Asian History Commons^™

“A Disconnected Dialogue: American Military Strategy, 1964-1968,” Oklahoma Humanities, Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall-Winter 2017., Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Articles and Research

"The admission, supported by a careful reading of the historical record, begs larger questions: How do we remember American strategy in Vietnam? What language do we use to describe a war that proved so tragic, not only for the United States but, perhaps more importantly, for the millions of Vietnamese who lost their lives in a decades-long civil war? In coming to grips with a complex war, Americans, then and now, have relied on a series of tropes to streamline their conversations about a distasteful war."

"Avenging Furies": The Memoirs Of American Women In The Philippines During The Second World War, Meghan E. O'Donnell

Student Publications

A large and active resistance movement developed in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation of the islands from 1942-1945. This paper discusses the memoirs of several women caught up in these movements, specifically Claire Phillips, Margaret Utinsky, Yay Panlilio, and Virginia Hansen Holmes. I argue that these women utilized their memoirs to secure places for themselves in history, using gendered and racialized language to define their experiences as incredible adventures. Their memoirs give significant insight into the civilian experience of the Japanese occupation and testify to the unique efforts made by women to support the American cause.

Nationalist Transformations: Music, Ritual, And The Work Of Memory In Cambodia And Thailand, Jeffrey M. Dyer

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Cambodia and its diaspora since 2004, this article explores tensions that arise when individuals and institutions impose nation-state ideologies on music and ritual that predate the nation-state concept and transcend official state boundaries. In numerous contexts, musicians and dancers in Cambodia and Thailand perform offerings and blessings that honor their teachers and initiate artistic lineages. Due to broad influence from India and centuries of conflict and borrowing, these rituals—though not necessarily their musical content—have proliferated in these two countries. I describe these nearly identical rituals—called thvāy grū in Khmer and wai khruu in Thai—and their …

The Malay World: Connecting The Past To The Present, Olivia Anne Habana

History Department Faculty Publications

In the late 19^th century – early 20^th century, colonial regimes in Southeast Asia introduced programs for the education and formation of the native peoples that they had colonized. This was done ostensibly to “benevolently assimilate” and civilize their colonial subjects. A closer look at the educational programs of the colonial regimes will reveal that there were other motives which ranged from the practical (creation of a colonial work force) to the spiritual-cultural (transformation of cultural norms to conform with those of the colonizer). In the process, there were also some inadvertent results such as the introduction of …

The Politics Of Shorter Hours And Corporate-Centered Society: A History Of Work-Time Regulation In The United States And Japan, Keisuke Jinno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shorter working hours drew much attention as a means of fighting unemployment and crisis in capitalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, shorter work-time is rarely considered a policy option to fix economic or social issues in the United States and Japan. This dissertation presents a history of work-time regulation in the United States and Japan to examine how and why its developments and stalemate took place.

In the big picture, developments of work-time regulation during the first half of the twentieth century were a part of concessional modifications of class relations, a common phenomenon in many …

Hiroshima On Peace Education And Problems With U.S.-Centric Historical Narratives In A World Without Survivors, Matthew S. Thome

International ResearchScape Journal

As time passes, the number of survivors from major world tragedies like the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki grows fewer and fewer. These survivors are a powerful resource for educating students of all ages about the importance of world peace. Drawing on the writing of Richard Moody and Frans Doppen, as well as Paul Ham, and Herbert Feis respectively, I outline the important role of hibakusha, or a-bomb survivors, in peace education at the secondary and collegiate levels. I explain how personalized survivor testimony provides an alternative and highly effective and necessary counterweight to teaching solely a U.S.-centric historical …

Sex In China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Bloody Bay: Grassroots Policeways, Community Control, And Power In San Francisco And Its Hinterlands, 1846-1915, Darren A. Raspa

