Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Oceans Of Space, Stephanie Steinbrecher '16

EnviroLab Asia

"Oceans of Space" relates my observations of the 2016 EnviroLab Asia Clinic Trip to Singapore and Sarawak, Malaysia. In this meditation, the concept of space serves as a lens to examine assumptions of geopolitical, historical, and philosophical positioning—regionally and globally. At the center of my inquiry is EnviroLab's connection to the Dayak communities in Baram, Sarawak. This region is experiencing dramatic social and ecological change as a result of industrial development. By triangulating my subjective impressions of this space, various knowledge systems, and the qualitative data EnviroLab gathered in Southeast Asia, I aim to untangle some paradoxes that complicate the …

Achieving And Maintaining Food Security In The Prc: The Impact On Foreign Policy, Paul D. Rittenhouse

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how the People’s Republic of China has used domestic and foreign policy to achieve and maintain food security. This is a formidable task for the PRC given that it has 20% of the world’s population and only 7% of its arable land. It has been made more formidable by domestic policy errors and its changing position within the international system.

The PRC has evolved from a Marxist revisionist state to one that mixes state capitalism and free enterprise and has become a combination of revisionist and status quo. Such changes lend …

Individual Differences In Intentional And Unintentional Exposure To Online Pornography Among Hong Kong Chinese Adolescents, Cecilia M. S. Ma, Daniel T. L. Shek, Catie C. W. Lai

Pediatrics Faculty Publications

The current study aimed to test how gender and religion affect unintentional and intentional exposure to online pornography in Chinese adolescents. A total of 1401 secondary school students (age range from 11 to 16 years) participated in the study. Findings from multivariate analyses show that males reported higher levels of unintentional and intentional exposure to online pornography than females. Significant differences were found in adolescents’ religiosity, with students who had religious beliefs reporting a lower level of unintentional exposure to online pornography than their counterparts without religious beliefs. In terms of intentional exposure to online pornography, adolescents were more likely …

Crime And Culture : A Thematic Reading Of Sherlock Holmes And His Adaptations., Britney Broyles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character and stories into the television shows Sherlock and Elementary on air today. The project will consider three central questions: 1) Why is this Victorian detective hero still popular in the twenty-first century and what has remained constant and still resonates with modern audiences? 2) Both television shows transport Holmes in time by setting their narratives in the present day; therefore, what has been changed in this process of adaptation? 3) How do these changes represent shifts in our cultural thinking about important aspects of humanistic inquiry? The …

Mythbusting Park Chung Hee: A Reexamination Of Park And His Coup, Justin Malzac

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Park Chung-Hee is a divisive figure. For some he is a saint that rescued his country from the brink of collapse and helped it rise into modernity. For others he is a devil, an iron-fisted dictator who cared more about his own power than his people. Both of these are politically slanted myths promoted as part of a corresponding political agenda. But even politically neutral writings on Park unwittingly conduct a mythmaking of their own. This paper is an attempt to show that Park Chung-Hee has become a mythological figure in Korean history because the scope of his power, agency …

Rising Assertiveness Versus Peaceful Development: Making Sense Of China’S Ambivalent International Behavior, Lukas K. Danner

Dr. Lukas K. Danner

A New Interpretation Of "Xing, Guan, Qun, Yuan", Qizhou Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Confucius puts forward the idea that "poetry helps to inspire, to observe, to keep company, and to express grievances" (xing, guan, qun, yuan), which had a huge impact on Chinese poetics. Among numerous interpreters of this idea, Zhu Xi was the most important authority. While he argues that the interpretation of "guan" by scholars in the Song Dynasty was unreliable, his own interpretations of Confucius's words were not logically consistent, either. Situated in the context of his own educational ideas and practices, one would discover that Confucius's words are about neither the composition nor ontology of poetry, but its use. …

Black Noise, White Noise, And Ghostly Sound: The Ontology Of Noise In The Context Of Deleuze's Conception Of Event, Yuhui Jiang, Yan Zheng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

As a complicated concept, Deleuze's "event" has traversed different phases of his thinking. However, one should always return to Logique du sens to have a thorough and proper understanding of this idea. Through detailed interpretation of the Stoic theory about "incorporeal", causality and temporality, this article intends to justify the ontological priority of event. The most recent arguments from the speculative realism have also shed a new light on this guiding line implicit in LS. This emerging correlation took its initial shape especially through the contemporary noise music that not only serves as the figurative counterpoint to the philosophical argument, …

