South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Taiwanese Indigenous Representation, Rhetoric Of Resistance, And Heteroglossia In Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale., John Yu-Choh Chang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between Taiwanese indigenous narrative and rhetoric, in textual representations of the Seediq people and the 1930 Musha Incident. It explores how the forced colonization of Taiwanese indigenous people affected their identities and cultural representation, and how multi-voiced forms of narrative, storytelling, and meaning-making have rooted in indigenous oral traditions and rituals that counter colonial representations. Across a range of cultural texts, I identify what I call Taiwanese indigenous rhetoric of resistance (TIRR), drawing on Simon J. Ortiz’s theory of indigenous literature and oral traditions as indigenous-nationalist forms of cultural resistance. In addition, I draw on …

Gendered Negotiation Of Space: A Study On Gender And Mobility Among Transgender Persons In Pakistan, Sana Illahe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transgender persons, known as khwaja sira in Pakistan, have historically been marginalized and excluded from various spatial domains, as they do not fit the societal norms of binary gender. They are subject to gender discipline by the Pakistani society to coerce them into conforming to the social norms. This research study uses in-depth interviews and applies grounded theory in conjunction with Michel Foucault’s concept of discipline to explore how khwaja sira are subject to societal discipline in Pakistan. The discipline ranges from tacit to overt forms, including verbal and sexual harassment. Khwaja sira are disciplined within their families, in formal …

Interrogating Whiteness In Graduate Education Culture: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Southeast Asian American Graduate Student Experiences, Lesley Nina Sisaket

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study is to understand the role that whiteness has in shaping the graduate education experiences of Southeast Asian American students in the United States. This study explores two research questions. 1) How do Southeast Asian American graduate students describe their graduate education? 2) How do Southeast Asian American graduate students describe concepts of whiteness, if any, throughout their graduate education? According to the experiences from six selfidentifying Southeast Asian American students, their graduate education experiences were described to be racially taxing, unchallenging, and isolating experiences. These findings stemmed from their graduate education experiences, which …

The Orient In The Empire’S Poetry: Scholarship, Translation, And Imaginative Geography (1770-1857), Zeeshan Riyaz Reshamwala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uses the idea of imaginative geography to study literary and scholarly representations of what writers in Europe referred to as the Orient during the long nineteenth century. Imaginative geography refers to a subjective collection of associations that accumulate around a place about which positive knowledge is limited, such that the imaginative associations overpower and structure any empirical knowledge about it, even when further knowledge is acquired. The imaginative geography of the Orient emerged from texts, images, and artifacts that traveled from Asia to Europe through sustained colonial contact. This dissertation studies how writers in India and Britain constituted, …

Tracing An American Yoga: Identity And Cross-Cultural Transaction, Christa Schwind

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation looks at the creative identity of an American yoga, both rooted in its Indic origins and radically transformed in its U.S. manifestations. It traces the broad historical transactions of yoga in terms of East and West, Secular and Religious, authenticity and idealized conception, as well as provides a critical historical genealogy of Anusara and Sridaiva yoga. Furthermore, the project relates yoga to the identity, power, and knowledge dynamics of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern histories and interpretations of yoga and Tantra, multiple theoretical discourses, and the embodied practices of individuals within Indian and American contexts.

I argue that there …