History ETDs

“Bloody Bay: Grassroots Policeways, Community Control, and Power in San Francisco and its Hinterlands, 1846–1915” follows the history of San Francisco’s spectrum of formal and informal policing from the American takeover of California in 1846 during the U.S.–Mexico War to Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook’s nationwide law enforcement advisory team tour in 1912 and San Francisco’s debut as the Jewel of a new American Pacific world during the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. These six decades functioned as a unique period wherein a culture of popular justice and grassroots community peacekeeping were fostered. This policing environment was forged in …

Sloan On Geopolitics, Geography, And Strategy History In Geopolitics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Geopolitical literature is experiencing a renaissance and scholars representing classical and critical perspectives in this field bring multifaceted assessments to historical and current international political and security issues. Sloan’s Geopolitics, Geography and Strategic History, which is part of Routledge’s Geopolitical Theory Series, examines connections between geography, strategy, and history and is the subject of this review and analysis. Three thesis questions examined by the author include why the geographical scope of political objectives and following strategies of nation states change, how do these changes occur, and over what time period do these changes occur. Sloan examines why the geopolitical theories …

The Expansion Of The Mandarin Mind, Tyler Okney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study will examine and contrast two periods of xenophobia and stagnation, late Qing dynasty China, and the PRC under Mao, with a genuine market place of ideas, Shanghai and the other foreign treaty ports in the period 1849 to 1949, and explain how this period of cosmopolitan ferment has had beneficial effects on China today. Countries that have shut themselves off from the outside world have frequently suffered first stagnation, and then decay. While this might appear a commonplace in the abstract, the application of this insight in the development of particular nations has been neither as thorough or …

Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

The secularization thesis, rooted in the idea that “modernity” brings with it the destruction—or, at least, the ruthless privatization—of religion, is clearly grounded in specific, often oversimplified, interpretations of Western historical developments since the eighteenth century. In this article, I use the case of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai 新仏教同志会) of the Meiji period (1868–1911) to query the category of the secular in the context of Japanese modernity. I argue that the New Buddhists, drawing on elements of classical and East Asian Buddhism as well as modern Western thought, promoted a resolutely social and this-worldly Buddhism that …

Review: Oleg Benesch, Inventing The Way Of The Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, And Bushidō In Modern Japan, James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

11_亞洲之光 — 香港古蹟燈塔遊蹤, Sun Wah Poon

專題講座

香港開埠後不久迅速崛起成為歐美在遠東主要的貿易港口，每年在香港海域穿梭往還的中外船隻成千上萬。對於船隻來說航道安全至關重要，其中照明系統是水手賴以辦別方位，確認航道的主要港口設施。自十九世紀末，政府在香港主要的航道據點建設了多座燈塔，引領船隻進出港口，招徠貿易，締造繁榮。這些燈塔計有鶴咀燈塔(1875)、青洲燈塔(1875、1904)、哥連臣燈塔(1876)、橫瀾燈塔(1893)及燈籠洲燈塔(1912)等，現時都獲列為香港的法定古蹟。隨著科技進步，雖然燈塔的角色已不復當年，但其承載的歷史意義卻有增無減。是次講座暨考察活動將介紹各個主要燈塔的歷史故事及其對香港發展的重要性。

Chinese Wines And Foreign Urns: Making Objects Of Lyric, Ryan Matthew Hintzman

Student Work

A 2016-2017 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Ryan Matthew Hintzman (Silliman College '17) for his essay submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature, "Chinese Wines and Foreign Urns: Making Objects of Lyric.” (Edward Kamens, Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, advisor.)

Ryan Hintzman’s essay, Chinese Wines and Foreign Urns: Making Objects of Lyric is a work of awe-inspiring erudition, vision, and ambition. Ranging far and wide among traditional and more recent theories of the lyric and moving boldly from 8th century poems in Japanese to 19th and 20th century poems in English, Hintzman …

A Coffee-Scented Space: Historical, Cultural, And Social Impacts Of The Japanese Kissaten, Claire A. Williamson

Student Work

A 2016-2017 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Claire Williamson (Jonathan Edwards College '17) for her essay submitted to the East Asian Studies Program, “A Coffee-Scented Space: Historical, Cultural, and Social Impacts of the Japanese Kissaten.” (William Kelly, Professor of Anthropology and Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, advisor.)

