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Description
This dissertation will examine particular aspects of Yuan and Qing dynasty Chinese art historiography and argue that Chinese artistic creation is built on a transreligious and transethnic aesthetic, rather than an aesthetic centered on a single unitary culture. My project has two primary goals. The first is to propose that transreligious and transethnic factors fundamentally altered Chinese aesthetics, and discuss specifically what those changes were. The second goal of this dissertation is to evaluate the importance of interdisciplinary research approaches — including literature, ceremonial traditions, religious scriptures, and multiethnic material culture — to the study of art history, and specifically to non-Han Chinese art historiography. By studying four artists of different ethnic backgrounds — Uyghur (Gao Kegong, 1248–1310), Nepali (Anige, 1245–1306), Manchu (Manggūri, 1672–1736) and Mongol (Fashishan, 1753–1813) — this dissertation intends to answer several questions: how did these artists’ native cultural and religious aesthetics influence their artworks? Might further examination of the transethnic and transreligious aspects of later Imperial artistic production bring new focus to previously unnoticed aspects of Chinese art? And, on the individual level, what new insights can be uncovered when art historians consider the works of a non-Han Chinese artist from these transethnic and transreligious perspectives? The materials used for this research include a close visual study of artworks from the Rubin Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
ContributorsAIERKEN, YIPAER (Author) / Brown, Claudia (Thesis advisor, Committee member) / Berger, Patricia (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This dissertation explores the concept of “Pacing the Void” (buxu 步虛) in Daoist scripture and ritual in relation to the Chinese literary tradition from early medieval China through the Tang dynasty. While the term generally connotes the act of ascending to the heavens, it took on varying layers of meaning throughout history, negotiated against the backdrop of new Daoist revelations, historical conditions, and the literary tradition. In part I, I examine early Daoist scriptures, both those of the Shangqing 上清 (Upper Clarity) and Lingbao 靈寶 (Numinous Treasure) traditions, to trace how the concept took shape in these works. The concept originated in Shangqing scriptures, which associate buxu with music and verse performed by the gods on momentous occasions. In Lingbao scriptures, buxu specifies the gods’ regular ritualized ascent up the Jade Capitoline Mountain (Yujing shan 玉京山). A distinct hymnal form, a series of ten verses, also emerged in Lingbao scriptures. Likely first intended for personal cultivation, these hymns were later adapted for communal ritual, in which priests embodied the scriptural doctrine in their performance, reenacting the heavenly precedent on the mundane stage. Part II explores how later writers adapted the Lingbao buxu hymnal form for various purposes and how they understood the idea of “Pacing the Void.” Yu Xin 庾信 composed a series of buxu poems in the Northern Zhou as a commentary on the religious and political scene of the period. Wu Yun 吳筠, writing in the mid 8th century, adapted the buxu hymn as part of his efforts to make Daoist cultivation and transcendence legible for a literati audience. Other Tang dynasty poets transformed buxu into a poetic trope, filtering their experience of Daoist ritual and music through more standard literary associations. By focusing on these writings in their social and historical context, I demonstrate how the concept of buxu, as scriptural doctrine, ritual form, and literary trope, evolved over this time, became embedded in the literary tradition, and captured the imagination of poets and rulers for centuries after its origin.
