a questionnaire survey; textual analysis; and focus groups. The findings point to a complex relationship between mediated representations and visions of modernity. They also demonstrate that villagers' responses are strongly stratified by age, length of residence, and relation to the pivot of the new industriaIisation- a major chemical plant and that they remain strongly influenced by the crucial nexus of traditional Thai society, the patron client system. Additionally, content analysis and critical discourse analysis suggest that Thai news television programmes reproduced both the ideology of globalism and the celebration of consumerism. Moreover, the voices of marginalized groups and local people are also absent from the activist media

Thatcher's thrillers: British television thriller serials of the 1980s

Thatcher's Thrillers is a cultural-materialist account of the development of a television drama genre in Britain during the 1980s. The thesis initially addresses the fast-changing legislative context of television broadcasting during the Thatcher era and outlines developments in drama formats and programming during this period. It then explores the defining characteristics of the thriller genre as evidenced in a range of texts from different media (short stories, novels, films and television dramas), in order to identify 'abstract' elements of the genre. Centrally, the thesis examines the 1980s and early-1990s thliller serials themselves, arguing that these constitute one of the most significant forms of television drama during the period. The pre-eminence of a number of these programmes was recognised by the television industry: Edge of Darkness (1985), A Very British Coup (1987), Traffik (1989) and Prime Suspect (1991) all won the BAFTA award for Best Drama Series/Serial for their respective year of transmission. These and a number of other serials constitute an identifiable genre addressing issues of public concern (such as the power of the hidden British establishment, the growth of the nuclear threat and conflicts between large business corporations and ordinary citizens) and contemporary formations of subjecthood (through protagonists whose experiences profoundly alter their sense of personal identity). Individual chapters of the thesis are devoted to the most noteworthy of these programmes, exploring their aesthetic characteristics and cultural resonances. The thesis also examines the contributions of key individuals, including writers such as Troy Kennedy Martin, Alan Bleasdale, Lynda La Plante and Dennis Potter, who in different ways challenged conventional representations and redefined the form of television drama. The thesis addresses in conclusion the relationship between narrative and ideology in contemporary thriller serials, arguing that there emerges a set of responses critical of the new imperatives of Thatcherism

Southern Accent August 2002 - May 2003

Southern Adventist University\u27s newspaper, Southern Accent, for the academic year of 2002-2003.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/southern_accent/1080/thumbnail.jp

Colonial political myth and the problem of the other: French and Vietnamese in the protectorate of Annam

This thesis explores French colonial perceptions of Vietnamese- cultural identity derived from the fusion of collective projections of European Self and Asian Other with the French fallacy of Vietnam as "little China". Colonialism mythologised these perceptions to meet the personal needs of French officials (and others) to feel securely in control of their alien Asian environment. Myths of Self and Other appeared early in colonial Cochinchina, and persisted in their initial form until the twentieth century when political disturbances like the 1908 anti-tax movement in the Protectorate of Annam (Central Vietnam) exposed certain shortcomings. In Annam, the subsequent need to neutralise anxieties about the arcane power of "Annamite tradition" prompted members of the Hue-based Amis du Vieux Hue to update existing colonial myths during the later 1910s. Their revision resulted in the definitive versions of two politically significant colonial myths that defined Vietnamese (and French colonial) identity _for the rest of the colonial period. They are called in this thesis the myths of "old, traditional Annam", and of the union of French genius and Annamite soul. So successful were they that their arguments continued to shape French (and western) understanding of Vietnam and the Vietnamese long into the post-colonial era. These myths, and the legitimating "little China" model they rested on, seemed to most observers to be objectively verifiable by recourse to colonial studies of Vietnamese history, society and customs. But, as this thesis argues, that influential body of understanding owed far less to Vietnam than to the needs and assumptions of an imported European discourse, in which unconscious collective projections of French Self and Vietnamese Other played the dominant role. The thesis examines that discourse, and the myths and projections at its heart. It begins by sketching in outline the main political trends in the century before French invasion as a framework for assessing the accuracy of Chinese model interpretations of Vietnam at the time. It then moves to colonial Annam, where it considers the concrete circumstances in which the compensatory development of political myths of Self and Other occurred. It then concludes with historical examples of collective projection and political myth, first analysing the colonial model of a Sinic monarchy, and then French images of their colonial selves, and of the Vietnamese Other

The Viet Nam Generation Big Book

An anthology of essays, narrative, poetry and graphics published in lieu of a 1993 issue of Viet Nam Generation, intended to be used as a textbook for teaching about the 1960s. Edited by Dan Duffy and Kali Tal. Contributing editors: Renny Christopher. David DeRose, Alan Farrell. Cynthia Fuchs, William M. King. Bill Shields, Tony Williams, and David Willson

Bowdoin Orient v.136, no.1-25 (2006-2007)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1007/thumbnail.jp

Bowdoin Orient v.133, no.1-24 (2003-2004)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1004/thumbnail.jp