From Guowen, Zhongwen T OHuawen: The Localization Process Of Chinese Textbooks In Singaporean Secondary School, Bing Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Due to the impact of political and cultural contexts, Chinese textbooks in Singaporean secondary school experienced a long and tortuous process of localization. In the early British colonial era and the Japanese occupation of Singapore, almost all Chinese textbooks in Singapore were imported from China and entitled guowen. From the end of World War II to 1979, with dramatic changes in China and Malaya, textbooks were primarily used to promote the consciousness of localization under the concept of Malayalization. Correspondingly, the publication of Chinese textbooks tended to be autonomous and their titles changed to zhongwen, yuwen or huawen. From 1979 …

Li Jinxi's Theory Of Chinese Language And Literature Education In Tertiary Institutes: "Integration" And "Remedy", Fengxia Cao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the 1940s, due to the lack of systematic education, university students had an imbalanced command of Chinese language and literature. Li Jinxi, a pioneer in Chinese language and literature education, published a series of papers on the ideas of "Tong Chou" (integration) and "Jiu Ji"(remedy) in Chinese language and literature education in tertiary institutes. "Integration" refers to the standardization of the number of essays in Chinese textbooks, focusing on improving reading and writing skills. Meanwhile, based on students' levels of Chinese, teachers could be flexible in terms of teaching methods, which is "remedy". Similar problems still exist today: there …

On Literary Theory: Its Way Of Unveiling, Semiotic Rectangle And Absolute Deterritorialization, Jin Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the 21st century, literary study has started a self-reflection on the multiple facets of theory, thus giving rise to anti-theories, meta-theories and after-theories, all of which cast doubt on theoretical study and literary theory. However, all the facets of theory are the inherent dimensions of theory per se. The exploration of the unveiling way of theory lies in a comprehensive view and an unveiling of theory itself. The theoretical rectangle reveals the varied and interconnected connotations within theory per se. The absolute deterritorialization of theory offers a dialectical possibility among territorization, deterritorization and reterritorization. The after theory is a …

On The Rise Of The Early Notion Of Literary Genres Inchina, Chengxue Wu, Guanlan Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Research on the generation of the notion of literary genres is the point of departure and a cornerstone for studies of the history of Chinese literary genre theories. The establishment of the notion of literary genres is marked by authors' having a clear knowledge of the characteristics of a certain genre, and applying it constantly and consistently, or in other words, by a consciousness of the very forms of literary genres. The notion of genres, in the beginning, is found, either in the application, or in the unambiguous definition and quotation, of the genres concerned. The birth of such a …

Symptomatic Reading, Event, And Iconography: A Brief Discussion Of Georges Didi-Huberman's Image-Knowledge, Wen Zhao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

As one of the most active art historians in France, Georges Didi-Huberman takes "event" as his theoretical basis, by which he makes possible the renewal of the critical tradition of Aby Warburg. Didi-Huberman is innovative because, on the one hand, he confirms Warburg's special epistemology that is situated within Walter Benjamin's horizon of event-truth implied in dialectic images, and, on the other, he legitimizes Benjamin's symptomatic reading of events by introducing Warburg's image-knowledge into iconographical studies. Didi-Hubermanian critical iconography has changed the look of contemporary French art history, disrupted the linear historical narrative of art in academic tradition, and ultimately …

The Earliest Experiment Report Of College Chinese: A New Interpretation Of The Teaching Of Practical Writings By Liu Bannong, Eryuan He, Wenli Feng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

After Gui-Mao education system enforced in 1904, preparatory courses lasted and became an organic part of modern Chinese higher education. As the predecessor of First-year College Chinese in the Republic of China, "preparatory Chinese courses" indicated the early form of College Chinese. Liu Bannong's "Teaching of Practical Writings", finished in 1917 and published in the next year, was the earliest research article and experiment report in modern Chinese as a discipline. Situated within the background of New Culture Movement, this article could have a better display of Liu Bannong and his colleagues' ideas of Chinese language education. Among them, the …

Mirror Image Deviation In Cross-Cultural Transmission: A Reevaluation Of The Debate On H. D. Thoreau As A Hermit Or A Fake Hermit In Dushu, Luechang Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the dissemination of H. D. Thoreau in China over the past 90 years, one heated debate with Dushu as the main platform occurred over Thoreau as a hermit or a fake one. By nature, this debate is a false statement, because Thoreau has never claimed to be a hermit. Being similar to the hermit and Chinese yinyi culture, a visible tendency to detach oneself from society and live in seclusion, Thoreau is arbitrarily judged as a hermit or a fake one. From the perspective of Chinese yinyi culture, some Chinese scholars analyzed the period, place, motivation and lifestyle of …

