Chinese Studies Commons^™

Teaching China Beyond Eurocentrism: Intercultural Pedagogy And The Case Of The República Del Reino De La China By Jerónimo Román Zamora, Miriam Diaz Belizon

Comparative Philosophy

Interdisciplinary approaches to teaching China in Western academic contexts often reproduce Eurocentric frameworks that reduce Chinese philosophical and cultural traditions to subordinate objects of analysis. This article proposes an alternative model grounded in intercultural philosophy and the Filosofías del Sur, arguing that China should be approached not as a distant object of representation, but as an epistemic interlocutor capable of transforming philosophical education. The article develops this argument through the recovery of the República del Reino de la China, included in the 1595 edition of Repúblicas del Mundo, as a key example of early intercultural mediation from the European South. …

Ethics Under Siege: The Conflict In Tigray Through The Lens Of Just War Theory, Daniela Widya Purba

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

This research article explains the ethical principles of the conflict in Tigray based on the Just War Theory. By using the descriptive qualitative methodology, this research article draws data from secondary sources which includes; academic journals, news reports, as well as international legal instruments to analyze the moral trajectory of the conflict. This research begins with jus ad bellum, to assess Ethiopia’s government justification in declaring conflict within Tigray. While the government fulfilled the criteria of just cause and legitimate authority, the question stands on the ambiguous political intentions and the failure to enact peaceful alternatives before resulting in waging …

Presidential Visits As Foreign Policy Instruments: U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy In Trump’S Second Term, Atar Thaung Htet

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Through an analysis of President Donald Trump's October 2025 travel to Asia, this study investigates the consequences of U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy under his second-term diplomacy. The paper examines three significant diplomatic encounters—the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia, bilateral meetings in Japan, and the APEC Summit in South Korea—using a qualitative case study methodology based on role theory and foreign policy analysis. The results show that alliance-centered security cooperation, strategic balancing toward China, and selective economic engagement were U.S. Indo-Pacific goals. Through extremely transactional and bilateralized relations, presidential diplomacy allowed the United States to fulfill a number of foreign policy responsibilities, such …

Penggunaan Onomatope Dalam Buku Cerita Anak Berbahasa Mandarin Dan Bahasa Indonesia: Analisis Kontrastif, Ruixi Zou, Usmi Usmi, Uti Aryanti

Multikultura

This article examines the comparison of onomatopoeia in Mandarin Chinese and Indonesian in children's literature. The study aims to identify, classify, and compare onomatopoeic forms found in the Mandarin children's story Bǎo Húlú De Mìmì (The Secret of the Magic Gourd) and the Indonesian children's story collection Sehari Satu Dongeng. This research employs a descriptive qualitative approach and a contrastive analysis method. The data were collected through close reading and note-taking techniques, and were analyzed using referential and comparative methods. The classification is based on the source of the represented sounds, namely human sounds, animal sounds, natural phenomena, and …

When Herstory Goes Viral: Popular Resistance In The State-Platform Nexus In China, Qingyue Sun, Runze Ding

Interdisciplinary Studies

This article examines the rise of herstory content on Douyin to explore how feminist resistance takes shape within China’s platform environment. Drawing on digital ethnography, we develop the concept of popular resistance, a form of platform-mediated resistance whose popularity serves both as a condition of political traction and as a mechanism of containment. To clarify this duality, we identify two dimensions: (a) popularity on the platform, driven by trends, aestheticization, and commodification; and (b) popularity within orthodoxy, shaped by state-sanctioned values that render certain forms of feminist expression politically permissible. Popular resistance retains a critical, if slippery, edge. It gives …

Hindu Poetry And The Project Of An Inter-Spiritual Catholic Theology, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article engages the work of the Indian south Indian Tamil-language Vaiṣṇava poet saints known as the Alvārs. The article specifically focuses the First HundredHoly Linked verses of Poykai Ālvār to argue for inter-spiritual learning between Catholics and Hindus. The article concludes with personal reflections on this encounter within the context of the global Catholic Church

Living Through Misinformation: An Autoethnography Of Autism In Chinese Communities, Joy Lu

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This critical autoethnographic essay examines how misconception, misinformation, and disinformation shape understandings of autism within Chinese communities and produce tangible harm for autistic individuals and their families. Drawing on lived experience, advocacy work, digital observation, and cross-cultural analysis, it explores how language, medical practices, social media, and professional authority sustain persistent misrepresentation.

