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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Item Standing Tall: U.S. Efforts at Democratizing Rural Japanese Women During the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952(2010) Price, Emily Rebecca; Mayo, Marlene J; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the U.S. Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952, dismantling the political and cultural systems that were perceived to have led Japan to war was a primary goal. Democracy, a word that came to encompass much more than its standard definitions, was to be the replacement ideology and coupled with demilitarization. Through a survey of SCAP documents from Record Group 331 located in the National Archives, this paper examines the way in which varying concepts and meanings of democracy were promoted to rural Japanese women by U.S. Occupation forces. It also explores the ways in which Japanese farm women embraced, rejected, and/or modified the evolving ideas about democracy into their daily lives. While the impact of democracy - in all of its many guises - was not as powerful as Occupation members desired, it still had a definite effect on the way rural Japanese women thought about their society and on their daily lives.Item Claiming India: French scholars and the preoccupation with India during the nineteenth century(2009) Mohan, Jyoti; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines the image of India which was created by French academics during the nineteenth century. This image of India was distinct from the British image of India as a land of oppressed masses ruled by Oriental despots. The French image of India relied on spiritual and religious aspects of India, with particular emphasis on the antiquity and Aryan heritage of Indian culture. the difference in these images was largely due to the different intellectual and political traditions of Britain and France, but also reflected Anglo-French national and colonial rivalry as well as France's subordinate (subaltern) colonial position in India. I have looked at French writings on India from the religious writings of early modern missionaries to the secular writing of early twentieth century French academics. I have also examined the interest that French scholars in diverse intellectual fields like philology, anthropology, history and religion had in learning and writing about India during the nineteenth century. My conclusion is that French scholars at the end of the nineteenth century defined India primarily in terms of race, caste and Hinduism.Item Public Works, Modernity, and Chinese Nationalism in Shanghai, 1911-1941(2009) Nalezyty, Nancy; Gao, James Z; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis focuses on the roads and public services created by the SMC because they are a topic which clearly illustrates the ambiguity of colonial modernism in Shanghai. This colonial modernism, which in Shanghai was largely instigated by the SMC, is a process which not only made the Chinese victims of colonial modernity, but also taught the Chinese the value of this Western modernity. This thesis explores these thoughts in terms of the actual use of land in Shanghai to build roads and the administration of these roads, but also includes the use of land for other public services. While much of the recent literature on Chinese modernity has moved to cultural areas such as film, architecture, and fashion, this essay will attempt to re-examine the urban expansion of Shanghai by focusing less on the diplomatic aspect of this topic and instead on examining the use of each parcel of land as a part of the urban infrastructure and how this affected the modernization and nationalism in China. It will do so by exploring the urban expansion of Shanghai, especially the building of roads and other public services, during the majority of the Chinese Republican Period. The essay is divided into four chapters based on major changes in the expansion of the International Settlement and the relationship between the SMC and its Chinese and other counterparts. The first chapter discusses the time period from 1911-1915 when the SMC continued to expand as they had previously done during the Ch'ing dynasty. The second chapter focuses on the years 1916-1927 when formal expansion was no longer a viable option and the SMC turned to building extra-Settlement. The third chapter discusses the years between 1928-1936 when the KMT created a new administration in Shanghai and the SMC slowly began to lose control of the roads to the new Chinese administration. The final chapter discusses the disruption of urban expansion during the Japanese war and occupation from 1937-1941. This essay will attempt to examine the urban expansion of Shanghai by focusing less on cultural aspects and instead on use of land, construction of roads, and the development of urban infrastructure, which gave rise to colonial modernism and Chinese nationalism.Item The Intellectual Origins of Lin Yutang's Cultural Internationalism, 1928-1938(2009) Lee, Madalina Yuk-Ling; Gao, James Z; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of thesis: THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF LIN YUTANG'S CULTURAL INTERNATIONALISM, 1928-1938 Madalina Yuk-Ling Lee, Master of Arts, 2009 Thesis directed by: Professor James Z. Gao Department of History Cultural internationalism is international relations guided by intercultural affairs rather than by interstate affairs. From the outset of modern international history, two models of cultural internationalism have emerged--symmetrical and asymmetrical. The asymmetrical model--the one-way import of cultural