East Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

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, …

Selective Remembrance: Constructing Nostalgia At The Park Chung Hee Presidential Museum, Abigail Shaw

Honors Theses

How and why does Park Chung Hee remain so potent in the minds of South Koreans, decades after his rule? Seungsook Moon (2009) describes the phenomenon as Park Chung Hee Syndrome: a cultural condition in which Park’s image circulates between glorification, demonization, and humanization, producing an unresolved and emotionally charged field of memory. Building on this, researchers have examined how a type of “Park Chung Hee nostalgia” operates through selective remembrance of developmental success, moral discipline, and national unity, ultimately creating a positive memory and longing for semblance of his long-ended rule (Park, 2011; Podoler, 2016; Lee, 2022).

Statues and …

Through The Lens Of “Kigo”: Understanding Japanese American Wwii Poetry, Grace C. Shields

Honors College Theses

In 1957, nearly ten years after the closing of Tule Lake Segregation Center in Newell, California, the last of the ten War Relocation Authority (WRA) concentration camps to close, author Keiho Soga writes on a piece of paper:

“Untitled”

By: Keiho Soga

Beyond the forbidding fence 

Of doubled barbed wire 

The mountain, 

Aglow with purple,

Sends us its greetings.

In this brief moment of reflection, Soga recounts his time in Sand Island Internment Camp, another of the Japanese American internment camps established during World War II by the United States government after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. …

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 …

"Obsessive Myth:" Disturbing The Grammar Of The Lyric And Epic In Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's "Dictee", Noelle (Nell) Kriegel

All Theses

The archival text Dictée by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha spans many genres, making it a highly hybrid text. Cha uses personal letters, official government documents, images, prose, dictation exercises, translations, and poetry to create a composite identity of women neglected through history. Dictée’s hybrid form allows it to experiment with the lyric and epic traditions, challenging their forms to adequately reflect the lived experience of oppressed women. Dictée’s hybridity is but one aspect of its interrogation of literary form and language; the text also plays with grammar, specifically pronouns, to depict a genealogy of female voices as they relate to …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #3, The Year 1591, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This tour guide is the third in Victoria Weston's An Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys. To access the full book, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining sections, visit:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/ This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #2, The Year 1230, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This is the second of three tour guides connected to Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art. For the full guidebook, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

The remaining sections can be found at these links:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #1, The Year 748, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This book is chapter one of Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys, which can be found in full at https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining chapters, visit:

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative analysis. …

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 …

The 2025 Japanese Rare Book Workshop On The Bibliographical History Of Japanese Rare Books From An International Perspective: A Report, Setsuko Noguchi, Toshie Marra

Journal of East Asian Libraries

The report on the 2025 Japanese Rare Book Workshop on Japanese Rare Book Workshop on the Bibliographical History of Japanese Books from an International Perspective, held at Princeton University Library Special Collection from August 19–21, 2025. The workshop was organized by the Subcommittee on Japanese Rare Books, Committee on Japanese Materials (CJM) within the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) in collaboration with Princeton University Library, Department of East Asian Studies, Program of East Asian Studies, and Professor Takahiro Sasaki of Shido Bunko, Keio University, as the instructor. The three-day workshop was followed by a symposium Case Studies on …

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 …

Jdm And The Formation Of Japan’S Underground Car Culture: Street Racing, Identity, And Regulation, Lizhou Chen

Student Publications

Japan’s underground car culture is often associated with street racing, JDM, and modified cars, but these visible features developed from broader economic, social, and regulatory conditions. This paper argues that Japan’s underground car culture was shaped by three factors: postwar economic growth that made mass car production feasible, social identity and status attached to car type and driving behavior, and government regulation of the road system and driving habits that forced reckless driving into less visible times and locations. By examining car ownership, kei cars, youth self-expression, gendered meanings of vehicles, road design, and moral expectations around safe driving, this …

2nd Place Contest Entry: "Destablizing U.S.-Japan Relations: Nikkatsu Film Noir As Postwar Social Critique", Thomas Graham Buchanan

Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Library Research Prize

This is Thomas Buchanan's submission for the 2026 Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Research Prize, which won second place. It contains their essay on using library resources, a summary of their research project on how a generation of Japanese filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s borrowed the formal strategies of Hollywood film noir to mount a critique of U.S. Cold War policy, and their bibliography.

Thomas is a student in the Master of Arts in Film & Media Studies program at Chapman University. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Emily Carman.

