East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations by Author "Groppe, Alison"

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    Exhibiting Socialist Chineseness Abroad: PRC’s Audio-visual Propaganda in Cold War Hong Kong and Beyond, 1950s-1970s
    (University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Tao, Sabrina Y.; Groppe, Alison
    This dissertation investigates how socialist Chinese audiovisual productions (especially cinema) that incorporate folklore, regional, and traditional Chinese cultural elements after socialist reform were exported internationally to win the hearts and minds of diasporic Chinese audiences via the intermediary of Hong Kong in the early Cold War era. In contrast with previous conceptions on PRC’s domestic propaganda that highlight revolution and class struggle, my dissertation argues that “socialist Chineseness” was an alternative as it blurred revolutionary messages in its audiovisual representations and marketing strategies for the purpose of circumventing censorship from the British colonial government and to construct a benevolent image of the new PRC to global audiences. Muting overt political themes while still shadowed by ideologies of socialism and anti-colonialism, these audio-visual texts created a nostalgic space of “cultural China” that blurred boundaries between regions, nationhood, social class, political and cultural identifications. In the meantime, they also had anti-colonial and anti-capitalist stances and acted as a contesting discourse against pro-rightist and pro-American culture in Cold War East Asia. By tracing these long-neglected transnational cultural interactions, this study hopes to reexamine the national boundary of Chinese cinema, as PRC films in the early socialist era were circulated in the broader regions of the Sinosphere. Meanwhile, by building a bridge between PRC and Hong Kong studies, this study explores the role of Hong Kong as a cultural nexus for the PRC’s audiovisual propaganda overseas. The dissertation not only reexamines how China presented itself to the world historically, but also explores how the socialist bloc conducted and responded to the global cultural Cold War in the realm of “soft power.”
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    Harmony & Heterotopias: China's Ethnic Frontiers in the Literary Imagination
    (University of Oregon, 2013-10-03) Yang, Yuqing; Groppe, Alison
    My dissertation looks at the depiction of China's ethnic frontiers in contemporary Chinese literature in order to examine a range of responses to the state-envisioned ideals of Harmony propagated throughout PRC history. The Confucian texts of Datong, or Great Harmony, are embedded in Maoist utopian visions for moulding the natural and human worlds in anticipation of socialist modernity; the contemporary revival of the Datong ideal expresses China's desire to build a harmonious (hexie) society in the 21st century. In the world of fiction, China's borderlands, home to ethnic minorities, are often conceived of as idyllic lands brimming with the type of harmony that is absent in the imperfect actuality of the political center. These depictions have emerged as either direct reactions to grand narratives of progress or as continued attempts to create an audience that grows attentive to the alternative models of a good society inherited from and preserved by the traditions of minorities. I borrow Foucault's concept of "heterotopia" to analyze literary fantasies surrounding three minority regions -- the wilderness of the Inner Mongolian steppe as the cradle of the wolf totem, the Tibetan areas associated with mythical Shangri-La, and the homeland of the matrilineal Mosuo, known as the Country of Women, in Southwest China. My dissertation formulates and develops the thesis that the featured writers set heterotopias at the geographical and social periphery in order to imagine and reconfigure China's road to modernity in a fashion that paradoxically challenges and enriches the official discourse of utopianism. They withdraw from the grand schemes of Harmony by creating their own utopian visions. In the meantime, their quest for a spiritual asylum unveils the historical impact of socialist campaigns on minority regions and people. The textual construction of the three different minority areas both capitalizes on and revolutionizes the stereotypical image that has presented such places as backward and primitive. Instead, the texts my dissertation analyses offer a fantasy about how minority places deliver the spiritual, ecological, and gender-based harmony that complements and perhaps even surpasses the dominant political narrative, when describing the ideal interaction between individuals, society, and nature.
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    Life on the Move: Women's Migration and Re/making Home in Contemporary Chinese and Sinophone Literature and Film
    (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18) Hsieh, Hsin-Chin; Groppe, Alison
    My dissertation examines the transformation of family and the reinvention of home from migrant women’s perspectives as represented in contemporary Chinese and Sinophone literature and film. In the era of globalization, people are increasingly mobile both within and across borders, resulting in the reshaping of family structure and re-conceptualization of home. In this dissertation I contend that migration is closely related to family dynamics and that migration also facilitates women’s agency in transforming family structure, navigating cultural differences, and negotiating with local societies and nation-states. The Chinese concept of jia 家 can be translated into English as family, home or house, and “homeness” in the context of Chinese migration is particularly associated with a geographical origin, a dwelling, a settlement, or familial intimacy. In this regard, I argue that migration is a process which reflects tradition, modernity and transnationalism, yet it can move beyond the metanarrative of homeland and nationalism that is often promoted by patriarchal cultural producers. I treat home as a locally defined notion to offer an alternate understanding of women migrants’ localization rather than focusing on the myth of return to the homeland. Women’s transgression of the boundaries of the household and their movement to other geographical locales transform their gendered role within the family, inciting their agency in opposing patriarchy and nationalism and creating space within which to negotiate the challenges of gender inequity, cultural difference, and marginalization. In contrast with the male-centered grand narrative featuring nostalgia for the homeland, I find that tales of women migrants show their protagonists eagerly adapting to their host countries and embracing local experiences. Hence, my dissertation focuses on the literary and cinematic representation of women migrants in contemporary Chinese and Sinophone literary works, documentaries and fictional films and explores four types of movement: immigration to North America, multiple transnational movements, cross-Strait migration from Taiwan to China, and new marriage-based immigration in Taiwan. Analysis of these works will improve understanding of the transnational flow of populations, the contested notion of home in migration, as well as the ways in which place-based literary and cultural productions are influenced by real-world migration.
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    Museums in Chinese: Nationalism, Universalism, and the Chinese Museum
    (University of Oregon, 2022-02-18) Moore, Lee; Groppe, Alison
    The PRC museum is becoming a space for the construction of a national identity grounded in an ethnicized notion of Han Chineseness. This dissertation traces the origins of the museum in the Chinese-speaking world, exploring how the conceptualization of the museum shifted from the universal to the nationalistic mode. In the history chapters (Chapters II and III), I explore how both discursive and built museums were initially conceptualized in the universal mode, as epistemological spaces where knowledge was conceived of in universal terms, before moving to the nationalistic mode, where knowledge was understood to produce the Chinese nation. In Chapter IV, I examine how the museum is used to construct a Chineseness grounded in an ethnicized understanding of a Han Chinese identity by close reading two museums to elucidate the extent to which the nation is authorized as the sole subject of history in PRC museums.