ideas--was reserved for the non-Western world. China under the Chiang Kai-shek regime naturally falls under the asymmetrical model. The symmetrical model--the reciprocal exchange of cultural ideas--was reserved for the intra-Western world. My study shows how Lin Yutang, in 1935, defied the restrictions of the symmetrical model and implemented symmetrical cultural internationalism--reciprocal cultural exchange with the Western world--with incredible success. My study also contributes a new analytical framework for cross-cultural studies by analyzing the ideology and methodology of Lin Yutang's framework from the perspective of cultural internationalism. Moreover, this study traces the origin of Lin's framework to one of the New Culture paradigms conceived by Hu Shi and Zhou Zuoren.Item The Browning of the All Blacks: Pacific Peoples, Rugby, and the Cultural Politics of Identity in New Zealand(2008-05-07) Grainger, Andrew David; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation I examine how the complex, and often contradictory, discourses of being a 'Pacific person' are played out in, and through, New Zealand rugby. In particular, I interrogate how these discourses--manifest in various forms of public expression--structure, regulate, and, potentially, challenge traditional notions of nationality. In the opening chapters I first explore how liberal values and the goals of inclusion and pluralism have been an important part of defining New Zealand identity. In this regard Pacific peoples are playing an ever-more important role. I suggest, however, that an emergent 'Pacific multiculturalism' actually reinforces white cultural power. It also masks the way national belonging has been racialized in New Zealand, and the role rugby has, and continues to, play in inscribing the Otherness of Pacific peoples. What I suggest is needed is alternative or resistant models of 'culture.' In the concluding chapters I turn to the notion of diaspora as one potential alternative. Rearticulating the insightful ideas of Paul Gilroy in my penultimate chapter, I argue that diaspora can be productively adapted as a model to comprehend the lives, travels, migrations, and significances of Pacific athletes. I suggest they provide important diasporic resources for rearticulating modes of belonging that exceed national boundaries. Methodologically, this project is a discursive analysis of the public discourses of Pacificness circulating in a diverse range of documentary, literary, and media sources. I suggest that this critical analysis of the performance, practice, and institutions of Pacific/New Zealand rugby provides a unique context within which to examine the ensemble of discourses and forces by which identity is understood and produced, and through which the Pacific subject in constituted. My hope is that, in accord with Gilroy (1993), this analysis both identifies and actively produces alternatives to divisive discourses of national and ethnic absolutism. That is, my goal is to produce a text which not only critiques, but offers strategies of resistance to, the practices, structures, and ideologies of exclusion.Item Bringing the Inside Out: Health, Personality, Politics, and the Tragedy of Lin Biao(2007-05-09) Luna, Adrian; Gao, James; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The following study is a close scrutiny of Lin Biao. This study will focus on Lin Biao's private life during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969). This study argues that Lin suffered from two distinct personality disorders: schizoid personality disorder and social anxiety disorder. After assessing the private behavior of Lin Biao and how the two disorders disabled Lin, this study will then move to illustrate the consequential enabling affect the two disorders had on Lin Biao's wife, Ye Qun. Thereafter, this study will reexamine several key cases that occurred immediately prior to and during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969) where Lin Biao is typically portrayed as being deeply involved. The conclusions are that Lin suffered from two distinct disorders, the disorders had an enabling affect on Ye Qun, and that Lin is a tragic figure, as he was placed in a political position that he could not appropriately administer under Chairman Mao.Item The Construction of U.S. Camptown Prostitution in South Korea: Trans/Formation and Resistance(2006-11-28) Lee, Na Young; Kim, Seung-kyung; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the historical construction and transformation of U.S. camptown prostitution (kijich'on prostitution) in South Korea. Wrought by Japanese colonialism, U.S. military occupation, national division, and the Korean War, camptown prostitution has been historically constructed and reconstructed within a complex web of dynamic power relations between/among nation-states, subjects, and NGOs. This is a study of U.S. camptown prostitution, however, which is not just about military prostitution. Rather, it is a study of the power dynamics inherent in the material basis and the discursive formations that make the phenomenon, kijich'on prostitution, substantial. As such, this study analyzes the multiple intersections of structures of power that constitute the kijich'on. The purpose of this study is 1) to provide a geneology to explain the socio-historical phases of camptown prostitution, 2) to gauge the impacts of inter-state relations, U.S. military policy, and (inter)national policies on the kijich'on and kijich'on prostitution, 3) to trace the roles and activities of Korean NGOs and women's organizations with regard to kijich'on prostitution, and finally 4) to understand the triangular relationship