Asian American Studies Commons^™

Creative Resilience Against Racism Among Asian Americans: Development Of A Method, Janice Chen

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The experience of racism is inevitable and can become internalized when racism is persistent. As an Asian American woman, I am interested in exploring how art can be used as a form of resilience against internalized racism among Asian Americans. Racism against Asian Americans and recent immigrants from Asia has always existed throughout the history of the United States. Systematic laws, institutional policies, and cultural norms have set rules and narratives to put Asian Americans at a disadvantage. In addition, Asian Americans may have difficulty opening the conversation about racism. Internalized racism can cause physical and mental harm. I used …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Moving At The Speed Of Trust, Sun Ho Lee

Masters Theses

Moving at the Speed of Trust is a workbook of strategies — practices, definitions, and techniques — to nurture community-building in support of inbetweeners who live between power structures and cultures and are often left out. Inbetweeners are those individuals whose lives are in transition through recent immigration or forced translocation from Asia to America.

These strategies revolve around threads of trust: kin, giggles, vulnerability, and shared experience. With these threads, we can question power. We can preserve stories, expand the ways we connect, shift perspectives on what is “standard,” and cultivate a community rooted in understanding. To understand each …

Art Therapy As A Tool For Korean American Families: A Literature Review, Minju Park

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This literature review aims to offer a comprehensive overview of attributes of Korean culture that make significant impacts on the family dynamic in the Korean immigrant households and to learn different types of art therapy that can help them. This literature review identifies specifically the struggles both first-generation Korean immigrant parents and second-generation Korean-American adolescents experience in order to understand where their conflicts come from. Later, different approaches of art therapy for the conflicts Korean immigrant households face are discussed. Data are collected from existing literature and videos by terms including art therapy for immigrants, family art therapy, Korean immigrant …

The Relationship Between Acculturation And Depression With Burmese Refugees, Gunnar Greg Newman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Acculturation and acculturative stress have been linked to depression among immigrants and refugee populations. Asian Americans and Asian American subgroups are underrepresented and have been neglected in research. The purpose of this quantitative study was to measure the relationship between acculturation and depression with length of time in the United States and acculturative stress as mediating variables among the understudied Asian American subgroup, Burmese refugees resettled in the United States. Unidimensional and bidimensional models of acculturation form the theoretical framework for this study. Three instruments, the Suinn-Lew Asian Self Identity Acculturation scale, the Riverside Acculturation Stress Inventory, and the Beck …

Making Meaning Of The Family's Immigrant Experience, Distress, And Help-Seeking: A Critical Inquiry Of Mental Health Support For Second-Generation Korean Americans, Kristin Kim-Martin

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The Korean American community is a predominantly immigrant population with a long history of historical and cultural trauma, including the continued losses, hardships, and violence endured through the immigration process, that continues to impact the well-being and functioning of individuals and families today. Second-generation Korean Americans play critical roles in establishing and maintaining the livelihoods and security of their immigrant families; however, they have been underrepresented and under-researched within the literature on immigration and its effects on the mental health and help-seeking patterns of this population. Although there is strong evidence for the influence of culture in the intergenerational patterns …

Mechanisms Of Biases And Cultural Literacy In International Language Education: One Such Story To Carry, Yukari Birkett

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

Despite equity and inclusion initiatives, the English based colonial model has permeated the kindergarten to college systems, teaching/learning, theories and methods, the perception of second language acquisition, multiculturalism, and language education (Knowles et al., 2015; Macedo, 2019; Phillips & Abbot, 2011; Battiste, 2013). Additionally, cognitive neuroscientific discoveries of the complexity of language learning, emotional intelligence, and cultural literacy systematically failed to reach educators. Few studies have focused on what factors impact on cultural biases of foreign language learners, or what factors in learning facilitate the dismantling of durable biases. What are the hidden agendas for teaching and learning foreign languages? …

Exploring Taiwanese Creative Arts Therapists' Professional Identity After Returning Home From Studying Abroad, Rhona Jung Jung Chang

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This study aimed to document Taiwanese creative arts therapists' career experiences after studying abroad and returning home, and how they perceive their professional identity as creative arts therapists in Taiwan. This qualitative study explores the experience of eight female professional Taiwanese creative arts therapists, including two art therapists, two dance/movement therapists, two drama therapists, and two music therapists. Interviews were conducted, and the participants were asked about their personal experience of art-making, the practice of creative arts therapies in Taiwan, and the understanding and awareness of their professional identity.