Japan has a long and well-documented history as a tea culture, from everyday practices to the refined aesthetics of the tea ceremony and its associated arts. Yet modern Japan is also a highly developed culture of coffee, and this is the topic that Claire Williamson …

Enclave Of Ingenuity: The Plan And Promise Of The Beijing Intellectual Property Court, Max Goldberg

Student Work

A 2016-2017 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Max Goldberg (Pierson College '17) for his essay submitted to the Ethics, Politics, & Economics Program, "Enclave of Ingenuity: The Plan and Promise of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court.” (Frances Rosenbluth, Damon Wells Professor of Political Science, and Paul Gewirtz, Potter Stewart Professor of Law, advisors.)

Max Goldberg’s thesis, Enclave of Ingenuity: The Plan and Promise of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, examines in depth one of the most interesting institutions in today’s China – an experimental court that stands at the intersection of …

Korean Soil, Japanese Faces, American Empire: Repatriation And The Korean War Experiences Of Japanese Laborers And Japanese American Soldiers, Jaclyn S. Knitter

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper compares the Korean War experiences of two ethnically Japanese groups that served the US military on the Korean Peninsula – second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers in the US Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and Japanese laborers – to demonstrate the salience of citizenship in the post-1945 Asia Pacific. In particular, this research addresses the question, “how did the politics of repatriation differentiate the experiences of Japanese Americans from those of Japanese nationals, both serving the US military during the Korean War?” This service ranged from (Nisei) American repatriation interrogators of Korean and Chinese civilians, to prisoners of war (POWs), …

Manipulated Museum History And Silenced Memories Of Aggression: Historical Revisionism And Japanese Government Censorship Of Peace Museums, Benjamin P. Birdwhistell

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Japanese government has a vested interest in either avoiding discussion of its war-torn past or arguing for a revisionist take. The need to play up Japanese victimization over Japanese aggression during World War II has led to many museums having their exhibits censored or revised to fit this narrative goal. During the 1990’s, Japan’s national discourse was more open to discussions of war crimes and the damage caused by their aggression. This in turn led to the creation of many “peace museums” that are intended to discuss and confront this history as frankly as possible. At the beginning of …

10_「新市鎮」探研 — 荃葵青的舊貌新顏, Yue Sang Leung, Cho Nga Leung, Kwan Kin, Kenneth Wong

專題講座

荃灣、葵涌及青衣是香港第一代新市鎮。早於1950年代，政府銳意在鄰近九龍的地區開闢土地，以「自給自足，均衡發展」為理念，拓展新市鎮。自此，擁有數百年歷史的荃葵青便經歷翻天覆地的變化：大規模的移山填海改變了原來的地貌；舊村落的搬遷重置騰出了發展空間；新道路網絡的建設打通了區內外的流動；各式樓房大廈的興建令人事活動驟增。是次講座暨考察活動以荃葵青的歷史發展為經，以新市鎮拓展為緯，細說區內數百年來的蛻變。

Making Japan Great Again: The Imperial Rescript On Education, Ayoung Kang, Alistor Skabelund, Matthew Stephenson

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

The Meiji government used the Imperial Rescript on Education in order to develop nationalism and respond against the dominating presence of Western Imperialism by standardizing Meiji education and interpreting it to justify militarism.

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

The Effects Of Historical Trauma And Gender On National Identity Within The Hmong Diaspora, Kalia Vang

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

Since 1975 the Hmong have settled in the West as a diasporic group. Their involvement in the Vietnam and Secret Wars with the United States in Southeast Asia had forced the group to flee their homes in the mountain tops of Laos. This political migration has since forced Hmong leaders to reframe Hmong national identity in the diaspora, specifically in the United States. With this, certain aspects and perspective from Hmong women on the Secret War were marginalized. Thus, this research asks the following question: why is national identity interpreted differently within the Hmong diaspora? This research project is broken …

Hgc-Txt, Michael Polczynski, Mark Polczynski

HGC - Historical Gazetteer of Crimea

No abstract provided.

