Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

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Sustainable Living: Integrating Climate Adaptation in Bangkok's Informal Settlements
(2024) Pipatpongsa, Ploy; Kim, Taejun; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis intends to demonstrate how the largest urban vulnerable communities in Thailand, using the case of At Narong in Khlong Toei, an informal settlement of over 30,000 residents who rent lands adjacent to the Port Authority of Thailand (PAT) in Bangkok. The PAT plans to evict the slum dwellers and develop the land, posing a severe threat to their lives and livelihoods. The thesis a multifaceted design framework that leverages social assets to enhance community resilience and inclusivity, particularly among vulnerable populations. The site location in PAT presents an opportunity to relocate informal settlements in the Lock 1-2-3 and 70 Rai communities, proposing multipurpose wetlands that serve as flood control, recreation areas and a market plaza that encourage social interaction and community cohesion.
Between Body and Spirit: Indian Influences on Modern Japanese Art
(2024) Chiu, Chao Chi; Volk, Alicia; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation contributes to ongoing examinations on modern transcultural exchanges between Japan and other Asian countries in the field of Japanese art by investigating the influence of India on itinerant Japanese artists throughout the twentieth century. In doing so, it challenges prevailing assumptions that Japanese artistic engagement with foreign culturesoperated entirely within an imperialistic context. Among the many Asian countries that served as sources of artistic inspiration for Japan, India stood out from the rest because of its esteemed spirituality in the eyes of Japanese intellectuals. Contemporary Japanese writings emphasized India’s importance as the birth place of Buddhism and framed the South Asian country as a bastion on Asian spiritual fortitude against the influx of Western materialism. Consequently, India also attracted Buddhist artists across Japan to visit its ancient temples and museums to its art. While these Japanese abroad expressed their admiration towards India’s religiosity and adherence to keeping its traditions alive, they also fantasized about the exoticism and corporeality embodied in Indian art and contemporary locals. Such fantasies were visualized intheir works in visual icons such as half-nude females with elaborate poses, Buddhist figures, including the Buddha himself, with exaggerated Indian ethnic features, and tropical plants and animals representing a long-lost past. I argue that Japanese adaption of Indian styles and themes into their art was characterized by a precarious harmony between spiritual and corporeal elements in the artist works. Furthermore, each artist defined “spirituality” and “corporeality” in distinct way, which led to diverse approaches. My dissertation revolved around four artists as case studies: Arai Kanpō, Nōsu Kōsetsu, Ishizaki Kōyō, and Sugimoto Tetsurō. By examining the careers, writings, and artworks of each artist, I will highlight how Japanese artists interpreted Indian materials and utilized them to create unconventional works. Furthermore, I would contextualize these artists’ work in the development of Japanese perspectives toward India throughout the twentieth century, expressed through contemporary writings that praised India for its spiritual fortitude but also denigrated them as an inferior Asian country. Examining the artists’ life and works in connection to changing perspectives towards India, Buddhism, and religious art in modern society, this dissertation explores the nuances of Japan’s artistic interaction with foreign materials beyond the context of colonialism and imperialism.
TRACING TRANSCOLONIAL INTIMACIES: RELATIONAL RESISTANCE THROUGH THE OCCUPATION OF JAPAN (1945-1952)
(2024) Itoh, Megu; Woods, Carly S.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Tracing Transcolonial Intimacies seeks to respond to the central question, “how can we work together across difference?” by exploring rhetorical strategies that bring people together across the divisions of coloniality. I enact a relational approach to rhetorical studies, to decenter individual subjectivity and to spotlight resistant relationalities. I combine this with a transcolonial framework, which grapples with the multiple vectors of coloniality. Such orientations enable the theorization of transcolonial intimacies, or mutual recognitions of humanity which bring the Other into the self. This project thus illuminates transcolonial intimacies as a form of resistant relationality obfuscated by colonial hegemonies. I am particularly invested in locating and analyzing transcolonial intimacies through the Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), a period defined by the collision between the Japanese and US empires, and the subsequent rupture of the Japanese empire. The three case studies thus seek to understand how Japanese civilians and Americans involved with the Occupation found opportunities to connect across three themes: race, gender, and foodways. These transcolonial intimacies reverberate, existing within a lineage of solidarities that draw from the past and extend into the future. To reckon with such relations of resistance, which move across time and space, I trace fragmented texts and artifacts situated in archives across national and cultural borders. Chapter 1 foregrounds relationships between Black American men soldiers and Japanese women civilians during a time of anti-fraternization and shared segregation under global white supremacy. Themes from the early twentieth century, such as the world color line and Black internationalism, regained relevance and functioned to reimagine Black American-Japanese solidarities. Chapter 2 examines how American women working for the Occupation and Japanese women union leaders collaborated on the adoption of menstruation leave. I argue that menstruation leave served dual purposes of liberation and containment, and also interrogate the story of menstruation leave as it is told through Mead Smith Karras, an economist for the Occupation administration. Chapter 3 illuminates how the total war period and the Occupation forced Japanese people to adapt their foodways for survival. I shed light on American participation within this process, including consumption of the Other and the uncomfortable reckonings that ensue. The dissertation concludes by following reverberations of transcolonial intimacies into the present, with an acknowledgment of what dehumanizes and divides, but also with an invitation to turn towards what humanizes and connects.