Data from this study was gathered by the interviews' transcripts and …

Lived Experiences Of Pakistani American Women Who Sought Mental Health Treatment, Marriam Ashraf

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractDespite the research on how mental illness manifests in the United States, there is more to be known about mental health in the Pakistani American population. The goal of this qualitative phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of Pakistani American women who sought mental health treatment. Ecological theory provided the framework for the study. Data were collected from semi structured interviews with 10 participants via telephone and face-to-face conversations. Data were analyzed using managing, reading, memoing, describing, classifying, interpreting, representing, and visualizing techniques. Findings indicated that seeking help for mental health played a positive role in participants being …

Cumulative Grief, Xuan Pham

Masters Theses

A written thesis to accompany the M.F.A. Exhibition Cumulative Grief, in which the artist's personal and familial narrative explores the complexity and nuances of racial grief.

Untwining Threads: Second Wave Hmong Parents’ Conceptualizations Of Ways To Support Their Adolescent Children’S Education, Mao Sea Lee

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This research identifies the support systems for adolescents’ education within the second wave Hmong refugee family setting. The study examines the parents’ perspectives on their own support systems for their adolescents’ education. The work focuses on studying both the instrumental support and psychological care these parents provide their teenage children and interprets why these parents choose to provide these resources. Studying these parents’ ways of supporting their adolescents provided a more in-depth understanding of why these recent refugee parents choose to invest of their resources to their adolescents’ education and, subsequently, what education means to them. The research also brought …

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Korean Adoptees’ Multiple Minority Identities, Jared Utley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the end of the Korean War, Korean children have been placed for international adoption due to their marginalized status in South Korea. In the United States, Korean children have predominantly been adopted to White families through transracial adoption (Bergquist, 2003; Lee, 2003). Transracial adoption describes the process of children being placed in a home where there are racial differences with one or both adoptive parents. Through international transracial adoption, Korean adoptees may undergo events that impact the salience and development of multiple minority identities, including: racial, ethnic, cultural, and as an adoptee. These experiences may be shaped by interactions …

Help-Seeking Behaviors Among Filipino Americans: Understanding Enculturation, Depression, And Anxiety, Kristoffer John Almazan Rouse

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Filipino Americans have some of the highest levels of psychological distress among all Asian Americans. However, underrepresentation in psychological studies and a unique set of cultural values and norms contribute to the lack of literature on the sources of this distress among Filipino Americans. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine how aspects of cultural assimilation and norms of Filipino culture affect willingness of Filipino Americans to seek mental health services. Several factors, enculturation, anxiety, and depression, among Filipino Americans were examined to predict influence on help-seeking behaviors. A sample of 120 Filipino Americans living in the Pacific …

Seeking Mirrors: Representation And Identity At Asian Pacific Islander Film Festivals, Yang Jiang

Dissertations

Media representation plays an important role in shaping how we perceive ourselves. For ethnic and racial minorities, studies have confirmed that exposure to stereotypical and negative representations can harm the development of ethnic and racial identity. Currently, however, there is little understanding of how representation can support the development of ethnic and racial identity. Essentially, what might visibility, rather than invisibility, in media representation look like, and what is the relationship between visibility and ethnic and racial identity?

This dissertation sought to address these questions by looking at the experience of Asian Pacific Islander (API) attendees at API film festivals. …

Dmt And “The Man Box:” Provoking Change And Encouraging Authentic Living, An Arts-Based Project, Steven Reynolds

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This thesis explores the mind-body experience through an arts-based research approach to examine, and redefine the emotional capacity and usefulness of males through societal determinants that limits and hinders men from living their authentic selves. Through the lens of a metaphoric “Man Box” 112 men participated in a workshop recreating their personal narratives of socialization through, style of dress, coping mechanisms, belief systems and who they should be as men through society's standards. In the “Man Box,” male bonding, and emotional feelings are discouraged, while the objectification of women, material property and physical/emotional strength are encouraged. This research investigates the …

Racial Microaggressions And Alienation Among Hmong American College Students, Bruce Yang