ContributorsFeezell, Tyler (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R. (Thesis advisor) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Morrow Williams, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The hero Sarutobi Sasuke (literally, “monkey-jump Sasuke”) is one of the most popular Japanese literary characters of the twentieth century. The Tachikawa Bunko book series released in the 1910’s told the story of the samurai Sasuke, who used magic and trickery to defeat his foes. The character garnered so much interest that many other writers wrote their own books, manga, and stories about Sasuke, and filmmakers went on to adapt his story to the big screen throughout the twentieth century. Sarutobi Sasuke’s influence is so wide in Japan that he still maintains some level of relevance in Japan today. From the postwar period onward, however, modern academic and non-academic writers and media figures in both the West and Japan have advanced two controversial claims: first, that Sarutobi Sasuke was either real, or based on a real person, and second, that Sarutobi Sasuke has always been a “ninja.” By investigating the Tachikawa Bunko series that popularized the character of Sarutobi Sasuke, this thesis surveys the evidence available on both of these claims. Firstly, this thesis explores the fact that though there are a wide range of sources available that show Sarutobi Sasuke is a completely fictional character, many authors still write about the character as though he were a historical figure. Secondly, the thesis examines the sources that have characterized Sarutobi Sasuke as a “ninja” by historicizing the idea of “ninja,” which is a term that was never actually used in the original Tachikawa Bunko series to describe Sasuke. Evidence suggests that Sarutobi Sasuke was only ever understood to be a “ninja” after the ninja boom of the 1960’s, and that many of these claims characterizing Sarutobi Sasuke as a ninja have come from the anachronistic misinterpretation of the Japanese words ninjutsu and ninjutsu-tsukai. This thesis thus tells the story of the origins of an often overlooked, yet important fictional character of the twentieth century, while also highlighting a strain of Orientalism, as described by Said, in English-language ninja writing. These issues have led popular writers to ignore Japanese literary creativity and treat all Japanese texts as literal history.
ContributorsHyman, Daniel Dylan (Author) / Tuck, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Hedberg, William (Committee member) / Kroo, Judit (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This dissertation examines neoliberal discourse’s construction and its impact represented in short stories published during the late 1980s and 1990s in the northern and central part of Mexico. Focusing primarily on short stories by authors Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, Rafael Saavedra, Oscar de la Borbolla, and Rosario Sanmiguel, this study analyzes how re-imagined, in their literary texts, the immediate aftermath of neoliberal policies in Mexican’s society, economy, culture, and politics. By re-imagining neoliberalism, I propose that each text creates a dialogue with and a juxtaposition of reality to the rhetoric constructed by the state apparatuses; and, at the same time, by exploring Mexicans’ daily lives, each text offers a different perspective on neoliberalism’s effects on them. Each chapter draws on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to provide a complete understanding of the origin of neoliberalism, its discursive evolution, its implementation in Mexico, its benefits and consequences, and its influence on the transformation of language, culture, politics, and feminism. Part I discusses the linguistic transformations on the Mexican side of the border after the arrival of neoliberal policies in areas of commerce, as presented in the short stories by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite and Rafael Saavedra. The conclusion of this analysis is that a kind of transitory bilingualism has emerged and, eventually, has become part of Tijuana’s linguistic identity. Part II explores the transformation of Mexico City represented in the book of Ucronías of Oscar de la Borbolla. In this part, I propose that these texts are ucronías políticas (political uchronies) –hybrid, humoristic news reports– that subvert neoliberal discourse by staging the negative effects of neoliberalism through the portrayal of marginalized spaces to make visible those forgotten by an apparently progressive rhetoric. Part III presents a rereading through an economic lens of Callejón Sucre y otros relatos, by Rosario Sanmiguel. The primary argument is that although the short stories in this book present feminist characters, some of them are neoliberal feminists. Neoliberal feminists are women in a privileged position of agency and empowerment; they can or need not accept patriarchal norms, and some characters in these stories decide to accept them.
ContributorsHernandez, Alfredo (Author) / Volek, Emil (Thesis advisor) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Rosales, Jesus (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Small fires in Black American women’s literature have been briefly and disconnectedly studied by numerous scholars. No scholar thus far, however, has aggregated the multitudinous symbolic presentations of small fire in Black American women’s literature. This thesis performs a literary criticism of several texts written by several Black American female authors, all of which contain deliberate uses of small fire. The conclusive product is a revelation of the way small fire functions within Black American women’s literature to imitate the cycle of the legendary phoenix—birth, flight, self-combustion, and rebirth—and to catalyze the multi-generational uplift that exists for Black American women who indefatigably create personal, domestic, and community renewal, and who undauntedly combat systems of racial, sexual, economic, and patriarchal oppression.
