Chinese Studies Commons^™

The Formation Of The Autonomous Woman Through A Hegelian Lens: A Comparative Study Of The British Fin De Siecle "New Woman" And The Post-Mao "Amazing" Woman, Robyn L. Buro

English Department Theses

This thesis utilizes the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness development to explore the formation of the autonomous woman within the New Woman movement of the British fin de siècle and the literature of women writers in 1980s Post-Mao China. The sexual figuration of the New Woman via an unremitting male gaze as well as the absence of individual awareness due to limited reflective self-assessment lead to a misrepresentation of the female figurehead in fin de siècle Britain. Through an in-depth study of literature by Charlotte Mew, Victoria Cross, George Egerton, and Thomas Hardy, the reader can identify key points of failure …

Beyond Boundaries: Women, Writing And Visuality In Contemporary China, Géraldine Fiss, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This special issue offers explorations of women, writing, and visuality in contemporary Chinese literature and culture, following up on a previous issue titled “Nation, Gender, and Transcultural Modernism in Early Twentieth‐Century China,” which was published in Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (vol. 8, no. 1, 2014). The earlier issue addressed “the complex cultural mechanism which placed gender at the center of the nationalist discourse” in early twentieth‐century works by both male and female authors and questioned how the uncertainty of discourses on gender and nation “opens up space for creating subversive cultural imaginaries and challenging colonial discourses.” This issue …

The Aesthetics Of Hysteria In Feminine Melodrama; On Fang Fang's Water Under Time (2008), Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Water under Time, the novel by the reputed Chinese fiction writer Fang Fang, appropriates and reconstructs the conventions of the hysteric narrative as an affective form of feminine history telling and writing. The novel, which accounts Hankou city’s past through the heroine’s life story, illustrates how feminine hysteria provides a gendered lens of reconstructed historical authenticity via the panorama of China’s early Republican period, the anti‐Japanese War, and the present new millennium. Transcending the official historical accounts, Fang Fang’s narrative features women’s innovative reconfiguration of contesting historical discourses about the city, the community, and the nation. This study of Water …

Measuring Quality Of Life For Shanghai’S Floating Population Employed In Urban Renewal Sites, Jacob A. Watkins, Gregory Veeck

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

Chinese internal migrants continue to struggle to obtain social and economic equity in some of China’s largest cities. Shanghai, China’s largest city, houses one of the largest floating populations in the country. As city officials and the CPC continue to spend on urban renewal sites in the city proper, new opportunities may be emerging for migrant workers. These sites contain hundreds on new commercial and service based businesses that could potentially provide stable employment for rural-to-urban migrants in Shanghai and influence migrant quality of life as well as provide the means for migrants to remain in the city long-term. This …

Teaching Zen's Ten Oxherding Pictures Through Leonard Cohen's "Ballad Of The Absent Mare", Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Program Structure On Language Acquisition And Intercultural Competence: A Comparative Study Of Study Abroad Programs In Kunming, China, Samantha Bergman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

According to the Project Atlas study conducted by the Institute of International Education, China is the world’s third most popular study abroad location. With over 390,000 international students currently studying in China, there are more opportunities for cultural exchange and mutual understanding than ever before. However, there is still relatively little existing research on how different study abroad program structures impact students’ Chinese language skills and cultural literacy.

This study examined the impacts of experiential learning and intensive language study abroad program structures on students’ language acquisition and intercultural competence development. Two study abroad programs based in Kunming, SIT China: …

The Congregation Of Heroes: A Skyrim Representation, Richard Smith 17

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

Impacts Of Migration On Mosuo Cultural Identity: A Case Study Of The Mosuo People In Lijiang, Isabel Ullmann

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

China is currently in the midst of the largest labor migration in human history and yet we know very little about the cultural impact on the migrants themselves. For many ethnic minorities, like the Mosuo, who have been isolated from urban, if not Han, influence for much of their history, this migration is sure to result in some cultural disruption. As a matrilineal culture defined by large extended families traced by the matriline, a distinct, non-exclusive sexual-reproductive system, a housing layout that reflects religious beliefs and social structure, and a fluid interplay of the local ddaba religion and Tibetan Buddhism, …

Chinese Origin Of The Term Pagoda: Liang Sicheng's Proposed Etymology, David Robbins Tien, Gerald Leonard Cohen

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

Western reference works regard the architectural term pagoda as being of uncertain origin, but an overlooked etymology proposed by Liang Sicheng convincingly solves the mystery: The word is Chinese, with the literal meaning “eight” (pa) “cornered” (ko) “tower” (La). Liang Sicheng, who pioneered the serious study of classical Chinese architecture, pointed out:

‘The octagonal pagoda, which first appeared in the Tomb Pagoda of Ching-tsang in 746, was the first “pa-go-da” in the real sense of the term.’