The Triple Connotations Of Eagleton's "Event" In The Event Of Literature, Zhike Yin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Is there any connection between Terry Eagleton's The Event of Literature and the philosophy of event? If any, why does he discuss "event" in the final chapter of this book? Why is it confined in only one chapter? To answer these questions, one needs to clarify the concepts he uses. His Structure/Event is based on Claude Levi-Strauss's mythology, Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, Anthony Giddens's "Structuration", and Wolfgang Iser's "Strategy". Nevertheless, Eagleton's "eventness" differs from Alain Badiou's "event", and is actually closer to Derek Attridge's literary ethics. As literature and art have to bring out actual effect, they are for Eagleton open …

Rewriting And Rewritology: A Poststructuralist Approach To Literary History, Jinlong Xiao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Research on literary history is the most fundamental way to construct the knowledge system of literature, which is mainly divided historically into two schools: contextualism and formalism. They both have major defects, which are caused by their thinking in logocentric binary opposition. A shift of our perspective to poststructuralist binary complementation may enable us to realize that all texts of literary discourse are formed by a rewriting of other discursive texts. Correspondingly, the most proper approach to literary history is to probe into the dynamic complicated relationship between a text of literary discourse and its pretexts. This approach,termedrewritology,includes four major …

The Primer Tradition And Reflections On Chinese Education Over The Past 100 Years, Zihui Zhu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

"Initiating Children's literacy by musical language" has been an important characteristic and fine tradition of elementary Chinese education in ancient China. In primers of this kind, it is characterized by syntactical antithesis and rhyming which were derived from the profound understanding of the ancients about the characteristics of the Chinese language. In the elementary education, it not only satisfies children's "willingness and readiness" to learn, but also exposes them to the aesthetic of Chinese language and culture. However, unfortunately, in the past one hundred years, due to the unscrupulous transplant or absorption of foreign education thought, the fine primer tradition …

A Dream Of Red Mansions And Xu Zhenya's Novel Writing, Yingjie Bai

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This article discusses the influence that A Dream of Red Mansions had on Xu Zhenya's novel writing. In his early years, Xu Zhenya wrote sixty Ci-poems about A Dream of Red Mansions. These Ci-poems indicate his understanding of characters in the novel and the love tragedy of Baoyu and Daiyu. When writing novels, he always uses A Dream in Red Mansions as an exemplar. Although Her Sacrifice and The History of Tears are autobiographical novels, Xu imitates A Dream in Red Mansions in terms of characterization and plot. Two Servant Girls, his third novel, is entirely a duplicate of A …

A Feminine Gaze: A Lacanian Analysis Of The Tv Series Journey To The West, Guanjun Wu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The TV series Journey to the West, first shown on China Central Television in 1986, is undoubtedly a seminal work in the history of Chinese television. As a TV remake of the classical Chinese novel bearing the same title, this work, following the principle of "faithfulness", substantively makes itself a symptomatic excess to the original novel. Through the "feminine affection" depicted by the general director Yang Jie, the original novel's phallocentric perspective is replaced in a revolutionary way by a feminine perspective of the Queen of the "Feminine Kingdom". In the end of the TV remake when Tripitaka has "completed" …

Double Inscription And The Concept Of Origin In Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan , Yu-Kai Lin Carlos

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

To many Western readers, Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, published in 1904, is a seminal work of what they perceive as Japanese kaidan literature. The fact that this work was first published in English for Western readers reveals the transcultural as well as translational nature of this literary genre that is called kaidan in the English-speaking context. The question of the origin of kaidan therefore makes it an interesting case of translation, since this book, in effect, is at once a translation and an inscription of the origin of Japanese kaidan literature in the Western context. …

From Discourse Of Political Practiceto Strategy For Cultural Interpretation: Jameson's Aesthetic Transformation Of Mao Zedong Thought, Yuyu Wu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

After the Western left-wing movement suffered setbacks in reality, its practice experience has been transformed into a method of textual interpretation. However, there are very limited studies to question how the failure of such political practice is reborn in a new discourse. This paper tries to explain its process through the case of Jameson's transformation of Mao Zedong thought into aesthetic. The transformation finds its expression in three aspects: 1) theory travel — variation occurs as the text travels; 2) the impact of the practice — deviance happens when the text is decontextualized; and 3) the transformative borrowing — the …

Highlights Of Symposium On "Studies Of Contemporary Art: Philosophical And Sociological Dimensions", Zheng Tao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

