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The frustrations of heaven's fragrance: an analysis and translation of Guan Hanqing's Qian dayin zhichong xie tianxiang

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This thesis examines the play Qian Dayin zhichong Xie Tianxiang, written by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) playwright Guan Hanqing (c.1225-1302). The first chapter of this paper provides brief background information about northern style Yuan drama (zaju) as well as a plot summary and notes about the analysis and translation. Through…

This thesis examines the play Qian Dayin zhichong Xie Tianxiang, written by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) playwright Guan Hanqing (c.1225-1302). The first chapter of this paper provides brief background information about northern style Yuan drama (zaju) as well as a plot summary and notes about the analysis and translation. Through a close reading of the play, I hope to illustrate how the play's complicated ending and lack of complete resolution reveals why it has received relatively little attention from scholars who have previously discussed other strong, intelligent female characters in Guan Hanqing's plays. The second chapter of this thesis includes translation of the play that is comprised of a wedge preceding the four acts. Before each act of the play is a critical introduction and analysis of the act to follow. Although many of Guan Hanqing's plays have been translated into English, this play has never been translated.
ContributorsByrnes, Kelli (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Zou, Yu (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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A search for man's meaning: examining manhood from the margins of gender and orientation

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While numerous studies have examined the nature of masculinity, scholars seldom seek to determine the meaning of manhood or to explore which types of individuals are culturally permitted to call themselves men. One scholarly approach suggests that the meaning of a cultural category can best be illuminated through examining marginalized…

While numerous studies have examined the nature of masculinity, scholars seldom seek to determine the meaning of manhood or to explore which types of individuals are culturally permitted to call themselves men. One scholarly approach suggests that the meaning of a cultural category can best be illuminated through examining marginalized examples within that category. Based on this assumption, this project illuminates cultural understandings of manhood in the United States by examining the experience of men within two marginalized categories--gay and transsexual--who have often found themselves fighting for the right to call themselves men at a time when hegemonic assumptions about manhood have required that one had been designated male at birth, claims a heterosexual orientation, and exhibits characteristics that are stereotypically masculine. For gay men who were born male, social marginalization could result from one's gay orientation as well as from a perceived lack of masculine traits. For some transsexual gay men, all three of the traditional markers of manhood may be absent or deemed insufficient. This scenario calls into question what it is that all men have in common if the concept of manhood is to be associated with any stable definition. Within rhetorical analysis, the concept of textual fragmentation suggests that a rhetorical critic performs an analysis of a text by examining dense textual fragments; the critic's audience members then produce what they perceive to be a finished discourse in their own minds. Along these lines, this project illuminates the concept of manhood by examining dense textual fragments found within mass media representations and personal narratives, and concludes that one's manhood is determined based on the degree to which one identifies with others who call themselves men. Therefore, manhood can best be framed, not as a specific identity with a stable definition, but as a body of intersecting identifications specific to a particular cultural location and time period. As such, it is linked to cultural systems of power and oppression, illustrating that the claim to manhood as an identity is a rhetorical act that is not free from controversy.
ContributorsBooth, Ewan Tristan (Author) / Brouwer, Daniel C. (Thesis advisor) / Martinez, Jacqueline M. (Committee member) / Fisher, Jill A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Post-oppositional queer politics and the non-confrontational negotiation of queer desires in contemporary China

Description
The meaning of sexuality is not only specific to particular time periods in history; it is also culturally specific. Informed by transnationalism, queer of color critique, postcolonial feminism, and public sphere theory, my dissertation investigates the complex dynamic between what I call "Chinese queer subjects" and their bio-genetic families in…

The meaning of sexuality is not only specific to particular time periods in history; it is also culturally specific. Informed by transnationalism, queer of color critique, postcolonial feminism, and public sphere theory, my dissertation investigates the complex dynamic between what I call "Chinese queer subjects" and their bio-genetic families in a time of queer globalization. By centering the life experiences of Chinese queer subjects through interviewing and rhetorical analysis, this project intervenes in the teleological discourse of "coming out" that is circulated both in transnational LGBT movements and within academia. Through a materialist analysis of the "coming out" discourse in mainland China, I reveal why and how the discourse of "coming out" is prioritized in Chinese LGBT movements in order to foster a domestic queer market in mainland China. Of most significance to this project are the two non-confrontational strategies that some Chinese queer subjects employ to navigate the tension between family and sexuality: first, the reticent "coming with" strategy that engages the home space with queer desires, transforming the heteronormative family institution from within, toward a more livable queer life; second, the xinghun strategy, a marriage arrangement that many Chinese gay men and lesbian women partake in as a means of being gay or lesbian without exiting the family kinship system. The practices of reticent "coming with" and xinghun challenge the binary between family and sexuality, suggesting that queerness can emerge and thrive without exiting the (heterosexual) family; they give us some concrete examples of what AnaLouise Keating calls "post-oppositional politics" among some Chinese queer subjects.
ContributorsHuang, Shuzhen (Author) / Brouwer, Daniel C. (Thesis advisor) / Quan, H. L. T. (Committee member) / Martinez, Jacqueline (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Assembling global (non)belongings: settler colonial memoryscapes and the rhetorical frontiers of whiteness in the US Southwest, Christians United for Israel, and FEMEN