This 746 date is of course centuries before the first appearance of pagoda in a European language, viz. 1516 in Portuguese, so the …

Remapping Emotion And Desire: Same-Sex Romance In Ah Cheng's "The King Of Chess", Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

This article examines the representation of emotion and desire in Ah Cheng's The King of Chess (Qi wang). The interpretation of The King of Chess has been oriented toward an allegorical reading that revolves around grand cultural concepts, such as aesthetics, Taoist tradition, cultural consciousness, and national identity. In this paradigm of reading, the literary text has largely become a footnote of the master narrative of China's cultural reconstruction of the 1980s. Following the recent interpretative turn of this story from cultural to existential and from allegorical to corporeal, the article extends to yet another domain, that of emotion, intimacy, …

Using Ignatian Pedagogy To Teach Chinese Literature, Dale Hoiberg

Ignatian Pedagogy Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Letters To Mei Lanfang, Alexandra Dare Norman

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

As a male actor of female Dan characters, Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) is known throughout the world as the most representative performer of Chinese opera – particularly for his performance of Concubine Yu in the Peking opera Farewell My Concubine. A feminist analysis of his work in this opera reveals a series of assumptions about the definition of “Woman” in both theatre and life. This project is solo performance piece formatted in a series of open letters to Mei Lanfang, interspersed with personal stories investigating what it truly means to be a Woman – as an actor, a Christian, a feminist, …

A Summary Of The 13th Annual Meeting Of The Society Of Chinese Literary Theory And The Conference On Reviewing And Rethinking Chinese Literary Theory Of The Past Century , Jian'gang Yang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

New Changes Of Confucianism During The Late Qing Dynasty And The New Novel's Imagination Of The Nation, Jun Zhu, Xun Sun

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

New Novel's imagination of the nation in the 20th century marked the beginning of modern Chinese novel as well as the narrative of a modern nation state. It was related both to the introduction of western modernity and new changes of Confucianism during the late Qing Dynasty. The convergence of the evolution theory in Gongyang studies and that in the West changed the traditional temporal and spatial structure in Chinese novels, which consequently resulted in the shift from traditional utopians to the imagination of the future "New China". While Chinese writers were introducing western political ideas by writing political novels, …

An Interpretation Of Zhang Xuecheng's Idea "The Philosophers And History Failed, Yet The Collection Flourished", Xu Fu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In Shijiao Zhang Xuecheng argues that "the philosophers and history failed, yet the collection flourished", using refined words to summarize the change of academic studies after Warring States. Not only does the argument describe the change of private writing's form, but also reveals its substantial change, which is the loss of purposes. In his discussion of the decline of history, Zhang Xuecheng especially emphasizes the loss of specialized subjects. This argument contains Zhang's academic ideal, and provides a frame of reference when it comes to other topics in Wenshi-Tongyi. The multiple dualities in this argument are consistent with the meaning …

Game Impulse's Negation Of Time In Time: Temporality In Schiller's Aesthetics (Ii), Yanshun Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Temporality is the key to Schiller's aesthetics and aesthetic education, which should be elucidated. Schiller believes that temporality must be followed in order to give a clear account of the fundamental differences between the perceptual impulse and the rational impulse in terms of their composition. He argues that the game impulse, which is of narrow temporality, cannot have far foresight, that the rational impulse as maxims, ethical norms and religious gods can negate time, and that temporality is by no means a tertiary criterion independent of the other two impulses. Only in the game impulse can rationality be activated and …

Jonathan Culler And Feminism, Fang Wu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Jonathan Culler constructs Feminist reading theory from the angle of literary deconstructionism. He elaborates on Feminist reading theory from three facets: reading and interpretation of women's experience, women's reading that identifies with men and that asserts reason. As a male theorist recognized by many women critics, Culler fully affirms Feminism and reflects upon it from a deconstructionist perspective.

The Logical Basis Of "Illocution" And The Problem Of "Intentionality": Quine's "Reducto Ad Absurdum" And The Dispute Between Wittgenstein And Kripke, Yunke Lin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

With the introduction of analytic philosophy in general and the analysis of everyday language in particular into studies of literary theory, illocution has become a widely accepted theoretical resource therein. The ready application of this theory in literary studies without considering its evolution within analytic philosophy has caused many problems in literary theory, the most visible of which is the issue of "intentionality" contained in illocution. Searle's seminal paper "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse" marks the involvement of analytic philosophy in studies of literary theory, but his "given intentionality" stance has become a new problem. The logical status of …

The Neo-Noir Crazy Stone Phenomenon, H. Kuoshu Harry

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The Crazy Stone phenomenon in China is often described as the black carnival of both the movie goers and the concerned scholars. The filmic and discursive enthusiasm for Crazy Stone has drawn much attention to the carnival theory by M. Bakhtin and the postmodern theoretical attention to mass culture. Surveying the cultural implications of craziness and how Crazy Stone connects with both the global as well as domestic film cultures, the author of this article observes the absence of such concepts as film noir and neo noir in this round of discussion and argues that Crazy Stone discourse and many …

The Theoretical Evolution And Literary Orientation Of "Symptomatic Reading", Wenfang Yao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The term "symptomatic reading" initiated by Althusser, as far as the origin of the term is concerned, can be traced to Freud and Lacan. Freud uncovers meaning from slips of tongue, dreams and the symptoms of the insane. Adopting philosophy, psychology and linguistics in rebuilding psychoanalysis, Lacan seeks to restructure, in a scientific and systematic manner, Freud's view that symptoms are meaningful. This is what lays the foundation for the theory of "symptomatic reading" put forward by Althusser. In the process of establishing the theory, Althusser derives the method from the form of negation Hegel investigates in his Science of …