Asian History Commons^™

The Culinary History Of Korean Immigrants 1903-2025, Eun Soo Han

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This paper is an exploration into the role that Korean dishes like Kalbi, Korean marinated or grilled meat, and Kimchi, a fermented vegetable or fruit dish played in the development of the Korean Immigrant community and the cultivation of cultural identity of Korean immigrants. This paper offers a brief overview into the history some of the major dishes that forms the core of the three sections of this article with Kalbi being the main theme for the section on Korean immigration to Hawaii in 1903 and Kimchi being the main dish discussed in the second to third section that explores …

Free In The Forest: Montagnards And U.S. Special Forces In Vietnam’S Central Highlands, Jake L. Brooks

Madison Historical Review

When America began to send U.S Army Special Forces to South Vietnam as advisors in the late 1950s, they needed allies that were familiar with the lush jungles of Indochina. In the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the Montagnard people partnered with the U.S. Army Special Forces in an attempt to keep their homelands safe from the Communists. As an ethnic minority, the Montagnards had been through years of abuse and cultural suppression by their ruling government; kept down by a Vietnamese dominated regime which viewed them as backwards and rebellious tribesmen. For the Green Berets that worked alongside them, the …

An Alternative To Armageddon: O.P. Weyland And The Development Of Tactical Air Power, Paul Wells

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Theorists and advocates of air power argued that aircraft, not ground forces, would become the dominant platform for victory in war. They promoted the concept of strategic bombing, using aircraft to bypass ground forces and directly attack a nation's industrial capacity to wage war, hoping to ensure quick victory and avoid a repeat of the prolonged slaughter in the trenches of WWI. In 1947, led by advocates of strategic bombing, the United States Air Force (USAF) became an independent and equal branch of the U.S. military. The USAF developed the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to meet the requirements of the …

Calculated Self-Presentation: Japan At Twentieth Century American World’S Fairs, Mary Rose Comerford

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

World’s fairs are places of innovation, culture, and technology. They are places where visitors go to be wowed by the innovations of other countries, but do they have a deeper meaning? In this thesis I will argue that world’s fairs serve a purpose beyond the sharing of culture and innovation. They allow national commissions to control the narrative of their country through a careful curation of displays that meet the objectives of their government. Countries’ objectives at world’s fairs change all the time, depending on their position in the world and what serves their best interest. The fairs themselves each …

Itadakimasu: Recipes From Japanese American Internment Camps, Alexander K. Nishida

Graphic Communication

This project presents a historical narrative told through the format of a cookbook, exploring the relationship between food, memory, and resilience during the Japanese American Internment of World War II. Using primary resources such as news publications from within the camps (Topaz Times,1943), historical interviews (Herzig, 1994), and secondary resources from an archival podcast (Campu, 2021) to highlight how food served as both a means of survival and an expression of identity under confinement.

The cookbook will combine recipes inspired by documented internment-era meals with stories and reflections gathered from interviews, archival materials, and community voices. Each section will contextualize …

"Forgive Our Living And Our Dead": Colonial Warfare In The Philippines, Mattie Fitzpatrick

History

In March of 1906, American troops massacred over 1,000 Filipino civilians on Bud Dajo mountain. American service members were commended for this incident. My research examines this massacre to ask why wars of insurgency are specifically subject to abuses of power, particularly during the American-Philippines War and the ensuing colonial warfare between 1898 and 1906 under the colonization of the US. My research will focus on the circumstances created to excuse US soldiers after atrocities were committed and the colonial attitudes of the time in addition to the brutal methods used by the American government in Philippines. American colonial administrators …

Elite Southern Views On Chinese Labor From Reconstruction To Exclusion, Spencer Livengood

The Ozark Historical Review

This paper discusses the shift in Southern attitudes toward Chinese immigrants during the period between the Civil War and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Immediately following the war, those attitudes were generally positive; however, once Reconstruction state governments were overthrown, the South’s political class rapidly aligned itself with western anti-Chinese voices in the papers and in Congress.