Thomas' thesis is the scholarship that emerged from the research discussed …

Han Kang On Time And Body, Clarissa V. Militante

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Han Kang's novel Human Acts delves into the liminality of time-space, as memories about a historical event become a ritual of remembering for those who survived tragedy. Time is not only historical, but can also be foregrounded by bodies, both dead and surviving. The survivors do not merely recall the past but inhabit it, too, so that they will not forget. This in itself is an act of defiance and resistance.

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.

Madwoman Makings: The Modern Girl As An Object Of Fear And Fascination In Unno Jūza’S "Mrs. Hirumi's Refrigeration Bag", Eliza Joy Mortimer

University Honors Theses

This thesis argues that Unno Jūza's 1937 short story "Mrs. Hirumi's Refrigeration Bag" uses the sensational tropes of deviant detective fiction to both stage and interrogate interwar Japanese anxieties around gender, science, and modernity. Focusing on the figure of Mrs. Hirumi—a scientifically empowered and sexually assertive female plastic surgeon who dismembers and cryogenically preserves her husband—the author reads her as a radical iteration of the Japanese Modern Girl character. By drawing on scholarship on deviant detective fiction, imperial modernity, and Kazue Harada's concept of (re)productivity, this thesis demonstrates how the short story both reproduces misogynistic criminological discourse and unsettles heteronormative …

Tolkien's Oriental Sources? Renunciation Of Immortality And Fairy Nature, Giovanni Carmine Costabile

Journal of Tolkien Research

Thompson motif F302.6.2.2. Fairy gives up her fairy nature and becomes mortal to be able to return to her mortal husband and its combination with H310. Suitor tests and H1010. Impossible tasks are Oriental motifs, to be found only in the Tibetan tale of The Boy with the Deformed Head in O'Connor's 1907 collection and in the 9th century CE Japanese Taketori Monogatari. In this light, it appears necessary, assuming that Tolkien had a source for his idea of Lúthien sacrificing her Elven immortality and Elven fate, that his source must be found in the aforesaid narratives, both available …

International Students In Early American Forensics: Notes On The History Of The U.S.-Japan Forensics Relationship During The Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries, Satoru Aonuma, Junya Morooka, Tomohiro Kanke

Studies in Debate and Oratory

Ending 215 years of “national seclusion,” in 1854, Japan ratified the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States and opened its doors to the rest of the world. Because of this special bilateral relationship, between the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, more Japanese began traveling to the U.S. than to any other country. Focusing on young Japanese who went to the U.S. as students and participated in debate and oratorical education during this period, this essay will re-examine the history of the U.S.-Japan relationship in terms of academic debate and oratory. During this period, American …

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 …

How A Stay-At-Home Father Plays A Role In Family Resilience?, Fatimah Fatimah, Eko Daryanto

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

One of the impacts of modernization is the loss of barriers between job and particular gender. This also happens in the family unit, more specifically in the role of husband and wife. The husband's job which is identical to earn money and the wife's job is to manage the household should be able to be done more flexibly according to family conditions. This adaptation process is needed in order to strengthen family resilience. Non-traditional family composition that usually consist of a stay-at-home father and a working mother can be used as a family adaptation strategy. This study uses the results …

Implementation Of Zero Trust Architecture On Local Server Management In Educational Institutions, Joko Purwanto, Safar Dwi Kurniawan

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Educational institutions are facing increasingly complex cyber threats, particularly as they continue to rely on on-premises servers with limited cybersecurity resources. Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) offers a security model that rejects implicit trust and requires strict verification of each access request. This study aims to examine the applicability of ZTA in managing local servers within educational institutions through a qualitative literature review approach. Relevant literature from 2014 to 2025 was analyzed using thematic synthesis to identify recurring concepts, strategies, and gaps. The results show that ZTA, when integrated with Identity and Access Management (IAM), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), …

Keibuan Pascamanusia (Posthuman) Dan Eksploitasi Afeksi Dalam Film Jung_E, Euis Sulastri

Multikultura

The film JUNG_E (2023), a South Korean film by Yeon Sang-ho, presents a distinctive representation of motherhood through the transformation of the maternal body into a posthuman entity. This study aims to analyze how maternal identity is constructed, weakened, and instrumentalized through technology within the context of future capitalism and militarism. Employing a qualitative-descriptive approach, the research examines the separation of the biological body, memory, and maternal affect as they are reconstituted in the form of artificial intelligence.

The theoretical framework integrates concepts of performativity and precarity/vulnerability proposed by Judith Butler, feminist posthumanism by Rosi Braidotti, affect theory by Silvan …