Asian American Studies Commons^™

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 …

Lotuses Rising: Fostering Southeast Asian Community Cultural Wealth Through Arts Based Culturally Specific Programming, Rhummanee Hang

Master's Projects and Capstones

This project explores how Banteay Srei, a community organization in Oakland, California, works with young Southeast Asian American women using arts based and culturally specific programming to make visible the community cultural wealth that exists in this community. Through cooking and telling stories about their elders' refuge and resettlement experiences, the young women gain a better sense of their own history, culture, and identity. This intergenerational project allows participants to learn, feel empowered, and begin to heal. The result is a cookbook for the young women of the organization. While this project and program is not meant to be replicated …

Crime And Culture : A Thematic Reading Of Sherlock Holmes And His Adaptations., Britney Broyles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character and stories into the television shows Sherlock and Elementary on air today. The project will consider three central questions: 1) Why is this Victorian detective hero still popular in the twenty-first century and what has remained constant and still resonates with modern audiences? 2) Both television shows transport Holmes in time by setting their narratives in the present day; therefore, what has been changed in this process of adaptation? 3) How do these changes represent shifts in our cultural thinking about important aspects of humanistic inquiry? The …

Can You Be Bicultural Without Being Bilingual? The Case Of Filipino Americans, Reiamari P Guevarra

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Media Representation Of Asian Americans And Asian Native New Yorkers’ Hybrid Persona, Min Huh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Asian Americans, having been degraded in the realm of popular media and neglected in the consumer market, have been unable to obtain a voice or leave a trace in American pop culture. The meager representation that Asian Americans rarely have is highly controlled through a distorted lens, inclined to paint them in a grotesquely exaggerated light for comic relief. The absence of Asian Americans in the media has compelled the Asian American youth to adapt the personas of different cultures in their desires for social and cultural mobility. These factors have given birth to a hybrid persona among Asian Native …

Animate Impossibilities: On Asian Americanist Critique, Racialization, And The Humanities, Frances H. Tran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation works from and through the field of Asian American studies, drawing on Asian Americanist cultural critique and minority discourse, to investigate the relationship among race, the politics of knowledge, and the epistemic function of the humanities. Proliferating discourses on “post-race” and “colorblindness” characterizing the present moment posit a progressive movement beyond racial division, towards recognizing and incorporating minority difference into the academy. However, even as issues like “diversity” have gained visibility as institutional objectives, I contend that this heightened visibility occludes the structural conditions that allow racialization to persist. In this project, I follow the work of thinkers …

A Comparative Analysis Of Mixed Race Marriage In Fiji And The United States, Rachel Kung

Honors Theses

In Fiji it is imperative to belong to group, particularly a racial/ethnic group because of a history of ethnic pluralism under British colonialism. Making connections and forming relationships is all determined by one’s racial/ethnic group. Due to this, belonging to two groups, especially if those two distinct races do not get along, such as indigenous Fijians and Indo‐Fijians, it becomes increasingly difficult to create a system of social networks. Fijians also tend to define ethnicity in terms of behavior rather than simply looking at one’s biology. If one cannot speak the native language of that particular race, he or she …

Towards A Community College Pin@Y Praxis: Creating An Inclusive Cultural Space, Atheneus C. Ocampo

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Darder (2012), in Culture and Power in the Classroom, argued that a system of educational inequality is promoted through the consistent production and reproduction of contradictions between the dominant culture and subordinate culture. More significantly, she noted that these dominant and subordinate culture contradictions create a necessity for bicultural individuals to navigate the dialectical tensions between dominant and subordinate cultures and the processes by which education perpetuates dynamics of unequal power and reproduces the dominant worldview. Hence, she urged educators to challenge prevalent power structures and re-imagine the process of schooling as a more inclusive form of pedagogy, geared towards …

The Formation Of Scholars: Critical Narratives Of Asian American And Pacific Islander Doctoral Students In Higher Education, Liza A. Talusan

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the formation of scholar identity as informed by an identity-conscious approach to doctoral student socialization, doctoral student development, and racial identity as expressed through the critical narratives of Asian American and Pacific Islander doctoral students in the field of higher education. The study explored the intersections of race, doctoral student socialization, and doctoral student development – three areas that have been approached as separate entities in existing literature. By using life history methodology and narrative inquiry, this study contributed to a more thorough understanding of racialized experiences in doctoral studies. Critical narrative was used as a methodological …

The Unwanted Immigrant, Frank A. Bozich Iii

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The social and religious differences between Chinese migrants and Americans of European descent played a large role in the exploitation of the Chinese. Ultimately, nativism became ingrained in Californian society as Irish Americans began to view Chinese as a threat to their economic success and violence toward Chinese became more common due to the Californian government’s support of anti-Chinese and nativist legislation.

