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Asian History Commons

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Theses/Dissertations

Honors Projects

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Asian History

The Legal Culpability Of Emperor Hirohito In The Outbreak Of The Second Sino-Japanese War, Joseph Castellano Apr 2024

The Legal Culpability Of Emperor Hirohito In The Outbreak Of The Second Sino-Japanese War, Joseph Castellano

Honors Projects

An analysis of the legal culpability of Emperor Hirohito in the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War based on primary source evidence. Combines an examination of primary and secondary sources to demonstrate that Emperor Hirohito was legally responsible for his role in the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War.


A Cryptid For Catholics And Communists: The Asuang As An Apparatus For Socio-Political Control In The History Of The Philippines, Alexandra Eckhart Apr 2024

A Cryptid For Catholics And Communists: The Asuang As An Apparatus For Socio-Political Control In The History Of The Philippines, Alexandra Eckhart

Honors Projects

This essay explores the utilization of folklore beliefs in psychological warfare through a comparative analysis of General Edward Geary Lansdale's tactics during the Hukbalahap insurgency at the beginning of the Cold War and the historical exploitation of the asuang myth by Spanish Catholic missionaries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While both instances involved leveraging local superstitions to influence behavior, their motivations and approaches diverged significantly. Unlike the missionaries, Lansdale's actions stemmed from a strategic imperative to combat communism rather than a sense of racial superiority or religious domination. Drawing parallels between Lansdale's methods and centuries-old patterns of oppression, this …


Student Activism And Malaysian Politics, 1955-74: Revising The History Of The Malay Language Society (Pbmum), Song Eraou Jan 2023

Student Activism And Malaysian Politics, 1955-74: Revising The History Of The Malay Language Society (Pbmum), Song Eraou

Honors Projects

In the literature on student activism in Malaysia, the years from 1967 to 1974 are emphasized as vibrant years—students organized large-scale demonstrations, regularly asserted their opinions in the political arena, and even participated in electoral politics. This period was followed, however, with the imposition of strict laws in 1975 limiting freedom of speech and expression. Such laws were part of the broader containment policy pursued by the state after the May 13, 1969, racial riots, which allowed the state to stifle any form of political dissidence to ensure peace between different ethnic groups. One particularly active organization in this period …


Love Is Real & I Just Had Some For Dessert: Legacies Of Communal Care & Compassion In Asian Diasporic Women's Food Writing, Miki Rierson Jan 2023

Love Is Real & I Just Had Some For Dessert: Legacies Of Communal Care & Compassion In Asian Diasporic Women's Food Writing, Miki Rierson

Honors Projects

In this project I work to recover influential yet often erased Asian American female immigrant chefs and food authors from the mid-twentieth century to the present, situating their contributions in a deep-rooted tradition of diasporic women who used cooking as a means of communal agency and care. Immigrant Asian cookbook authors and chefs have long faced internal criticisms from their own diasporic communities of either inauthenticity or engaging in “food pornography,” to use writer Frank Chin’s term—a line of criticism that Lisa Lau has elaborated on as “re-Orientalism.”Though these criticisms should not eclipse the works themselves, I discuss and counter …


Bringing The Japanese Occupation Of Korea To High School Classrooms, Bree Rosenberger Apr 2021

Bringing The Japanese Occupation Of Korea To High School Classrooms, Bree Rosenberger

Honors Projects

Bringing the Japanese Occupation of Korea to High School Classrooms is a set of three units on the occupation, designed using the Inquiry Design Model from the C3 Teachers. Each unit corresponds to a major time period in the occupation; unit one covers 1876-1919, unit two 1919-1931, and unit three 1931-1945. This project aimed to provide a way to teach the occupation in a manner friendly to high school students and presents an opportunity to align content more fully with the philosophy of social studies education. Finally, it presents a way to teach East Asian history actually from an East …


Teaching The Lessons Of The Vietnam War And Applying Them To The War In Afghanistan: Lesson Plans For A Sophomore Us History Class, Zoe Bond Apr 2021

Teaching The Lessons Of The Vietnam War And Applying Them To The War In Afghanistan: Lesson Plans For A Sophomore Us History Class, Zoe Bond

Honors Projects

This project is a series of lesson plans for a 10th grade US History class detailing the lessons of the Vietnam War and how they have and haven’t been used by President Obama in his decisions during the War in Afghanistan. The lesson plan uses Differentiation and Universal Design for Learning to accommodate every student in the class. The goal of this project was to teach original research in a way that promotes inquiry even if there is no correct answer at that time.