Arts & Literature: A Personal Reckoning: Taking Responsibility As A Perpetrator, Henry C. Theriault

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This autobiographical essay identifies three forces that shaped the author’s participation in the scholarly and political struggle against genocide and other mass violence and oppression. These include his status as the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors, the fact that his father was killed in action in the US War of Aggression against Vietnam, and the bullying he experienced as a child and adolescent. It then pushes back against any sense of victimhood that has resulted from the combination of these forces, to recognize the author’s implication in perpetration of the US War of Aggression against Vietnam, which the author has …

Korean Pioneers: The History, Identity, And Legacy Of The First Korean Americans, Evan Gravdahl

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

In examining Korean American history, the starting date for their arrival is conventionally recognized as 1903, when roughly 7,000 laborers migrated to Hawaii. This first wave consisted primarily of young men, many of whom didn’t plan to stay in the US. However, as their stays continued and other Koreans continued migrating, they began developing a unique cultural identity within the United States. This paper aims to determine the unique identities that developed during this first wave of immigration between 1903 and 1945, how they assimilated, and how they interacted with other ethnic minorities and later waves of Korean immigrants.

The …

Emulating Empire: Washington’S Preoccupation With British Counterinsurgency In Malaya And U.S. Commitment To Vietnam, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This essay examines how Washington’s deep preoccupation with the British-Malayan counterinsurgency tactics–tactics that routed the guerilla fighters of the Malayan Communist Party–shaped US commitment to Vietnam. This US preoccupation, stoked by Britain’s (and Malaya’s) promotion of their counterinsurgency knowledge to US leaders, also influenced the lessons that US analysts and thinkers absorbed from the United States’ defeat in Indochina. Most studies of British-Malayan counterinsurgency and its connection to the Vietnam War fixate upon debating the relevance of the former to the latter and how this bears on US failures in Indochina. However, this essay focuses on the understudied fervor with …

Embodied Archives, Emerging Futures, Xuân-Lam Nguyen

Masters Theses

Fifty years after the end of the U.S.–Vietnam War, this thesis reflects on the entangled relationship between the two nations, inspiring hope while challenging dominant representations of trauma and tragedy. Drawing from autobiography, family history, folk art traditions, colonial photographs, hierarchies within art history, archives of student activism, and key geopolitical events, the work explores the complex intersections of queer identity and glitchy historical narratives. Combining research-based inquiry with time- and labor-intensive processes, it reimagines historical materials to construct alternate possibilities for the future.

The Silk Butterfly Effect: Japan And The United States 1853-1941, Melodee Birlew

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the rise and fall of the silk industry in both the United States and Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. While silk had been a valuable commodity for millennia for royalty, aristocrats, and the extremely wealthy, the opening of Japan's ports in 1853 soon made silk more accessible to lower classes around the world.

Consequently, Japan's newfound wealth catapulted her status among other rich and powerful nations. Japan's military might, financed in large part by the silk trade and displayed by her victory over Russia in 1905, earned her even more prestige on the …

The Dynamics Of Us-Bangladesh Relations: Before, During And After The 1971 War Of Liberation, 1947-1975., Mdaminul Islam

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis traces the dynamics relations between Bangladesh and the United States before, during and after the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. The thesis argues that during the Cold War era the US wanted to build good relations with Pakistan to curb communism in the Middle East and the South Asia. As a result, during the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, the Nixon administration did not support Bangladesh’s independence, even though US diplomats and other officials reported the ongoing genocide. Despite this fraught history and Bangladesh’s pro-Indian, pro-Soviet leanings, relations formed between independent Bangladesh and the United States …

From Essential To Expendable – Montagnards, Kurds, And U.S. Army Special Forces In Vietnam And Northern Iraq, Jake Brooks

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In the Vietnam and Iraqi conflicts, the U.S. Army Special Forces teamed up with indigenous ethnic monitories to bring the fight to all corners of the battle space, and to take advantage of their immense local knowledge and strategic locations. The Montagnards of Central Indochina and the Kurds in Northern Iraq allied with the Special Forces for a number of reasons: protection from their ruling governments, recognition for their movements for autonomy, increased access to better medicine and equipment, and the opportunity to strike back at their historical enemies. The Montagnards and Kurds taught the Green Berets how to better …

