History Commons^™

Du Fu And Chinese Poetic Expression: How Politics, Nature, And Self Become One, Binhnam Nguyen

Young Historians Conference

The Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu introduced a new style of writing to Chinese poetry with his new interpretation of how to write poetry and for what purpose it can serve. Living in the midst of political turmoil, Du drew inspiration from the instability and used poetry as a means of expressing his anguish, but nationalist sentiments that wished for the prosperity of China. His different stylistic approach to poetry personalized the art of poetic writing and changed its language to express something more lyrical and with feeling. Du’s role in changing the course of Chinese poetic expression can be …

A Bridge Across The Pacific: A Study Of The Shifting Relationship Between Portland And The Far East, Michael Todd Gagle

Dissertations and Theses

After Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, both Japan and China sought the support of America. There has been a historical assumption that, starting with the hostilities in 1931, the Japanese were maligned in American public opinion. Consequently, the assumption has been made that Americans supported the Chinese without reserve during their conflict with Japan in the 1930s.

The aim of this study is to question the accuracy of that assumption in the case of Portland, Oregon. An analysis of newspapers and print material specifically focusing on Japan and China from before the conflict reveal that the general American opinion of …

The Foundation For Revolution : Educational Reforms In Late ChʻIng China, Andrea Asbell

Dissertations and Theses

Historical consensus has labeled the educational reform efforts of China's scholar-officials in the second half of the nineteenth century as merely reactions to external circumstances and therefore has concluded that these reforms were "failures". The youthful revolt against Chinese cultural traditions, which culminated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, has frequently been cited as a clear demonstration that previous educational reforms had failed. However, when viewed as the intellectual phase of the revolutionary process, reform activities among members of China's bureaucratic and scholarly elite in the four and one half decades from the 1860s to the early 1900s can …

Facing Both Ways: Yan Fu, Hu Shi, And Chen Duxiu -- Chinese Intellectuals And The Meaning Of Modern Science, 1895-1923, Niobeh Crowfoot Tsaba

Dissertations and Theses

The concern of Chinese intellectuals with the "idea" of modern science from the West in the transition generation from 1895 to 1923 was fundamentally a concern about "national survival" and modernity. The value and meaning that accrued to science as "method" -- as a "thinking technique" -- and to the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer as the "science of choice" among Chinese intellectuals of this period, was due to belief or disbelief in the power of these ideas to describe, explain, or solve the problematic of "modernity" in a Chinese context.

Yan Fu's (1853-1921) translations of Thomas …