Description
Scholars of rhetoric, critical intercultural communication, and gender studies have offered productive analyses of how discourses of terror and national security are rooted in racialized juxtapositions between "East" against "West, or "us" and "them." Less frequently examined are the ways that the contemporary marking of terrorist bodies as "savage" Others…

Scholars of rhetoric, critical intercultural communication, and gender studies have offered productive analyses of how discourses of terror and national security are rooted in racialized juxtapositions between "East" against "West, or "us" and "them." Less frequently examined are the ways that the contemporary marking of terrorist bodies as "savage" Others to whiteness and western modernity are rooted in settler colonial histories and expansions of US and Anglo-European democracy. Informed by the rhetorical study of publics and public memory, critical race/whiteness studies, and transnational and Indigenous feminisms, this dissertation examines how memoryscapes of civilization and its Others circulate to shape geopolitical belongings in three cases: (1) public memory places in the US Southwest; (2) pro-Israel rhetorics enacted by the US organization Christians United for Israel; and (3) the embodied and mediated protests of European feminist organization FEMEN. In bringing these seemingly unrelated cases together as elements of a larger assemblage, I draw attention to their symbolic and material connectivities, examining the racialized, gendered, national, and imperial logics that move between these sites to shore up the frontiers of whiteness. Specifically, I argue for conceptualizing whiteness as a global assemblage that territorializes through settler colonial memoryscapes that construct "modern" national and global citizen-subjects as those deemed worthy of rights, protection, land, and life against the threatening bodies of Otherness seen to exist outside of the shared times and places of normative democratic citizenship. In doing so, I also examine, more broadly, how assemblage theory extends current approaches to studying rhetoric, public memory, and intercultural communication in global, trans
ational, and (post)colonial contexts.
ContributorsChevrette, Roberta (Author) / Brouwer, Daniel C. (Thesis advisor) / Leong, Karen J. (Committee member) / Hess, Aaron (Committee member) / Nakayama, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Space of Imagination, Beauty, and Romance: Yuan Sanqu’s Representation of Female Imagery of the Pleasure Quarters

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This dissertation explores the representation of female imagery associated with the Yuan pleasure quarters by examining a reservoir of Yuan sanqu. Previous scholarship has studied this topic using either historical material or zaju drama texts but has more or less ignored the voluminous corpus of sanqu. Furthermore, scholarly inquiries of…

This dissertation explores the representation of female imagery associated with the Yuan pleasure quarters by examining a reservoir of Yuan sanqu. Previous scholarship has studied this topic using either historical material or zaju drama texts but has more or less ignored the voluminous corpus of sanqu. Furthermore, scholarly inquiries of Yuan sanqu either have emphasized its development from the Song ci lyrical tradition or its colloquial features. In consequence, the complexity of sanqu as an independent literary genre has been neglected. Using the representation of female imagery of the pleasure quarters in Yuan sanqu as an entry point, on one hand, this dissertation examines the dynamics of this urban and textual space. On the other, it focuses on rarely-studied sanqu pieces and analyzes them in a new light. The pleasure quarters and the production of Yuan sanqu are closely related to each other. In particular, the pleasure quarters are both revealed through the creative process of sanqu and have established sanqu as a distinctive aesthetic experience. The first chapter will focus on women of the pleasure quarters from the perspective of their hierarchical distinctions in terms of beauty, performative nature, and desirability as companions. Chapter two discusses the representation of women of the pleasure quarters in Yuan sanqu. Distinctive from the exclusive focus on privileged outstanding courtesans in poetic and lyrical tradition, Yuan sanqu depicted women from different registers of pleasure quarters. Thus, the genre formulated a diverse picture of images, rhetoric, and modalities. Chapter three examines a major literary tradition mainly sustained by the Yuan sanqu tradition, which is the story of Shuang Jian and Su Xiaoqing. As one of the most important and widespread literary traditions at play during the Yuan, Yuan sanqu writers’ representation of this pleasure-quarters-based story manifests the fulness and diversity of Yuan sanqu as a distinctive literary genre. In the epilogue, I focus on a zaju script by Ma Zhiyuan and an anonymous song suite in relation to this story. By so doing, I intend to show how Yuan qu lyrics incorporated the poetic, lyrical, and dramatic traditions in a somewhat promiscuous way.
ContributorsChen, Tianjun (Author) / West, Stephen H (Thesis advisor) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Brown, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021