Made Visible: Women Artists and the Performance of Femininity in Modern Japanese Art, 1900-1930
(2024) Wies, Lillian T; Volk, Alicia; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation offers a new framework for understanding individual Japanese women artists’ work and the systems of gender oppression that characterized modern Japanese art. It does so by engaging with the visualization of Japanese women artists in the early twentieth century. In response to societal anxiety about the increase of women artists in the perceived male domain of the professional art world, women artists were pressured to conform to standards of normative femininity. Those standards, I argue, can be united under a single archetype, the “female artist,” which came to dominate the visual representation and social imagining of women artists. This study offers a nuanced investigation into the reciprocal relationship between women artists and the “female artist” by focusing on four establishment women painters: Kajiwara Hisako, Shima Seien, Yoshida Fujio, and Kametaka Fumiko. Chapter One establishes the ideological grounding that defined women artists by their gender and pressured them to perform hegemonic femininity, thereby creating the marginalized “female artist” archetype. Chapter Two explores the “female artist” as a visual type, established through photographic reproductions of women artists in women’s magazines and by a painted representation of the type by Kajiwara Hisako. The chapter evaluates the complex ways women artists participated in the construction of the visual type, arguing that women made micro-adjustments to the type that valorized women’s artistic skill even as they upheld oppressive gender ideals. Chapter Three details Shima Seien’s use of self-portraiture to protest the dehumanizing elements of the “female artist” archetype and assert an alternative vision of herself as an artist and individual. Chapter Four considers Yoshida Fujio’s embrace of the “female artist” as part of a journey towards personal and artistic self-determination. The Coda uses the case study of Kametaka Fumiko and the false attribution of her self-portrait, Hanare yuku kokoro, to her deceased husband, Watanabe Yohei, to reflect on how the “female artist” archetype continues to diminish women artists’ position within scholarship. The goal of this study is to make visible the diverse ways modern Japanese women artists negotiated systemic gender discrimination in an effort to recover a sense of their agency and individuality.
Stories from the English Teaching Industry in Taiwan: Uncovering Hidden (and Overt) Belief Systems & Ideologies of English Through Storytelling
(2023) Fiore, Amanda Jane; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: STORIES FROM THE ENGLISH TEACHING INDUSTRY IN TAIWAN:UNCOVERING HIDDEN (AND OVERT) BELIEF SYSTEMS & IDEOLOGIES OF ENGLISH THROUGH STORYTELLING Amanda J. Fiore, Dr. of International Education Policy, 2024 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Jing Lin, Department of International Education Policy This dissertation is a critical exploration of power, privilege, and oppression in the private English teaching industry in Taiwan. It collected and examined the lived experiences of 9 Taiwanese students, 7 Taiwanese teachers, and 27 “foreign” teachers from around the world (43 total). All participants were living in Taiwan and teaching or studying English in the cross-cultural environment of Taiwan’s private English schools at the time of this study. The design was a multiple case study with a narrative lens. Case study was used to separate and bound the 43 participants into 5 Cases, which were formed according to participants’ role (as teacher/student) and their racial, national, and linguistic identities. Two types of qualitative analysis were applied: 1) thematic coding across all interviews, resulting in both in-Case and cross-Case analyses; and 2) emplotment, which was applied to 4 of the 43 participant’s interview data, turning their data into stories. Primary findings included the discovery and articulation of belief systems which associated English with power and prestige, as well as whiteness, Westernness, and “foreignness,” where “foreignness” was racialized in the Taiwanese context as not Asian. These belief systems created a structurally embedded hierarchy of racial, national, and linguistic identities within the English teaching industry in Taiwan, where white Westerners were the most privileged, followed by Western Teachers of Color (who are not Asian), then Western teachers with Asian racial identities, and finally non-Western foreign teachers. In all Cases, local Taiwanese teachers were the most marginalized and oppressed. Secondary findings included a set of personal characteristics held by all participants successfully able to connect with the “foreign other,” leading to the argument that personal orientation is more important than any other factor in creating cross-cultural understanding. Regarding research, this study argues that “emplotment” is an effective narrative tool for helping researchers with privileged identities navigate unequal power dynamics between themselves and their participants. This finding is corroborated by my own experience as a white Western researcher interpreting interview data from Participants of Color with a variety of national and linguistic identities.
