Asian American Studies Commons^™

Constructing Loyalty, Citizenship, And Identity: A Rhetorical History Of The Japanese American Incarceration, Kaori Miyawaki

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reexamines loyalty, citizenship, and identity in the United States by closely reading historical materials about the Japanese American incarceration. The Japanese American incarceration is a unique and important historical event for studying citizenship and identity, since it was a moment in the U.S. history that citizens of the country were incarcerated by their government. This raises a larger question beyond the incarceration. What does it mean to be a loyal American citizen?

By closely analyzing texts generated by the U.S. government, the Japanese American community, and White American photographers, I identify multiple, conflicting meanings and implications behind the …

Confucius, Yamaha, Or Mozart? Cultural Capital And Upward Mobility Among Children Of Chinese Immigrants, Wei-Ting Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the determinants of upward mobility among children of Chinese immigrants. While most studies emphasize ethnic cultural capital as a primary determinant of Chinese upward mobility, this study proposes three new concepts to illuminate understudied processes promoting mobility. Specifically, this study argues that Chinese immigrants' interactions with classical music schools in the Chinese community help generate globalized cultural capital (resources from immigrants' participation in transnational networks), navigational capital (the ability to connect social networks together to facilitate community navigation through higher-status educational institutions) and aspirational capital (the ability of parents to acknowledge the barriers to upward mobility). These …

Altered Lives, Altered Environments: Creating Home At Manzanar Relocation Center, 1942-1945, Laura W. Ng

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to understand how individuals exiled from their homes due to racial prejudice cope with institutional confinement. Specifically, this study focuses on the World War II mass incarceration of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States after Japan's attack on the American naval base Pearl Harbor. Under the guise of national security and without due process, the United States government forcibly removed over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and imprisoned them in camps spread throughout the country. This thesis examines institutional confinement at one Japanese American carceral site: an incarceration camp …

The Relative Impact Of Identity On Lgbt Api Outness: A Quantitative Analysis, Jessica Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, the intersecting relationship among race, sex, gender, and sexuality plays a significant role in one's identity development and socialization. Especially for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Asian Pacific Islander (API) individuals, such interplay presents a continuous task of processing and presenting different identities. Employing a national sample of over 500 LGBT API individuals and utilizing multivariate regression analysis, this thesis explores how LGBT API individuals' sexual and racial identities affect their decisions in coming out to family, friends, co-workers, and other community members. Findings indicate that the level of discomfort in racial/ethnic and/or LGBT community …

Breaking The Mold: Four Asian American Women Define Beauty, Detail Identity, And Deconstruct Stereotypes, Allison Ginwala

Honors Theses and Capstones

The experiences of four women reveal how notions of outer beauty touch ideas of personal ethnic identity, racism, media-imposed pressure, and social stereotypes; shaping the lives of Chinese, Chinese American, and Asian American women.

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 …

Making The Desert Bloom: Landscape Photography And Identity In The Owens Valley American West, Kaily A. Heitz

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the way in which landscape photography has historically been used as a colonialist tool to perpetuate narratives of control over the American West during the mid to late 1800s. I use this framework to interrogate how these visual narratives enforced ideas about American identity and whiteness relative to power over the landscape, indigenous people and the Japanese-Americans imprisoned at Manzanar within Owens Valley, California. I argue that because photographic representation is controlled by colonist powers, images of people within the American West reinforce imperialist rhetoric that positions whiteness in control of the land; thus, white settlers used …

Japanese American Cultural Identity: The Role Of Wwii, Internment, And The 3/11 Disaster In Japan, Carrie L. Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the nature of Japanese American cultural identity through an examination of the historical contexts of WWII, internment, and the 3/11 disasters in Japan. Interview data was analyzed using both interpretive and critical paradigms. I then utilized the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), the corresponding concept of identity gaps, and critical-cultural hybridity. It was found that Japanese Americans construct, enact, and relate to their identities in markedly different ways despite belonging to the same cultural group. In turn, I am proposing further revision to CTI's communal frame to exemplify the shared and contested elements of a collective. This …

Restoring, Rewriting, Reimagining: Asian American Science Fiction Writers And The Time Travel Narrative, Joanne Chern

Scripps Senior Theses

Asian American literature has continued to evolve since the emergence of first generation Asian American writers in 1975. Authors have continued to interact not only with Asian American content, but also with different forms to express that content – one of these forms is genre writing. Genre writing allows Asian American writers to interact with genre conventions, using them to inform Asian American tropes and vice versa. This thesis focuses on the genre of science fiction, specifically in the subgenre of time travel. Using three literary case studies – Ken Liu’s “The Man Who Ended History,” Charles Yu’s How …

Artist As Citizen: Transnational Cultural Work In The National Democratic Movement Of The Philippines, Ryan Anthony Leano

Doctoral Dissertations

The inspiration for this topic comes from my own experiences as a Filipino transnational cultural worker in this movement. There has been research done on Filipinos in the arts and social movements, however there is a paucity of information concerning Filipino cultural work. Cultural work and cultural workers are intentional in creating culture as an act of resistance to imperialism, as of the stories they tell though their creative work are not revealed much in mainstream media. Cultural workers also seek to debunk the myth of artists working in isolation from the community. As shared by the participants in this …

Letters From An Interdisciplinary Artist: Illuminating Korean Adoptee Identity Through Mentors And Metal, Tonya Ferraro

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Interdisciplinary integration and practice through meaning making and context can contribute to the reconsideration and revolution of research by supporting narrativesand creating space for public discourse. In researching my heritage as a Korean adoptee, I found that the literature has been predominantly from adoptive parents' perspective,focusing primarily on child and adolescent development. Lacking in the literature is the adult adoptee perspective, and specifically their experiential voices.

This interdisciplinary thesis has three major purposes (1) to explore how transracial transnational Korean adoption affects identity formation, (2) to illustrate how mentoring relationships can be a means to address and reframe the theme …