Literature Through The Lens Of Davidson's Event Theory, Qiao Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In contemporary literary theory, we discuss literary eventlargely withthe theoretical source of continental philosophy. This articleaims to draw an analytical philosophical picture forliterary event through Davidson's event theory. It investigates Davidsonianliterary event from two aspects. On the one hand, according to Davidson's ontology of event, the nature of literature should beseen as the particulars, and the way of discussing literature should be changed from "existence" to "happening", hence the shift from ontology of literature to performance of literature. On the other hand, literary event represents intentional literary action, and a successful literaryaction presents how the writer usesidiolects to communicate successfully …

Rethinking Writers’ Ethnic Identity: Essentialism Vs. Free Choice, Jianhua Yu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper is a rethinking of writers' ethnic identity by, first of all, summarizing the basis on which ethnic writers are often categorized, namely by blood, nurturing, professed recognition or inclination, and analyzing the defects of such classification. Following this analysis, it discusses the subjective part of ethnic writers' identity selection, focusing mostly on the often neglected elements of identity — its performativity and its temporality; it argues that we need to abandon essentialism by embracing the theory of social constructionism. In today's multilateral and shifting world, the identity of ethnic writers should increasingly be viewed as a constructive process …

Behavior Language, Unconscious Structure And Literary Activities, Dakang Ma

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Human's consciousness is constructed by the memory of speech acts, and the unconscious is constructed by the memory of behavior language. The similarities and differences between the two languages (behaviors) determine the relation and differentiation between the structure of consciousness and that of the unconscious. Therefore, it does not hold water that Lacan uses the structure of language to explain the unconscious. Aesthetic activities are the full cooperation between consciousness and the unconscious, so the characteristics of the two kinds of behaviors (languages) determine the dual character of aesthetic and artistic activities.

Event And Art: Lyotard's Politics Of Phrase And The Postmodern Sublime, Hui Zhou

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Starting from the relationship between modern French philosophy and event and time, this article attempts to expound the main idea of the politics of phrase oriented to différend, to compare the differences and similarities between Kant's reflective judgment and the judgment of Lyotard, to analyze the reasons why postmodern art finally leads to the sublime, and thus to point out the special significance of event to postmodern theories. In the end, this article reflects on the oscillation of postmodern theories between the activeness and passiveness of the subject, and the price that elites have to pay for detaching themselves from …

Prefaces And Postscripts In Early Dunhuang BianwenAnd The Establishment Of Research Paradigm For Modern Folk Literature, Yajing Wang, Xun Sun

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Top scholars in China attracted by findings of Dunhuang Bianwen in 1907 sorted out these newfound materials and wrote prefaces and postscripts for them, which indicated their understanding of various aspects related to Bianwen. Firstly, studies of Bianwen's value brought folk literature to modern academics; secondly, the differentiation and analysis of Bianwen's literary forms opened up the path of emphasizing intrinsic characteristics of literature; thirdly, textual criticism on origins and development of stories in Bianwen introduced an important and new research method for narrative literature. All these paradigms and outlines of Bianwen studies established earlier have displayed Chinese academics' achievement …

The Debate On "National Characteristic" And The Mindset Of Binary Opposition In Contemporary Intelligentsia, Yugao He

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the debate on Lu Xun's "national characteristic" at the turn of the 20th century, Feng Jicai and Liu Hewereseverely criticizedfor their post-colonial stance. However, all these critics misunderstood Liu He's point. Through analysis, one finds that critics' mindset of binary opposition such as "China/west, tradition/modernity" was the main cause of the misreading. Meanwhile, Liu He's post-colonial practice also betrays dogmatic binary thinking. The mindset of binary oppositions inherent inmodern Chinese academic thought throughout history has restrained intellectuals' talent, hence a waste of intelligence. To avoid such mindset, Chinese literary scholars should be more sensitive and receptive tofindings in other …

“Drawing Is Where The Joy Is”: Cultural Anxiety, The Monstrous Fantastic, And The Artist As Mediator In Katsuhito Ishii’S The Taste Of Tea, Elise M. Parsons

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

This article applies George Canguilhem’s notion of monster theory as a method for cultural analysis to the analysis of literature. It argues that monster theory provides one accurate view of Japanese contemporary culture as it is depicted in literature, and that observing the relationship of artists and writers to the monsters they depict can lead to a valid hypothesis about the artist’s view of culture. Using this hypothesis as a theoretical framework, the article then analyzes The Taste of Tea, a contemporary film by Japanese director Katsuhito Ishii, in terms of monster theory. It concludes that monster theory vindicates …