Family Reputation in Asian Indian American Women: An Exploration of Its Implications and Emotional Consequences
(2023) Sheth, Anjali; O'Neal, Colleen R; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Asian Indian American young women are often torn between two incompatible cultures, Eastern and Western. The former promotes collectivism while the latter promotes individualism. In addition to this internal cultural conflict, there is the added obligation of maintaining one’s family reputation which can create challenges for young women who are navigating these opposing cultures. The specific goal of this study was to understand how Asian Indian American undergraduate women experience and perceive family reputation, in addition to its impacts on their emotional experience, emotional coping, and mental health. The method involved semi-structured interviews with ten participants who identified as (a) Asian Indian American, (b) cis-gendered woman, (c) second-generation immigrant, (d) the child of two parents born in India, and (e) an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland. For analyses, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to code and develop themes that emerged from the interview narratives. Results yielded six superordinate themes that defined family reputation through the perspective of the participants as well as their conceptualization of the various factors that are related to the construct (e.g., gender). The discussion addresses the importance of understanding this construct as it shows up for this sample given its relevance in various aspects of their lives.
Music Literature During the Allied Occupation of Japan and Debates on the Future of Japanese Music, 1945-1949
(2023) DeBell, Joshua Blake; Robin, William; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Research on how countries under military occupation developed their music range from studies of the American occupation of Germany to studies of the Allied Occupation of Japan. Even though studies on Japanese music under occupation mainly focused on how composers dictated this culture, Japanese scholars should also be considered because scholarly writings have historically influenced what styles and aesthetics the Japanese endorsed. This study examines music literature from the University of Maryland’s Gordon W. Prange Collection. From 1945 to 1949, this literature is characterized by scholars studying the hōgaku, European, and American art music traditions. They also advocated that readers appreciate composers, pieces, styles, and genres from European art music, American art music, or hōgaku to establish a new music culture for Japan. However, these authors were divided on whether this music should only employ Western and Japanese styles or be a fusion of both. By examining this literature, this study offers an analysis of an under-researched perspective on music during Japan’s occupation and provides a new musicological approach toward examining occupation cultures.
Evolution and Eternity in the Landscape of Defeat: Yokoyama Taikan and Mt. Fuji
(2023) Mastrandrea, Magdalena; Volk, Alicia; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The end of the Fifteen Year War in August 1945 abruptly dismantled the ideology of art in service of the empire that established Japanese painters had worked under for over a decade. During this time, Yokoyama Taikan, a figurehead of the Nihonga painting genre who infamously called on artists to support the war effort, displayed hyper-nationalist paintings of Mt. Fuji, an icon synonymous with the nation of Japan. As droves of American Occupiers entered the country following Japan’s surrender, artists like Taikan quickly began to adjust their public image to avoid consequences. Yet only two years later, Taikan painted and displayed Landscape of the Four Seasons, an 88-foot-long scroll painting progressing through scenes of mountains, forests, rivers, and most notably, beginning with Mt. Fuji. Although painted in the midst of the Allied Occupation of Japan, when all Japanese media was subjected to strict censorship, Taikan’s use of Fuji at the beginning of this composition blatantly recalls his wartime paintings of the mountain. Despite this, he successfully exhibited Landscape of Four Seasons at the 1947 Japan Visual Arts Academy exhibition, or Inten, the first full-scale Inten since Japan’s surrender. In my analysis of this image, I begin by introducing compositionally similar Mt. Fuji paintings from before the war’s end to establish Taikan as a vehemently nationalistic artist who glorified the empire in the image of Fuji. Through examining the iconography and display of Landscape of the Four Seasons, painted in the dramatically shifted political climate of 1947, I argue that the image of Mt. Fuji, only recently associated with extreme nationalism and militarism, evolved rapidly after Japan’s surrender into a symbol of hope and resilience. The idealistic, symbolic nature of Nihonga painting allowed Taikan to exploit Fuji’s new meaning in defense of his wartime endeavors. Therefore, his Occupation era landscapes of the exact same subject matter evaded suspicion. Landscape of the Four Seasons is evidence of this phenomenon and of Taikan’s full reentry into the mainstream Japanese art world because of its display in the Inten, where it attracted significant attention. In addressing this, I explore the evolution of Mt. Fuji as an icon in the eyes of the Japanese and Americans alike, defining its new symbolism in the postwar period.
