Asian History Commons^™

A Tale Of Two Motherlands: Bridging The Gap Between The American And Korean Identities Of Korean War Adoptees, Lily Zitko

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

In 1955, the Harry and Bertha Holt successfully petitioned for the passing of Private Law 475 (Holt Bill) allowing for the adoption of eight orphans from South Korea. This was the beginning of a global revolution in transnational and transracial adoption. Prior to this, the idea of adoption outside of the United States was seldom possible; however, the work of the Holt family rationalized with the pubic and garnered much attention from the government and media. Even more so complicated was the idea of mixed-race Korean children, fathered by American G.I.s stationed in the Korea during the Korean War. Their …

Political Economy Of The Middle East: Historiography And The Making Of An Episteme, Jordan Rothschild

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Great Divergence accelerated a process of Western European states dominating the majority of the world’s geography and people economically and geopolitically. Given the stakes of this shift and its ramifications for all of the history that followed, and the significant way that the divide continues to shape our world, this phenomenon is subject to considerable debate within the historiography. This paper uses the Great Divergence as a departure point to analyze the different schools of political economic history, from the flawed sociologies of the early 20th century theorists to the World Systems Theorists and beyond. A key aspect of …

Review- Archives And Human Rights, Alexandra Pucciarelli

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Archives and Human Rights edited by Jens Boel, Perrine Canavaggio, and Antonio González Quintana utilizes seventeen case studies to examine the role archives and archivists can play in international justice after human rights violations. The cases include but are not limited to; Rwanda, Spain, and Cambodia.

“Filipinos In California, Community, And Identity”: A Personal Inquiry, Sam T. Mcclintock

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

The Perspectives Of Urban Renewal: Reevaluating The Image Of Late Twentieth Century Gentrification Of U.S. Chinatowns, Christian E. Manalac

Gettysburg College Headquarters

Urban renewal or gentrification has affected many low-income minority families in the United States with redevelopment projects that destroyed their neighborhoods for the affluent white middle class. Unlike, many minority groups who protested against the intrusive practice Chinatowns communities saw themselves divided over the issue. Chinatowns throughout the nation benefitted from redevelopment projects that brought new investments into their neighborhoods’ businesses, but like other minority neighborhood, they also suffered as their residents were displaced. This case study examines the debates over urban renewal of Philadelphia and Washington D.C’s Chinatowns through local newspaper coverage from the 1970s-1990s. Specifically, this study uncovers …

The Marriage Between Art And Politics: Propaganda, Rebecca J. Counen

The Purdue Historian

During the first half of the twentieth century Europe, Asia, and the United States faced many political/social changes and challenges amid both ideological wars and revolutions. This research paper works to analyze films from this era in order to convey the somewhat unorthodox, yet nonetheless influential and compelling, relationship between the arts and politics and how creativity is oftentimes manipulated for power and influence.

Nationalist Theory And Politicization Of Archaeological Resources: Manifestations In Iraq, Andrew Vang-Roberts

Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology

Archaeological resources have been used by political regimes to further their own interests across time and space for many decades since the discipline was established as a profession in the late 19th century. Regime-backed 20^th century dictators like Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein, Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak understood that whoever controls a nation’s archeological resources controls the nation’s memory. By controlling collective memory, a regime can assert control over its people. Archeological resources can be used to validate a regime’s control over physical space as well. Educating a population about its archeological past can …

“Unspoken Understanding”: The Evolution Of Chinese American Adoption Communities, Annie Abruzzo

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

While scholarly work on adoption, transnational adoption, and specifically international adoption from China has been robust, it has tended to focus on studying parents and parenting. This paper analyzes the resources used by both parents and children to discuss race, culture, and adoption, and seeks to understand the effects of these parenting strategies on Chinese American adoptees, who have begun to reach young adulthood in the last ten years. Examination of the recent growth of adoptee communities reveals that a shared and complex adoptee identity is a more powerful nexus than shared Chineseness.

Nationalistic Massacre Victims Triumph Over Ccp, Nathan Huffine

Voces Novae

Following the Japanese invasion of mainland China, and the subsequent Nanjing Massacre in 1937, Chinese Massacre survivors gained a nationalistic perspective as a result of their lived experiences. Later, these survivors’ nationalistic perspective came in direct conflict with the class-based perspective held by the Chinese Communist Party. This clash in political views helps shed light upon much of the internal and external Chinese historical narrative throughout the mid to late twentieth century.