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Students of color continue to experience racism within institutions of higher education across the United States. These experiences often include racial microaggressions, which are evolved forms of racism that are subtle, difficult to detect, and harmful. Racial microaggressions have been found to be associated with several consequences including mental health, emotional, and physical problems (Dahlia & Lieberman, 2010; Connolly, 2011; Cheng, Tran, Miyake, & Kim, 2017). Furthermore, studies have also alluded to the potential relationship between racial microaggressions and the dimensions of alienation for student populations of color (Fissori, 2010; James, 1988; Lambert, Herman, Bynum, & Ialongo, 2009; Sauceda, 2010; …

Color Between The Lines: Navigating Mixed Race Identity, Kelly O'Halloran

College Honors Program

Through the qualitative work of narrative psychology, this thesis explores experiences of mixed race individuals who have one white parent, one minority parent, and who grew up in a predominantly white community. The data were drawn from the author’s own first-hand experiences as well as in-depth interviews from three Holy Cross students about their mixed race identities. On the basis of these data, three forms of self-identity were found to be especially salient: the unaware self, the unique self, and the liminal self. The unaware self can be understood as not knowing how one appears to others. The unique self …

Cruising Borders, Unsettling Identities: Toward A Queer Diasporic Asian America, Wen Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I challenge the dominant conceptualization of Asian Americanness as a biological and cultural population and a cohesive racial category. Instead, I consider it as a form of flexible subjectivity and an affective emergence that occurs and materializes due to the multiple sites of convergence in the neoliberal assemblage of model minority ideology, imperialist geopolitical history, racialized queer politics, and criminal (in)justices. I examine the spatial and temporal configurations of Asian American subjectivity through a queer and postcolonial lens, first by conducting a critical historical review of the category of Asian American in the geopolitical history of psychological …

Filipino Americans' Perspectives On Caregiving, Maribel Lapuos Dominguez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

With increased life expectancy, more individuals will need to rely on caregivers and/or caregiving services. Filipino Americans are reluctant to depend on outside help when it comes to caring for their family members. There was a gap in the literature concerning the specific impact of the caregiving role on Filipino Americans and how cultural values affect the care provided to their family members. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain understanding of how Filipino cultural values and life roles affected Filipino Americans' experiences of caregiving. The conceptual framework included the sociocultural stress and coping model. The central research …

Coping With Acculturative Stress: Mdma Usage Among Asian American Young Adults In The Electronic Dance Music Scene, Michelle Stephanie Chan

Pomona Senior Theses

The intersection of Asian American identity and illicit substance use is greatly understudied in psychological literature, especially with matters of mental health and drug use being stigmatized by Asian cultural norms. However, with an increasingly alarming number of fatal drug overdoses by Asian Americans at electronic dance music (EDM) events, attention must be drawn to the needs of this unique population. The present study characterizes this community by drawing from data of 1,290 Asian American young adults who participate in the EDM scene. This study also hypothesizes the impact of acculturative stress and feelings of social belonging on MDMA usage …

Challenging Filipino Colonial Mentality With Philippine Art, Francesca V. Mateo

Master's Theses

For 350 years, the Philippines was colonized by Spain and the United States. The Philippines became a sovereign nation in 1946 yet, fifty years later, colonial teachings continue to oppress Filipinos due to their colonial mentality (CM.) CM is an internalized oppression among Filipinos in which they experience an automatic preference for anything Western—European or U.S. American—and rejection of anything Filipino. Although Filipinos show signs of a CM, there are Filipinos who are challenging CM by engaging in Philippine art. Philippine art is defined as Filipino-made visual art, literature, music, and dance intended to promote Philippine culture. This …

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the need to "world" our literary histories of U.S. war fiction, arguing that a transnational approach to this genre remaps on an enlarged scale the ethical implications of 20th and 21st century war writing. This study turns to representations of the human body to differently apprehend the ethical struggles of war fiction, thereby rethinking psychological and nationalist models of war trauma and developing a new method of reading the literature of war. To lay the ground for this analysis, I argue that the dominance of trauma theory in critical work on U.S. war fiction privileges the "authentic" …

Factors Influencing Diabetes Self-Management Of Filipino Americans With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Holistic Approach, Jocelyn B. Sonsona