ContributorsBrooks, Jeremy David (Author) / Brown, Lois (Thesis advisor) / Clarke, Deborah (Committee member) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Selected Poets’ Lived Experience of the Seventh Avenue Streetscape Project: A Phenomenological Study of Meaning and Essence addresses a specific public art project. Public art has a long history of eluding a definition of consensus, and it continues to do so. There is very little in the way of accountability for its effect, and most of what is available is anecdotal. The Seventh Avenue Streetscape (SAS) is no exception in that no follow-ups were ever asked of the community, even though the Melrose Neighborhood District has been revitalized and rescued from its decline with the inception of SAS. It brought residents and business owners together in coordination with the City of Phoenix and Arizona State University to create the unique infrastructure of SAS that presents itself as a sheltered bus stop/outdoor gallery displaying art and poetry on large platform panels to the delight of the citizenry. The purpose of this study was to explore, describe, and interpret the meaning given to the Seventh Avenue Streetscape by poets who participated in that project. The central question guiding the research was “What is the essential meaning and understanding of the lived experience given by poets who participated in the Seventh Avenue Streetscape project and its creation?”
The study was conducted through the qualitative research tradition, guided specifically by the theoretical base known as phenomenology. Phenomenology lends itself particularly well to the study of phenomena such as SAS as its focus is finding the essential in the “everyday” through the expression of lived experience. My primary data source were the poets themselves, those whose poems had been selected to be publicly presented. Once cleared by the Institutional Review Board, my method of data collection involved one-on-one recorded interviews. The interviews were then transcribed and subjected to various methods of data reduction, including coding and themeing the data from the thick description given by the poet-participants. The data revealed patterns among the poets which could be divided into six essential themes, confirming a plausible description and interpretation of SAS. Recommendations included conducting the same study again with the remaining qualifying SAS poets and comparing the results.
ContributorsLanier, Nadine Lynn (Author) / Maring, Heather (Thesis advisor) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Committee member) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Criminal detection emerged as a significant literary element in mid-Victorian Realist and Sensation novels. These fictional detectives, much like their 20th-century successors, promised clarity and resolution as they solved crimes, caught criminals, helped victims, and explored complex narrative and social connections as they did so. However, while these fictional detectives may solve crimes and mysteries, they rarely provide the narrative resolution of later fictional detectives.This dissertation examines how Victorian Realist and Sensation fiction demonstrate how corrupt individuals and institutions legitimize themselves through displaced responsibility. The literature does this by subverting the expectations of the detective plot: those the detective pursues as criminals may be the real victims when the real villains – those in privileged and protected positions – persist without official consequence. Rather than provide narrative resolution, fictional detectives contribute to and reinforce these legitimizations while the literature displays how corrupt characters exploit their positions in social institutions, such as the law, the family, philanthropy, etc., that contribute to the victimization and criminalization of other characters. The literature responds to these conditions with the formation of care communities, or smaller social organizations where individuals can attend to these needs of one another. Rather than strike out at these corrupt social institutions’ pretenses of innocence, care communities provide havens for the abused and opportunities at recuperation, repentance, and forgiveness. Demonstrations of the ability or inability of detection, care, and social corruption to resolve social problems provide nuanced representations and the consequences of providing help or harm.
This study focuses on 3 novels with investigative plots. First, Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3) as an example of Realist fiction that critiques how legal and philanthropic endeavors can be exploitative and contribute to crime and the social problems they are designed to prevent. Second, Ellen Wood’s East Lynne (1861) as an example of Sensation fiction and how mismanaged domestic spaces can lead to crime and wrongdoing in other social spaces. Third, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (1868) as an example of Sensation fiction turning into detective fiction that considers how ingrained social and cultural values and practices initiate and perpetuate crime and wrongdoing.