Awards For Outstanding Papers Written In 2024

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Failure For Avon, Failure For Labour A Waterworks Project And The Shortcomings Of Left-Wing Groups In Pre-Wwi Aberdeen, Garrett Mast

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On September 16th, 1909, the Aberdeen Daily Journal ran a single article that encompassed one and a half pages of the ten- page printing. This article did not discuss any national or international news, but rather a town council meeting for the city of Aberdeen in northern Scotland. This meeting was anything but standard procedure, lasting six and a half hours, a record for the council with at least 27 of the 34 councillors participating in the debate. The debate discussed the rather mundane question of from which river the council should seek approval for pumping new drinking water.1 “The …

A Historical And Legal Analysis Of The Life Of Ellett Robinson, Abigail Hilbig

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

To look deeply into the lives of individuals is to begin to understand the intricacies of American life. Ellett Robinson was an African American woman, born at the inception of the twentieth century. Like the century she lived through, Ellett’s life was defined by sociocultural concepts that began long before she came to be. Perceptions of race and the family were being transformed throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Born into this tumultuous time, Ellett was destined to experience the prejudice that existed against African Americans in the South. With slaves having been freed just thirty- six years before Ellett’s birth, …

La Junta Development Of U.S. Opinion And Interaction With Chile, 1970–1981, Carson Cambell

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

It was hot outside in the late afternoon of the seventeenth of September when Charles Horman stepped out of his car. Horman was exhausted from a long day of many futile attempts to contact the United States ambassador in Santiago, Chile. Many hours were spent in the endeavor to secure emergency travels back to the U.S., but thus far there was no success to be found. Carrying such important information regarding the successful coup of the Chilean General, Augusto Pinochet, Horman knew he needed to reach the safety of his home country.11 The American journalist entered his house, and mere …

“No Finger In The Dike Could Have Stopped It” The Effects Of The Governmental Failures Surrounding The Teton Dam Flood, Brooke Wilks

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Lyle H. Moon, mayor of Sugar City, Idaho, was a petroleum man. He drove trucks for the greater area of Southeastern Idaho, supplying all their petroleum needs. On June 5, 1976, his route took him within a mile and a half of the Teton Dam. Unbeknownst to him, the dam had sprung several leaks that morning. Two bulldozer crews labored through the morning, trying desperately to plug the holes. While on his route, radio operators called him and told him to drive away from the dam as quickly as possible. Thinking it was a joke, Moon quipped, “Tell me another …

The Possession Of John Toldervy Early Quakerism And The Polarization Of Print Polemic In Cromwellian England, Hyrum Veach

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In the winter of 1655, ex- demoniac, dismissed apprentice, and sometime Quaker John Toldervy published a short memoir entitled The Foot out of the Snare.1 The pamphlet presented itself as a part conversion narrative and part anti- Quaker exposé, and told a startling story of demonic possession. After Toldervy became a Quaker, he told his readers, his mind was corrupted by a “seducing spirit” that convinced him that he was both Christ and the Archangel Michael and drove him to perform many bizarre acts.2 Two months later, after a brief pamphlet war with soon- to- be- disgraced Quaker James Nayler,3 …

Superheroes To Regular Joes The Vietnam War Through The Lens Of American Comic Books And Cartoons, Ella Henricksen

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Historians generally agree that American comic books got their start in 1842 with Rodolphe Töpffer’s The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck,1 but pairing images with text is far from a novel idea—it is practically as old as the invention of writing. By the late 1800s, cartoons and caricatures were staples in papers. Satirical editorial cartoons poked at serious issues, and single- panel gag cartoons showed a humorous picture with a caption. Short comic strips like The Yellow Kid featured regularly appearing characters,2 and in 1933, Famous Funnies (a reprinting of popular humorous news comic strips) finally made the jump to …

Sounds Of Solidarity Pan Africanism, Internationalism, And The Black Experience At Blue Note Records, Nathan Neher