From Memory To Present To An Uncertain Future: An Analysis Of History And Policy On Chinese Food Security, Justin Mascarin Apr 2021

From Memory To Present To An Uncertain Future: An Analysis Of History And Policy On Chinese Food Security, Justin Mascarin

Honors Projects

This paper seeks to analyze China’s historical relationship to famine to better understand contemporary Chinese policy on food security. The historical analysis focuses both at the political level and the level of the peasantry, with a particular focus on the Great Chinese Famine. This Chinese specific analysis in conjunction with an understanding of food security history helps to better understand two white papers on food security from the Chinese Government in 1996 and 2019. This paper finds these white papers to be response to deep rooted doubts in the ability for the Chinese Government to logistically support such a massive …


Ba'ath Party Archives And The Khmer Rouge Records: The Importance Of Cultural Accessibility, Elizabeth M. Thompson Apr 2021

Ba'ath Party Archives And The Khmer Rouge Records: The Importance Of Cultural Accessibility, Elizabeth M. Thompson

Honors Projects

This paper contrasts the handling, provenance, and application of the Ba’ath Party Archives with that of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge Records. While similar in many facets, the events surrounding the Ba’ath Party Archives received heavy ridicule while the international community largely supported the handling of the Khmer Rouge records. The comparison of the Cambodian and Iraqi case studies’ distinct differences reveal why international opinion varies. It also emphasizes a gap within standard understanding concerning archival law and practices. This exploration will reveal that current archival dialogue focuses too much on a dichotomous relationship between international and national concerns. The author …


What Seoul Saw, What Gwangju Knew: Journalism And Censorship During The Gwangju Pro-Democracy Movement, Emily Ambrose May 2020

What Seoul Saw, What Gwangju Knew: Journalism And Censorship During The Gwangju Pro-Democracy Movement, Emily Ambrose

Honors Projects

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Kwangju Pro-Democracy Movement, a civilian protest in the city of Kwangju against the Chun Doo Hwan military dictatorship, which was brutally crushed by the military. This research focuses on the journalism that occurred during movement and attempts to analyze the relationship between the government and the media by gauging the extent of censorship. This is done by comparing censored national and local newspapers in Korea to uncensored foreign newspapers for differences in the information presented. Because of factors such as biases and differences in access to resources between newspapers and journalists, …


Duty And Distinction: Scientists As Intellectuals In Modern China, Helen Wang Jan 2020

Duty And Distinction: Scientists As Intellectuals In Modern China, Helen Wang

Honors Projects

As critical players in the Chinese state’s pursuit of modernization and political legitimacy, Chinese scientists have been the recipients of state attention and scrutiny throughout modern history. This paper will analyze how Qian Xuesen (1911-2009) became a national hero as the Chinese Communist Party’s model scientist. Qian developed his scientific expertise in the United States, before Cold War political tensions forced his extradition. Upon his return to China, Qian became a key missile scientist in the state’s emerging nuclear weapons program. By analyzing Qian’s public persona as portrayed in official state media, this paper will argue that the CCP conferred …


The Scars Of War: The Demonic Mother As A Conduit For Expressing Victimization, Collective Guilt, And Forgiveness In Postwar Japanese Film, 1949-1964, Sophia Walker May 2017

The Scars Of War: The Demonic Mother As A Conduit For Expressing Victimization, Collective Guilt, And Forgiveness In Postwar Japanese Film, 1949-1964, Sophia Walker

Honors Projects

Contemporary American viewers are familiar with the vengeful and terrifying ghost women of recent J-Horror films such as Ringu (Nakata Hideo, 1998) and Ju-On (Shimizu Takashi, 2002). Yet in Japanese theater and literature, the threatening ghost woman has a long history, beginning with the neglected Lady Rokujo in Lady Murasaki’s 11th century novel The Tale of Genji, who possesses and kills her rivals. Throughout history, the Japanese ghost mother is hideous and pitiful, worthy of fear as well as sympathy, traits that authors and filmmakers across the centuries have exploited. This project puts together four films that have never before …