ContributorsHatch, Michael P. (Author) / Bivona, Dan (Thesis advisor) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Broglio, Ron (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Screenplays and novels are similar in that they both tell a story. However, the two are not the same. Screenplays and novels have a significantly different function and purpose from one another. With that being said, this thesis conducts a register analysis to discover the prominent linguistic differences in each register. Overall, this study finds that novels and screenplays do in fact have linguistic features that differ from one another. The linguistic features distinctive to a screenplay are: shorter sentences, more non-standard sentences, and more nouns. Longer sentences, independent clause coordination constituents, phrasal constituents, and reduced predicate adjective phrases are the linguistic features present in the novel.
ContributorsLuna, Elaina (Author) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Thesis advisor) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
In Arizona: A History, Thomas E. Sheridan writes that Arizona isn't something real but "only a set of arbitrary lines on a map." I disagree with that statement. Writers such as Jane Allison, Jerome Stern, and Peter Turchi have all written craft books analyzing the structures of narrative, and it could be argued that at the core of their individual arguments is the shared sentiment that it is the shape of something which gives it meaning. As such, those "arbitrary lines" which Sheridan dismisses have created geographical perimeters in the real world, which have fostered historical, cultural, political, ideological, familial, artistic, and literary perimeters as well. So arbitrary or not, those lines have created boundaries which have given real meaning to people's lives. This dissertation attempts to explore the lives shaped by Sheridan's arbitrary lines. Based on what historian Robert L. Dorman calls the "localist west" in Hell of a Vision: Regionalism and the Modern American West, this dissertation uses fiction to investigate the state of Arizona as its own unique yet limited knowledge apparatus, specifically how the state's mostly forgotten cowboy heritage, both real and mythic, serves as an underlying ontological practice for part of its population. The stories presented here attempt to be reflective of the metaphysics for that population and are constructed from an assemblage of the region's territorial-to-present history, literature, conservative politics, economies, racial discourses and populations, and its arid yet diverse desert ecologies. There's also some Waylon Jennings. While this work examines existence within a limited Arizona population--mostly lower to middle class conservative white folk living within the mythos and realities of the Western tradition and its associated spectrums of masculinity--it does not prove a thesis for it. I did not collect quantifiable data or make conclusions about how and why a particular population acts they way it does. Instead, I've simply tried to undertake what Milan Kudera writes in The Art of the Novel is the writer's purpose, to be an "explorer of existence."
ContributorsDanielson, Jonathan James (Author) / Broglio, Ron (Thesis advisor) / Irish, Jenny (Thesis advisor) / Ison, Tara (Committee member) / Rios, Alberto (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This thesis explores how to read the American experimental novel VAS: An Opera inFlatland, a collaboration between Steve Tomasula and graphic designer Stephen Farrell.
VAS demonstrates how twenty-first-century tools and technology can construct a
narrative that resembles the human experience shaped by contemporary tools and
technology. VAS includes not only a conventional story line but also narrative elements
outside the story line, such as collage material and a multimodality, all of which
contribute to the novel’s emerging, posthuman narrative. The reading experience of the
conventional novel is immersive; experiments with the novel disrupt the immersion of
reading, and this disruption produces a presence: the reader becomes conscious of
reading, of narrative structure, of the broken conventions, and even of the novel itself.
Martin Heidegger’s analyses of tools and technology can elucidate how novels produce
presence by breaking conventions, for conventions are like tools, and broken tools, such
as a broken hammer, become present to the user that was a moment ago immersed in
their use. The reading of VAS that results is two-fold: (1) a stylistic comparison of VAS
and This Is Not a Novel by David Markson, two experimental novels that differ in the
technology used and represented and, ultimately, the presence made, and (2) a reading of
VAS that considers how the novel makes present its narrative dimensions, out of which
emerges the novel’s narrative.
ContributorsStewart, Nicholas J (Author) / Hope, Jonathan (Thesis advisor) / Broglio, Ron (Committee member) / Holbo, Christine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022