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ABSTRACT This thesis aims to demonstrate the validity of political violence in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives as a reflection of the sociopolitical situation of immigrants and their descendants in the United States (U.S.). The thesis explores the various ways in which contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives present

ABSTRACT This thesis aims to demonstrate the validity of political violence in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives as a reflection of the sociopolitical situation of immigrants and their descendants in the United States (U.S.). The thesis explores the various ways in which contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives present the political violence in the U.S. towards Mexican and Peruvian immigrants and Chicanos and Peruvian Americans examining the intersections that exist between the resistance and violence discourses and its sociopolitical consequences. Although the topic of political violence has been previously studied in U.S. and Latin American narratives throughout its history, its analysis has been insufficiently explored as far as contemporary narratives of the XXI century are concerned. With this in mind, two texts will be used to study this discourse of violence in Chicano and Peruvian American literature: Alejandro Morales' "Pequeña nación" (2005) and Daniel Alarcón's "Guerra en la penumbra" (2005). The thesis examines the immigrant as a center of discourse exploring the conflict between them and the institutions or groups in power that instigate this political violence. The first chapter covers the socio historical background regarding Mexican and Peruvian migration flows to the United States in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The second chapter introduces "The Triangle of Violence" proposed by Norwegian mathematician and sociologist Johan Galtung as the basis for the theoretical framework and approach of this analysis. Chapter three analyzes the Chicano short story "Pequeña nación" by Alejandro Morales. The analysis of the Peruvian American short story "Guerra en la penumbra" by Daniel Alarcón follows in chapter four. The conclusion emphasizes the problem of political violence experienced by immigrants in the U.S. in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives and possible solutions contained therein, protesting a problem that can hinder immigration policy reforms and the defense of human rights.
ContributorsSifuentes, Ana (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / García-Fernández, Carlos J. (Thesis advisor) / Alarcon, Justo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-97) is often thought of as a rebellious figure within the eighteenth-century intellectual and literary landscape. His perceived rejection of nearly all aspects of Confucian values was so extreme that he was even dubbed a "sinner against the teachings of Confucius." This thesis examines six stories within

Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-97) is often thought of as a rebellious figure within the eighteenth-century intellectual and literary landscape. His perceived rejection of nearly all aspects of Confucian values was so extreme that he was even dubbed a "sinner against the teachings of Confucius." This thesis examines six stories within Yuan Mei's Zi buyu 子不語 (What Confucius Did Not Talk About) and, through close reading, shows how Yuan Mei utilizes each foreign group's physical traits and their ability to verbally and/or ethically communicate with the Chinese protagonist, in order to reflect their adherence to Confucian values and acceptance of Chinese imperial authority to arrange them along a spectrum of humanness that reflects the Chinese-foreign distinction. Furthermore, by examining each story in their historical and literary contexts, it is discovered that nearly every foreign group portrayed in Zi buyu is based on historical groups that actually existed on the periphery of the Qing empire, and that the different degrees of foreignness of each subject reflect each historical foreign group's acquiescence to or rebellion against the imperial authority of the Qing empire. Contrary to commonly held opinions, Yuan Mei's negotiation of foreignness demonstrates his own deep subscription to Confucian ethics and adherence to imperial order.
ContributorsCampos, Miles (Author) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young Kyun (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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My dissertation primarily investigates the vast literary corpus of “Qiantang meng”

錢塘夢 (A dream by Qiantang River, 1499, QTM hereafter), the earliest preserved

specimen of the Chinese vernacular story of the “courtesan” 煙粉 category, which

appears first in the mid-Hongzhi 弘治period (1488-1505). The story treats a Song

scholar Sima You 司馬槱 (?) who traveled

My dissertation primarily investigates the vast literary corpus of “Qiantang meng”

錢塘夢 (A dream by Qiantang River, 1499, QTM hereafter), the earliest preserved

specimen of the Chinese vernacular story of the “courtesan” 煙粉 category, which

appears first in the mid-Hongzhi 弘治period (1488-1505). The story treats a Song

scholar Sima You 司馬槱 (?) who traveled in Qiantang and dreamed of a legendary Su

Xiaoxiao 蘇小小, a well-educated and talented courtesan who supposedly lived during

the Southern Qi 南齊 (479-520). Fundamentally, I am concerned with how and why an

early medieval five-character Chinese poem, questionably attributed to Su Xiaoxiao

herself, developed across the later period of pre-modern Chinese literary history into an

extensive repertoire that retold the romantic stories in a variety of distinctive literary

genres: poems, lyric songs, essays, dramas, ballads, vernacular stories, miscellaneous

notes, biographical sketches, etc. The thematic interest of my research is to evaluate how

travel and dream experiences interactively form a mode whose characteristics could help

develop a clearer understanding of biji 筆記 (miscellaneous notes) as a genre which is

representational and presentational, exhibiting a metadramatic textual pastiche that

collects both fact and fiction. The timeless popularity of QTM storylines reflect and

express the trope of the “travel and dream” experience. This is something of a “living”

complex of elements through which a textual community in later generations can

reconstruct their authorial and cultural identity by encountering, remembering and

reproducing those elements in the form of autobiographical and biographical expression

of a desiring subject. Travel and dream experiences are cross-referenced, internally

dialogical, mutually infiltrating, and even metaphorically interchangeable. They are

intertwined to create a liminal realm of pastiches in which we can better examine how the

literati in the Yuan (1271-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties

formed their own views about a past which shapes and is shaped by both collective and

individual memory. Such retellings both construct and challenge our understanding of the

complex networks of lexical and thematic exchange in the colloquial literary landscape

during the late imperial period.
ContributorsWu, Siyuan (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Cutter, Robert Joe (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017