The essay argues that this misinformation is not merely the result of ignorance, but a socially reinforced and institutionally supported system of knowledge. By situating personal encounters within broader cultural and structural contexts, it highlights the interconnected roles of language, power, and exclusion in shaping autistic lives. It …

The Maghrebi Silk Road: A Medieval Exploration, Malak Ouammou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Maghrebi Silk Road: A Medieval Exploration is an interdisciplinary historical examination of a variety of intellectual and material cross-cultural interactions and connections between Asia and the Maghreb from 900 to 1492. It primarily revolves around agriculture, sericulture, and immaterial and material culture, with an emphasis on knowledge production and dissemination. In it, I focus on the Mediterranean endpoint of the Silk Road network, illustrating the Maghrebi Silk Road through an exploration of various case studies such as rice, silk, and storytelling that demonstrate the role of and the extent to which these “secondary” Silk Road routes existed and were …

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

Made In Chimerica, Austin Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to answer how prop design may function as an effective vehicle to challenge notions of orientalism, an inquiry grounded for the purposes of this thesis in contemporary Asian diasporic experiences within the United States, and spark deeper questions regarding notions of assimilation, erasure, and cultural ownership. Cultural understanding of Asian American experiences have long been tethered by White-dominant frameworks to orientalist stereotypes that range from early xenophobic caricatures to more modern dehumanization attempts via techno orientalism and model minority myths. At its fundamental core, orientalism centralizes White-dominant narratives as the major filter by which to judge, interpret, …

Finding A Way Out Of The Filter Bubble: The Confusion Of A Heavy Social Media User, Longwen Miao

Masters Theses

This thesis studies how algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and the construction of selfhood within contemporary digital culture.

Everything begins with the experience of repeatedly encountering algorithmically recommended content on everyday digital platforms. On these platforms, images, sounds, and social interactions are continuously selected, repeated, and reorganized by predictive systems, forming an environment in which perception is constantly structured and adjusted.

From this observation, the research raises two central questions: how do algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and self-recognition, and how might these systems be intervened in or made perceptible through artistic practice? Within …

What Teachers See: Collaborative Artmaking In Chinese And U.S. Elementary Schools, Jiayu Shi

Masters Theses

This study explores how elementary art teachers in the United States and China perceive and use collaborative artmaking with their students. Driven by my personal journey as a Chinese student and art educator now studying in the U.S., this research asks: How do teachers in these two countries compare in their views of collaborative artmaking, including its social-emotional outcomes, benefits, and challenges. I conducted semi structured interviews with three elementary art teachers: two from China (one veteran, one early-career) and one from the U.S. with experience in both rural and urban schools. Findings show that teachers in both contexts value …

Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies, Hanyi Wang

Masters Theses

Digitization is not a modern invention. Derived from the concept of fingers, this mindset of packing information into quantifiable, interchangeable units sounds mechanical, yet eerily physical. Try to imagine: a ghostly hand with millions of fingers with the same length, likeness, and function. Under the worldview of Digital Narrative, we live in a digital simulation: everything is representable with quantifiable units, fluid across media. Yet under this spectacle of convenient abundance, something is missing. The Unknowables are replaced with arbitrary symbols, while the Uncategorizables are omitted. This is a framework that cannot accommodate human subtleties and complexities. One needs to …

Until The Ground Breaks, Annie Hu

Masters Theses

Until the Ground Breaks explores the complex relationship between personal memory, embodied experience, and internalized "archival logic." By examining long-term cross-cultural diasporic experiences and the shifting dynamics of family narratives—including the sensory experiences and fading memory of a grandmother, a father's correspondence that acts as a textual record of emotional logic, and the continuous revision of family history—this thesis dissects the psychological tremors that occur when the illusion of a singular, stable memory archive collapses. This research rejects the view of memory as a static container of truth, revealing it instead as a dynamic, unstable, and constantly rewritten living system. …

破酆都 Calling Her Through The Gates, Yuqi Liu

Masters Theses

My practice centers on papermaking, printmaking, and artist books to explore fiber as both image and language. I treat paper not simply as a surface, but as a living material through which memory, labor, and history can be held. By making my own sheets from plant fibers, fungi, and other organic matter, I create works in which material and meaning are inseparable. Shaped by my engagement with the natural world, women’s history, and overlooked vernacular forms of knowledge, my work moves through cycles of life and death, presence and disappearance, fragility and resilience. My projects with mushrooms and mycelium led …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 19 No. 1, 2025, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Articles

Think Pieces

Photo Essay

Book Reviews

A Description Of Zhao Zhang’S Nature No. 2 And Xiaoxuan Xu’S An Unusual Feast Of East, Sicheng He

Dissertations, 2020-current

This research presents a new path in the development of Chinese music by aiming to incorporate both modern Western and ancient Chinese influences in form, texture, tonality, topic, and other dimensions of style and structure. Two Chinese composers whose recent compositions for the piano share similar characteristics: Zhao Zhang (b. 1964; Nature no. 2, 2013) and Xiaoxuan Xu (b. 1990; An Unusual Feast of East, 2022). The research will discuss how Zhao Zhang and Xiaoxuan Xu accomplish this fusion of old and new in their recent piano works Nature no. 2, (2013) and An Unusual Feast of East, 2022. …

Closing The Revolution: The Criticize Water Margin Campaign And The Politics Of Surrender In Mao’S China, Yaowen Dong

Asia Pacific Perspectives

The mid 1970s witnessed a massive Maoist campaign to attack the late imperial vernacular fiction Water Margin, which had been previously favored by the Chinese Communist Party because of its elements of rebellion and egalitarianism. The paper examines the Criticize Water Margin Campaign in 1975 and 1976 that interpreted the fiction as class-reconciliation and surrender. I argue that the dramatic shift of the narratives surrounding Water Margin manifested the deeply embedded paradox between rebellion and normalization in the communist revolutionary project. Such paradox of revolution is not only the product of the infringement of the coming neoliberal world order, …