among the nation-states, women subjects, and movement organizations in (re)constructing kijich'on prostitution as both material reality and symbolic metaphor. Thus, the research questions at the center of this dissertation are directed towards four themes: historicizing kijich'on prostitution, understanding the role of the nation-states and NGOs in the process of construction and transformation of the kijich'on, deconstructing the policies that have impacted kijich'on prostitution and the women's movement against kijich'on prostitution. In order to answer these questions, this study employs multiple methods of gathering information and analysis, including archival research, participant observation, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis. Utilizing gender as a crucial analytical category, this dissertation contributes not only to an understanding of camptown prostitution, but also to the theoretical conceptualization of military prostitution, feminist radical theories of gender, race, and nation, and the trans/national feminist movements.Item Learning New Painting from Japan and Maintaining National Pride in Early Twentieth Century China, with Focus on Chen Shizeng (1876-1923)(2006-07-14) Lai, Kuo-Sheng; Kuo, Jason C; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the early twentieth century, many Chinese painters went to Japan to study. This dissertation argues that, despite learning from Japan, these artists sought to create a better future for Chinese painting. They did not desire to create a single kind of "Eastern painting" with their Japanese counterparts. The Chinese had long claimed a kind of cultural superiority, called Sino-centrism, which did not diminish in the early twentieth century. The Japanese, however, developed a kind of thinking termed pan-Asianism, in which Asia was considered a unity, and Japan, its leader. Because of this difference, the similarities between Chinese art and Japanese art in the early twentieth century cannot be interpreted as the emergence of an "Asian art" because the Chinese did not endorse Japanese pan-Asianism. Li Shutong was one of the first Chinese painters to visit Japan to learn Western-style painting. Gao Jianfu, founder of the Lingnan School, went to Japan to learn painting and returned with the style known as Nihonga, a synthesis of traditional Japanese painting and Western-style painting. Chen Shizeng was a traditional painter of the scholar class. He also went to Japan to study. But he studied natural history, not painting. Chen Shizeng was most active during the May Fourth Movement of the late 1910s and early 1920s, when radicals wanted to abandon traditional Chinese culture. They called for a total adoption of Western culture. Although Chen Shizeng was open-minded to Western culture, he chose to defend traditional Chinese literati painting. His translation of Japanese scholar Ōmura Seigai's essay The Revival of Literati Painting was part of this defense. Chen Shizeng was strongly influenced by his teacher Wu Changshuo (1844-1927). He was inspired also by other great Chinese painters of the past, and he adapted some Western methods that he learned in Japan. However, the Japanese influence in his painting should not be interpreted as his attempt to create an "Eastern art" in collaboration with Japanese painters.Item China's Smiling Face to the World: Beijing's English-Language Magazines in the First Decade of the People's Republic(2005-12-13) Lazarick, Leonard; Gao, James Z.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the 1950s, the People's Republic of China produced several English-language magazines to inform the outside world of the remarkable transformation of newly reunified China into a modern and communist state: People's China, begun in January 1950; China Reconstructs, starting in January 1952; and in March 1958, Peking Review replaced People's China. The magazines were produced by small staffs of Western-educated Chinese and a few experienced foreign journalists. The first two magazines in particular were designed to show the happy, smiling face of a new and better China to an audience of foreign sympathizers, journalists, academics and officials who had little other information about the country after most Western journalists and diplomats had been expelled. This thesis describes how the magazines were organized, discusses key staff members, and analyzes the significance of their coverage of social and cultural issues in the crucial early years of the People's Republic.Item The Political Struggles of the Ulama of Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband: Identifying and Operationalizing the Traditionalist Approach to Politics(2005-12-13) Hamid, Myra; Glass, James; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This paper uses the example of the political struggles of the religious scholars (ulama) of Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband, a highly influential Islamic seminary founded in North India in the 19th century in the wake of Muslim defeat in the Mutiny of 1857 against the British, to identify the salient features of the traditionalist approach to politics and examine how this approach can be operationalized. The paper compares the traditionalist orientation to politics, which the school at Deoband and the movement that emerged from there came to represent, with modernist and fundamentalist/Islamist approaches. It proposes that the understudied but extremely important traditionalist paradigm provides the basis for more creative, balanced, fruitful, and Islamically authentic political engagement than either of the two opposing trends popular in the Muslim world today.