Inequality of suicide in South Korea: Unequal distribution of completed suicide and suicidal ideation
(2020) Lee, Jaein; Cohen, Philip N.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Suicide in South Korea, considered a serious social issue, has been investigated by a number of scholars in multidisciplinary fields. However, suicide continues to be framed and focused only on limited aspects, such as having an individual-level focus on problems they face in only biomedical and psychiatric factors or only macro-level social contextual factors. Those one-sided approaches contain flaws from paying little attention, which results in an incomprehensive understanding of suicide occurring in society. This dissertation has three primary aims to examine: (1) major influential factors of suicide rates in South Korea counties from 2005–2013, (2) gender, age group-specific influential factors of suicide rate of South Korea in 2005 and 2010, and (3) individual level inequality of suicidal ideation in South Korea from 2007–2017 controlling province level regional predictors. County-level suicide rates were lower in the counties with higher population density and crude birth rate. In contrast, counties with higher crude divorce rates had higher expected suicide rates. For age group- and gender-specific suicide rates, all age groups had higher suicide rates in 2010 than 2005 after holding all other variables constant. Especially for the elderly suicide rate, counties with a higher proportion of the elderly were associated with a lower suicide rate, indicating the social network effect. The risk of suicidal ideation was higher for females, older age groups, lower-income, unemployed, not currently married, negative health status (stressed, bad health, depression without care).
An analysis of negation-dependent times amwu-phrases in Korean, and its theoretical consequences
(2020) Bae, Sooyoung; Lasnik, Howard; Preminger, Omer; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this thesis, I revisit the nature of a negation-dependent expression awmu- in Korean. The central claim is that amwu-s do not fall within one of the two well-established categories of Negative Polarity Item (NPI) and Negative Concord Item (NCI). Hence, the taxonomy of negation-dependent expressions needs to be expanded to include a new, third type. Furthermore, I argue that this third type of expression, as exemplified in Korean, calls for a different principle of grammar, which is syntactic in nature, to properly account for its distribution. The thesis is organized as follows. In chapter 1, I introduce the taxonomy and theoretical background of negation-dependent expressions that have been discussed in the previous literature. Then, I review on-going discussions concerning the identity of amwu- in Korean. In particular, two competing perspectives on amwu- are examined: Negative Polarity Item (NPI) approaches to amwu- (Sohn 1994 & Sells & Kim 2006) and Negative Concord Item (NCI) approaches (Giannakidou 2000, 2006 & Yoon & Giannakidou 2016). I also introduce a puzzle: amwu-s cannot be licensed by its apparent licensor (i.e. sentential negation) in derived positions, which is not accounted for under the previous accounts of NPIs or NCIs and motivates the main proposal of the thesis. In chapter 2, I propose that amwu- is a third category of negation-dependent expressions and amwu- and negation stand in a base-generated relationship of constituency. In particular, I show that the interplay between the constituency of amwu- and negation and constraints on syntactic movement explains why amwu- cannot be licensed in derived positions. This argument is further supported by the bound pronoun effect (cf. Grano &Lasnik 2018 for English) that seems to relax the locality constraint between the base position of amwu- and the surface position of sentential negation. In Chapter 3, I examine predictions of an argument I put forth in chapter 2 that the features responsible for the occurrence of overt negation in Korean can be acquired by the relevant heads derivationally. Following Chomsky (1965)'s featural constraint on deletion, I argue that only inherent features, which are not acquired derivationally, are subject to the identity requirement on ellipsis. Thus, the identity condition on ellipsis under my proposal amounts to a requirement to select a feature from the lexicon that is identical to the one selected from the lexicon in the antecedent. I argue that the fact that amwu-s can be used as fragment answers, despite the polarity mismatch with the antecedent clause, receives a natural account as a consequence of the feature specification in the domain of ellipsis. In Chapter 4, I investigate implications of the underlying constituency of amwu- and negation. In particular, I show paradigms of the extended version of Beck & Kim's intervention effect (1997) in constructions where a long-distance scrambled amwu-phrases interact with wh-phrases. I argue that long-distance scrambled phrase can participate in syntactic and semantic operations in its derived positions. This, in turn, challenges the view that long-distance scrambling in Korean should be relegated to PF. In Chapter 5, I investigate the nominal structure of Korean based upon the Numeral Classifier constructions. In doing so, this chapter contributes to the proposed argument that NegP is an optional part of the extended nominal projection in Korean. In particular, I examine a variety of orderings of Numeral-Classifier constructions in Korean and how they are derived. The chapter also argues that elements within a nominal phrase in Korean are also constrained by Cyclic Linearization and Order Preservation (cf. Fox & Pesetsky 2003, 2005; Ko 2005, 2007; Simpson & Park 2019). This suggests the application domains of Cyclic Linearization are not only clausal domains (CP) but also nominal ones (DP), at least in Korean.

Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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