Comparative Book Review: Chopsticks And The Land Of The Five Flavors, Jacob P, Banda

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

Two Poems: Stop Time Before; Forsaken Ones, Ánh-Hoa Thị Nguyễn

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This creative work features two poems: Stop Time Before; Forsaken Ones

Importing The American Dream: Japanese Hardware And Soft Power, Kenneth S. Klein

Tenor of Our Times

This paper explores the nature and reception of Japanese imports, both material and cultural, to America in recent history. It puts special focus on elements of popular culture such as film, television, sport, and video games to show how the content of Japanese imports shifted from being predominately hardware based to software based by the end of the 20^th century. The paper also explores the degree to which the Japanese identity of various products was hidden or emphasized in their advertisement and presentation. Throughout, the theme and question of quality is discussed. The American perception of the quality of …

The Colonized Masculinity And Cultural Politics Of Seediq Bale, Chin-Ju Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “The Colonized Masculinity and Cultural Politics of Seediq Bale,” Chin-ju Lin discusses a Taiwanese blockbuster movie, a postcolonial historiography and a form of life-writing, which delineates the last Indigenous insurrection against Japanese colonialism. This article explores the cultural representations in Seediq Bale. Fighting back as a colonized man for pride and dignity is portrayed as means to restore their masculine identity. The headhunting tradition is remembered, romanticized, praised highly as heroic and even strengthened in an inaccurate way to promote individualistic masculinity and to forge a new national identity in postcolonial Taiwan. Nevertheless, the stereotypical …

The Rise And Fall Of The Zaibatsu: Japan's Industrial And Economic Modernization, David A. C. Addicott

Global Tides

Throughout the past century, the rise and fall of the zaibatsu and the operations of their direct successors has not only shaped Japan’s economic and financial landscape but also has been instrumental in the modernization of the world economy. Many of these corporations traced their roots to Japan’s premodern era, and were directly responsible for the transformation of a nation of rice farmers into an industrial powerhouse in the years prior to World War II. Following Japan’s defeat, these monopolistic corporations were dismantled by the Keynesian economists of the Allied occupation and were reorganized into the keiretsu system, which exists …

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.

Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …

The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, Kerry P. C. San Chirico

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay discusses the challenges faced by Indian Catholicism, particularly as it seeks to adapt to and in contemporary, post-colonial India through the process or program of what is called inculturation, a self-conscious program of adaptation to Indian religion and culture. Since Indian Catholicism is constituted by so many irreducible persons-in-relation, the article focuses on the life of the Catholic priest, Swami Ishwar Prasad in whose life we may chart something of the inculturation movement and the Catholic tradition as it is found in North India region, in one rather long and rich lifetime connecting two centuries. The article seeks …

In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.

Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2016

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

The Desperate Rebels Of Shimabara: The Economic And Political Persecutions And The Tradition Of Peasant Revolt, Jake A. Farias

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The Shimabara Rebellion has been studied throughout history by historians of East Asia. Originally conceived by both Japanese and Western scholars as a religious revolt against the anti-Christian Tokugawa government, later scholars contended that the Rebellion was a demonstration by the mistreated and impoverished and only tacitly related to Christian influences. This paper sets out to build on that narrative and to show the connection between the Christian resistance to the Tokugawa government and the movement of impoverished and desperate peasants, pushed to the brink of existence. Furthermore, this paper hopes to explore the goals of the Rebellion and establish …

Hiroshima. At The Intersection Of Sciences, History, And Personal Narratives. A Personal Reflection., Gloria R. Montebruno Saller

The STEAM Journal

In the city of Hiroshima, Japan, sciences, history, and personal narratives meet. Atomic bomb survivors became the keepers of this town’s history and one of the most tragic chapters in the history of humankind; and as their voices fade to old age and death, there is a sense of urgency to keep their narratives alive. These are my personal reflections.

Why Chinese Neo-Confucian Women Made A Fetish Of Small Feet, Aubrey L. Mcmahan

Grand Valley Journal of History

Abstract for “Why Chinese Neo-Confucian Women Made a Fetish of Small Feet”

This paper explores the source of the traditional practice of Chinese footbinding which first gained popularity at the end of the Tang dynasty and continued to flourish until the last half of the twentieth century.[1] Derived initially from court concubines whose feet were formed to represent an attractive “deer lady” from an Indian tale, footbinding became a wide-spread symbol among the Chinese of obedience, pecuniary reputability, and Confucianism, among other things.[2]^,[3] Drawing on the analyses of such scholars as Beverly Jackson, Valerie Steele …