Tangled Subjectivities: An Examination Of The Japanese Subject From 1868-1912, Haylee Shepard

History Honors Program

When a 260-year-old regime comes toppling down, how do you organize society after the fall? That is the challenge that faced members of the Meiji state after the end of the Tokugawa Bakufu. The need for internal unity and the pressure of Western Imperialism, as imposed by the Unequal Treaties,^[1] raised the stakes of the Meiji State’s goal: to create a modern nation-state with a unifying national identity. What did that process entail? First, create a legal precedent for control and monopolize violence. Second, define the individual because a nation needs a public, and a public cannot exist without …

Hgc-Kml, Michael Polczynski, Mark Polczynski

HGC - Historical Gazetteer of Crimea

No abstract provided.

Hgc-Shp, Michael Polczynski, Mark Polczynski

HGC - Historical Gazetteer of Crimea

No abstract provided.

The Intersection Of Culture And Activism In The Filipino Community In Soma, Ericka J. Martynovych

Master's Theses

My research analyzes the intersection between culture and activism, through oral histories with participants and organizers of SoMa Pilipinas, the Filipino cultural heritage district in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. I analyzed the impact of the establishment of the Filipino cultural heritage district on the Filipino community in the South of Market neighborhood. I examined what motivates members of this community to be politically active by organizing and attending protests and rallies, speaking at Planning Commission hearings at City Hall, attending planning meetings for SoMa Pilipinas, building relationships across organizations and fields, and providing resources for community …

Sir Robert Thompson’S Better War: The British Advisory Mission And The South Vietnamese Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961-1963, Richard Sears Lovering

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the interactions between the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam (BRIAM) and the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem and his American advisors. By studying BRIAM’s efforts—and those of its leader, Sir Robert Thompson—this thesis argues that many of the tactics Thompson advocated and Diem executed, especially the Strategic Hamlet Program, foreshadowed the techniques Americans used several years later under General Creighton Abrams, during the period historian Lewis Sorley termed the “better war.”

Sorley argued that the American strategy in the Vietnam War was flawed until Abrams implemented his “one war” plan. With this interpretation, however, …

Confucianism: How Analects Promoted Patriarchy And Influenced The Subordination Of Women In East Asia, Lauren J. Littlejohn

Young Historians Conference

Analects, compiled by Confucius’ disciples, helps historians understand the origin of Chinese philosophy and women’s role in society. Analects created a separation of gender that assigned women the domestic role and granted men the authority to handle public affairs. Furthermore, Analects influenced the work of other philosophers who published similarly patriarchal works. Additionally, the subordination of women in Analects, resulted in the practice of female-infanticide, concubinage, and ghost marriages. Analects and the application of Confucianism offers historians an opportunity to study how women in East Asia were treated in the past and helps explain why women continue to …

09_香港離島風光, Man Hing So

專題講座

香港除了繁華的都市面貌外，還有清幽閒靜的一面。香港的離島大多保留了其自然風貌和簡樸的鄉村風情。是次講座將為各位介紹香港別具特色的離島，包括塔門、東平洲、吉澳和蒲台島。其中有「香港南極」之稱的蒲台島歷史十分悠久，早在1425年繪製的《鄭和航海圖》裡已有記載。在上世紀五六十年代，這個小小的島嶼曾居住高達2,000人，村民大多以捕維生，但隨漁業沒落，居民相繼遷出，現時島上雖然僅餘不到20名居民，卻仍然保留了豐富的人文資源。是次考察將帶各位到蒲台島感受當地的風土面貌和如畫的自然景色。