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Blue Note Records is considered one of the most prolific and influential independent American jazz record labels of the mid- twentieth century. The label was founded in 1939 by German- Jewish immigrant Alfred Lion who had fled Nazi Germany. Lion’s longtime friend, Francis Wolff, would later also leave Germany to join Lion and help with photography and other business affairs.1 Originally recording traditional jazz and swing groups, Blue Note transitioned to modern jazz in 1947, eventually helping facilitate the development of hard bop, post- bop, and avant- garde jazz in the mid- twentieth century.2 Lion played a prominent role in …

Pain For Profit The Motivations Of Slave Surgeons In The Eighteenth To Nineteenth Century Caribbean, Gabe Smock

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

When late eighteenth- century British surgeon Dr. Alexander Falconbridge ventured belowdecks to check on the hundreds of slaves chained there, he had no illusions about the horrors of the Middle Passage. After all, this was not his first voyage providing medical care for slaves until they disembarked at the infamous markets of colonial Kingston, Jamaica. He took a moment to brace himself, then ventured down into the damp air below only to encounter a sight so awful that it was difficult to put into words when he recounted the experience years later to Parliament. As a consequence of being packed …

“Radio . . . What [Is It] Doing To Our Children?” The Impact Of Radio On Families During The Golden Age Of Broadcasting, Samuel Pulsipher

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Eerie string music, a dark cackle of laughter, and then a sinister voice says, “Who knows what evils lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”3 Suddenly, an interruption by the Goodrich Man. He has something to say about Goodrich tires with their lifesaving tread and blow- out protection: “So, play safe, equip your car with Goodrich, safety Silvertown!” The Goodrich- Man is ushered out by organ music as our hero Lamont Cranston, the Shadow, is introduced. He is heralded as a man of wealth and science who devotes his life to righting wrongs, protecting the innocent, and punishing …

Rap And Rhyme An Insider Look On African American Life In Urban America, Rachel Van Katwyk

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Thousands of hands clapped and cheered for the rap artists heralded as the rock stars of the age. Fans packed into Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena, chanting to hear the song they all wanted to scream. F*** the Police. T he rap group, N.W.A., toured America in the summer of 1989 and was contractually obligated to forgo performing that particular song. Scattered among the crowd were police officers ready to take action if the song started playing. N.W.A. called an audible, and DJ Yella projected the song from the speakers for thirty seconds before three sharp shots were heard. At the …

Personal Politicking Dolores Huerta’S Key Contributions To Farmworker Organizing, Keylla Ortega

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

When she was just in her mid- twenties, Dolores Huerta served as a board member of one of the most influential mid- century civic organizations in California, the Community Service Organization (CSO). Huerta quickly established herself as a key voice in the farmworker movement for labor rights, but she recognized early on that as a woman she had to work strategically to win votes in board meetings. She later recalled, “If I wanted to get a vote on a tough case, like to fight the police department, I had to really use . . . all of this personal kind …

Editor's Preface, Brett Bodily

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Japanese Imperial Education In Korea And Taiwan And The Lens Of Reciprocal Assimilation, Devin Sanders

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

During the 19th century, the nation of Japan underwent a variety of political, social, and economic changes, including but not limited to events such as the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895. This paradigmatic shift sought to usher in a new era of Japanese dominance on both regional and international scales. Japanese dominance and international relevance, as indicated by Meiji-era domestic and foreign policy, was to be realized through adopting demonstratively successful policies, technologies, ideals, governments, militaries, economic approaches, and even the appearances of Western powers.1 Indeed, influential Japanese leaders such as Fukuzawa Yukichi believed …

Vanguards Of Change In The “Georgia Of The North” Youth Activism In The New Jersey Civil Rights Movement, Emily Peterson

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On February 17, 1948, the small suburb of Somerville, New Jersey began preparations for its annual “Brotherhood Week” meeting, part of an annual national initiative to address racial and religious prejudice. That day, the planning committee for the event received the following letter from a local high school student who served on the Brotherhood Week Youth Planning committee: “Every February…Brotherhood Week rolls around...But what about the other 364 days of the year? What happens to our fine ideas of cooperation, understanding, and goodwill then? Nothing ever comes of these meetings. We, the youth of Somerville, feel there should be a …