Exploring Identity Through Clay: A Humanistic Art Therapy Case Study With A Blind Chinese Adoptee, Virginia Jade Leicht

Expressive Therapies Theses

This qualitative case study explored how working with clay in art therapy can help support a blind man’s identity exploration. This paper addresses the problem of many traditional therapeutic approaches within the art therapy realm: They rely too heavily on visual engagement, which can limit the accessibility and opportunities for self-exploration and identity development for those who are blind. The study was grounded in current research and foundational theories based on the humanistic art therapy approach. Clay is considered an accessible medium that engages multiple senses and allows for emotional exploration and meaning making, specifically through tactile and sensory-based engagement …

Between The Middle Kingdom And The Middle Way: An Analysis Of State Power And Sacred Authority In The Sino-Tibet Conflict, Madison M. Berry, Aimee N. Ebeling, Jayden A. Hanson

Pepperdine Journal of Communication Research

This research paper addresses the growing concerns of the Sino-Tibetan conflict by analyzing the relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) through an intercultural communication and negotiation lens. By analyzing historical relationships between the two parties and comparing them to similar contemporary situations, this paper examines the sinicization of the Tibetan people. By exploring the “Old Tibet” and “New Tibet” narratives, while acknowledging the centrality of the Dalai Lama to both parties, it also addresses territorial disagreements and the contrasting understandings of sovereignty and modernization, which fuel the conflict. Finally, a policy framework …

From Collection To Documentary: An Eventful Journey Of Developing And Managing The Wan-Go H.C. Weng Film Collection, Jim Cheng

Journal of East Asian Libraries

Experience, challenge, lesson, reward, and inspiration of developing and managing a special collection: Wan-go Weng Film Collection in a major research library.

The Taichung Polyglot, Mårten S. Saarela

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

An Exploration Of Third Spaces In China, Clare J. Hummer

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Exploring Third Spaces in China in a multimedia format.

“I Ignored Western Media And Went Down The Rabbithole No One Warns You About”: An Exoticization Genre On Youtube, Dixon D. Dayton

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

Icarus’S Fall: Villainization In Wicked, Star Wars, And The Untamed, Laura Renfroe

Honors Theses

When looking back on the most beloved, yet infamous, villains of popular culture, one can note an abundant rise of prequels and backstory-driven media exploring the paths that villain characters take that lead them to their tragic fall. Some of those stories include John M. Chu’s Wicked, George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and Chen Jialin and Zheng Weiwin’s The Untamed, each of which explores protagonists who are labeled as “wicked” and depicted as fallen to the “dark side.” While these characters are often studied in existing literary research, there have yet to be explicit ties …

Qingming Jie: Across The Horizon, Elby Wang

Emerging Writers

This paper attempts to provide an understanding of an Asian tradition, Qingming Jie, by providing the past, the present, and the future of the tradition. The article explains the origin of Qingming Jie as well as contemporary changes to the tradition and explores how practicing this tradition differs from practicing in the motherland.

Ancestral Rites And Tablets As A Site Of Contestation Between Confucian Filial Piety And Catholicism: The Cases Of Chinese Confucian Yan Mo And Korean Catholic Yun Ji-Chung, Mideum Hong

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay examines how the Confucian practice of filial piety, particularly as expressed through ancestral rites and tablets, became a focal point of contention in the encounters between Confucianism and Catholicism. Focusing on the cases of the Chinese Catholic Yan Mo and the Korean Catholic martyr Yun Ji-chung, I argue that the different historical and cultural contexts in China and Korea significantly shaped how each figure understood and responded to the practice of ancestral rites. While Catholicism spread globally, local converts developed distinct theological interpretations rooted in their respective cultural traditions. Although Yan Mo and Yun Ji-chung reached divergent conclusions …

Overview & Acknowledgments, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This Introduction overviews the work of contributors from the Graduate Symposium sponsored by the Journal of Global Catholicism and the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.  The Introduction also highlights the independent peer reviewed submission from Dr. Agnieszka Laddach of the University of Warsaw.

Disney's American Mulan, Sofia Diascro

CAFE Symposium 2026

In America, we are taught that we should live for ourselves. We are told we have personal freedom to be an individual and do what we want. Ancient China prioritized collectivism, an idea deeply rooted in Confucianism. Collectivism is about hierarchy, family, duty, and obligation. Disney’s Mulan movies differ from the Chinese legend of Mulan by emphasizing American values of individuality and self-discovery.

Literature Review: Crowdfunding And Political Fundraising, Saiful Ahmad, Palupi Lindiasari Samputra

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Crowdfunding is an effort to raise relatively small amounts of money involving many individuals to support a specific project. Typically, crowdfunding is conducted online through fundraising platforms. The aim of this paper is to identify and analyse the utilisation of crowdfunding in fundraising activities that are related to or have political goals carried out by certain organisations or political groups. The method used in this paper is qualitative in the form of narrative analysis carried out through in-depth reading of several scientific literatures that discuss political fundraising through crowdfunding. The sources of scientific literature collection were obtained through the Google …