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is an increasing prevalence of Type 2 diabetes mellitus among Filipino Americans. However, how well Filipino Americans with diabetes self-manage their disease and what factors influence their diabetes self-management behaviors remain unknown. Based on a holistic approach, this quantitative study was designed to investigate the diabetes self-management behaviors of this population and the factors influencing their self-management behaviors. The combined roles of diabetes knowledge, diabetes self-efficacy, spirituality, and social support were examined in predicting diabetes self-care behaviors. A convenience sample of 113 Filipino Americans with Type 2 diabetes mellitus completed the Diabetes Knowledge Test, Self-Efficacy for Diabetes Test, Daily …

Religion And Spirituality In Mental And Physical Well-Being Of Korean And White Americans, Mila Kil

Wayne State University Dissertations

An increasing number of researchers have confirmed the important role of religion and spirituality, not only in the psychological and emotional domains but also in physical health. Several researchers note that various forms of spirituality and religiousness can help Asian immigrants cope with the upheavals of immigration, adaptation to a new country, and other difficult personal and social transformations related to being in a new culture. Especially for Korean immigrants, churches and religious organizations act as a powerful support group. However, few empirical studies have paid attention to this topic, considering the importance of religion and spirituality to most individuals. …

Exploring U.S. Imperialist Influences On Bicultural Koreans' Identity Negotiation : A Critical Theory Study, Minsun Lee

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Bicultural identity has traditionally been studied in a contextual vacuum, with little attention to how asymmetrical power dynamics between two cultures influence the negotiation of a bicultural identity. This critical theory study used a focus group and follow-up individual interviews to illuminate how five adult bicultural Koreans residing in the U.S. negotiate their sociocultural identities within the context of U.S. imperialist influences. Interpretive phenomenological analysis (Smith & Osborn, 2008) and methods drawn from feminist research (Anderson & Jack, 1991) were employed to analyze the data.

The Effects Of Racial Discrimination, Ethnic Identity, And Generational Status On Situation Well-Being Of Asian Americans, Li-Ling Lin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A randomized three-group, experimental online study was conducted to investigate the degree to which ethnic identity and generational status moderated the relationship between racial discrimination and situational well-being in a sample of Asian Americans. Replicating and extending Yoo and Lee's (2008) study, the current sample of 194 Asian American participants were randomly assigned to one of three vignettes: without racial discrimination (control group), a single incident of racial discrimination, or multiple incidents of racial discrimination. Results indicated that participants in the two experimental conditions reported more negative affect than participants in the control group, and participants in the multiple incidents …

Intergenerational Conflict Between Emerging Adults And Their Parents In Asian American Families, Kathy Nguyen

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Due to a paucity of research, little is understood about the experiences of Asian American emerging adults as they navigate their relationship with their parents. The purpose of the current study was to investigate intergenerational conflict in Asian American families, specifically when emerging adults are living at home with their parents. Acculturation gap, generational status, birth order, gender, and language proficiency were examined as predictors or mediators of conflict. Participants consisted of 350 Asian American emerging adults who were currently living with their parents, who lived with their parents during certain times of the year (e.g., vacations), or who had …

The Effect Of Post-Marital Co-Habitation With In-Laws On Level Of Acculturation And Marital Satisfaction Of Chinese American Women, Louisa F. Lam

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Living In Two Worlds: Asian-American Women And Emotion, Kimberly S. Gangwish

Student Work

Asian-American women have faced certain difficulties in growing up due to the distinct differences in Asian and American cultures. The two cultures have philosophical differences as well as differences in acceptable manners of behaving and communicating. The expression of emotion is one of these areas. This research study looks at the differences in the two cultures concerning the expression of emotions and how this affects the women who are trying to live within both worlds. Ten first-generation Asian-American women were interviewed, using an oral history method, concerning three different situations. One situation involving just their parents, another involving their friends, …

Transitions To U.S. Private Schools: Perceptions Of Six Immigrant Elementary School Boys, Philip Manwell

Doctoral Dissertations

"The United States is faced with the privilege and challenge of educating immigrant children, not only in a second language and other skills, but also in the many and varied dimensions of life in this country" (London, 1990; p. 287).

Whether these children have fled rigid dictatorial regimes or wars, whether they came to the U.S. directly or spent time in refugee camps or detention centers, whether they have little more than what they are wearing at the time, or their families have planned the migration carefully, leaving their countries of origin legally and peacefully, bringing currency and the promise …