'Illegal And Void': The Effects Of State And Federal Legislation On Filipino Migrants In The American Empire, Hayley Mcneill

Theses and Dissertations

The colonial relationship between the United States and the Philippines helped periodize Filipino migration to America in the first half of the 20th century, drastically in the 1920s and 1930s. Young Filipino men moved from the American-governed islands to other American territories and throughout the West Coast. Filipinos moved consistently for work. The constant seasonal travel, state and federal legislation, and projected characteristics on the young men increased Filipinos inability to settle, enacted barriers against marriage, and halted Filipinos ability to reach adulthood. Laws surrounded by exclusionary attitudes, including the Cable Act, California Civil Code Sections 60 and 69, the …

Stories Of Persistence: Filipina/O American Undergraduate Students In A Private, Catholic, And Predominantly White University, Angelica M. Bailon

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

At more than three million, Filipina/o Americans are one of the largest ethnic minority groups in the United States. Yet, few studies have focused on the experiences of Filipina/o Americans in institutions of U.S. higher education. Given the increasing disparity in degree achievement between first and second generation Filipina/o Americans, this qualitative study investigated the challenges to persistence that Filipina/o American undergraduates have faced in college and identified resources and strategies that have facilitated their survival in higher education. Through individual interviews and a focus group, participants shared their experiences in a private, Catholic, and predominantly White institution. This study …

Revolution, Redemption, And Romance: Reading Constructions Of Filipino Spanish American Identities And Politics Of Knowledge In Rizal’S Noli Me Tangere And El Filibusterismo Alongside Filipino American Fiction, Steven Beardsley

Departmental Honors Projects

This project analyzes the literary works and the iconic role of Filipino nationalist José Rizal before, during, and after the Spanish American War of 1898. Rizal’s social activism and writing inspired a revolution against the Friarocracy in the Philippines. He also influenced Filipino American writers who reference Rizal’s construction of the Filipino woman in Christianity and Filipinos fighting against colonial oppression. Additionally, Filipino American writers illustrate how being Filipino in the US today is a transcultural experience rather than a simple binary of traditional Philippines and modern America. Recognizing Spain as an earlier colonizing force is critical in understanding the …

Wtf Is #Modelminoritymutiny?: Solidarity, Embodiment, And Practice In Subverting Ascribed Asian American Racial Positioning, Pamela Ng

Scripps Senior Theses

In 2014, in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter, a call to action was made for Asian Americans to actively engage with and unlearn the age old model minority myth and join the movement for racial justice. This thesis seeks to understand and complicate what it means to subvert this ideology in the way of #modelminoritymutiny. It is divided into three primary sections: first, a theoretical framework and of the model minority myth throughout time as a tool for positioning Asian Americans; second, an application of this framework into the recent Peter Liang and Akai Gurley case this past year; and third, …

Understanding Postcolonial South Asian Communities Through Bollywood, Noor A. Asif

Scripps Senior Theses

Inspired by my personal experience as a South Asian-American, I chose to create a series of paintings that seek to analyze the relationship between South Asians and a Western environment. I was further influenced by Bollywood painted posters, which I argue encapsulate postcolonial aesthetics in the form of fair skin, colored eyes, and exoticism. Moreover, I believe that Bollywood has continued to disseminate these aesthetics to the South Asian collective community. Bollywood and its implicit fascination with the West, in addition to its inherently South Asian identity, embody the struggle that many South Asians face. This struggle, which I as …

Nostos: On Recollecting Loss And The Physical Manifestation Of Loss, Stephanie M. Huang

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper examines nostalgia in photo-poetry book Nostos, and nostalgia’s existence as a theoretical global condition arising from displacement, looking at nostalgia specifically not as a yearning for home, but a yearning for a lost sense of feeling at home. It traces the lineage of image-text hybrid art practices and examines the significance of conveying meaning through both synergistically. It studies the psychoanalytic process of transforming loss into object, or absence into presence, ultimately using the object as a lens to view oneself and the way in which nostalgia manifests itself.

“Leadership Means Moving A Community Forward”: Asian American Community College Students And Critical Leadership Praxis, Melissa Ann Loredo Canlas

Doctoral Dissertations

Asian Americans are underrepresented in both formal leadership positions and leadership research (Foldy & Ospina, 2009) and rarely are Asian Americans viewed as leaders, activists, or agents of social change. Leadership development programs, particularly those focused on social and racial justice, are largely absent from the curriculums and educational experiences of Asian Americans (Omatsu, 2006), and few leadership development programs focus specifically on the needs of Asian Americans (Chung, 2014; Liang, Lee, & Ting, 2002), particularly at the community college level.

This study addressed the need for critical leadership development for Asian American community college students, focusing specifically on leadership …