Theses - Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

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Controlled Access
Religious Beliefs and Rituals of Lay Believers in Guanzhong Stele Associations during the Fifth and Sixth Centuries
Wong, Junfu
During the fifth and sixth centuries, lay believers from diverse cultural backgrounds came together to form associations centred around the erection of religious stone stelae. Each of these stone stelae contains a fruitful corpus of epigraphic sources, providing direct access to the religious stele culture of lay believers. Dedicatory prayers capture the religious aspirations and motivations of lay believers, while the patronage registers document their names and titles. By conducting an investigation into these stele inscriptions, this research explores the religious beliefs and rituals of lay believers. Its first chapter explores the organisational structure of lay associations. Its second chapter extracts details from the dedicatory prayers to provide an exclusive picture of the production process of stone stelae. Continuing from the dedicatory prayers, the third chapter turns to explore the religious beliefs of lay believers, revealing their imagination and expectation of the afterlife, before examining their interpretations of the relationship between the religious traditions available to them. Finally, the fourth chapter dedicates itself to the possible reconstruction of the ritual scenes of lay believers, proposing a unique codicological reexamination of the patronage registers. Standing as a pioneering interdisciplinary study, this research integrates visual and verbal sources related to stone stelae. Its ultimate goal is to enrich the field by presenting a comprehensive exploration of the stele culture of lay believers.
Open Access
Al-Jāḥiẓ’s Treatises on the Imamate
Sánchez Sánchez, José Ignacio
Among the surviving writings of al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869), which address a wide variety of topics, there are several treatises dealing with the debates on the imamate held in the first decades on the third/ninth century. This PhD dissertation is devoted to the study of these treatises on the imamate in their entirety, not only of those sections which scholars have identified as part of a doctrine on the imamate or political theory. My research, rather than on the particular conclusions that al-Jāḥiẓ draws from his examination of the different opinions on this topic, will focus on the logic underlying al-Jāḥiẓ’s treatment of these polemics and the frame of reference to which he adheres. In this regard, I will argue that al-Jāḥiẓ’s analysis of the polemics and his own theories on the imamate are predicated upon two main interpretative paradigms: Shāfiʽite legal hermeneutics and Muʽtazilite epistemology. I shall analyse al-Jāhiẓ’s texts individually, by focusing on the particular arguments adduced by different religious groups, and on the two central ideas that underpin all these works: first, whether the duty of setting up an imam has been revealed in the Qurʾān and the *Sunna* or should be deduced by applying reason; second, the polemics concerning the duty of electing the imam. The findings of this research show that al-Jāḥiẓ’s treatment of the polemics on the imamate is systematic and entirely coherent, and that the apparent contradictions and oddities that scholars have found in his writings can be explained in terms of generic conventions. Al-Jāhiẓ argues that the revelation is silent concerning the imamate, and considers that this institution is necessary for the community -and a duty upon the elites- on the basis of Muʿtazilite epistemological and ethical principles.
Open Access
The Small Masorah: Genealogical Relationships in 112 Early Hebrew Bible Codices Based upon the Masorah Parva
Beiler, Vincent
The thesis consists of a study of the Tiberian Masorah parva of 112 early Hebrew Bible manuscripts. Most codices can be dated to the 10–12th centuries. In order to integrate the vast amount of data available, select subsections of the Masorah of these 112 manuscripts were collated, amounting to ca. 43,000 Masorah parva notes. The database that arose from this collation was then mined for similarities and differences between the manuscripts, with the goal of providing a stemma of early Hebrew Bible manuscripts. In the main, the Masorah parva data indicate that there is a central cluster of manuscripts that are to be highly regarded, and then a larger number of manuscripts that diverge in various ways, both large and small, from the centre nucleus. These data confirm the centrality of the Aleppo Codex and highlight the value of a number of additional codices that have heretofore been largely overlooked. It is also shown that many of the codices that scholars traditionally have relied upon are perhaps not the optimal MSS with which to begin research of the Tiberian Masorah. Additional subgroupings of manuscripts are also noted, particularly (a.) for a cluster of N. African manuscripts, (b.) for a cluster of codices that resemble the Cairo Codex, and (c.) for the manuscripts of Samuel b. Jacob. It is also demonstrated that the collection of Bible MSS in St. Petersburg, previously known to many as a scattered collection of leaves, is perhaps more substantial than has been realised. This is because many of the classmarks can be matched with other classmarks of the Firkovich collections, resulting in Bible manuscripts of much more substantial length. These classmark matches number nearly 400 and are set forth here for the first time.
Embargo
Linguistic Variation in MS 1751 Judaeo-Arabic Medical Manuscript of the Matenadaran Collection
Avetisyan, Ani
The thesis provides a comprehensive study of the linguistic features within the MS 1751 Judaeo-Arabic medical manuscript from the Matenadaran Collection, contextualized by comparing it to its Judaeo-Arabic, Arabic, and Garshuni variants. Detailed analyses underscore the linguistic complexity and depth of MS 1751, mapping its various orthographic, morphological, and syntactical patterns. Special emphasis is placed on distinct orthographic trends observed between 18th and 19th-century Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts, indicative of broader vernacular shifts, possibly influenced by the linguistic milieu of the Ottoman Empire. The study is also concerned with the textual criticism of the first Judaeo-Arabic composition of MS 1751, the *Nihāyat al-qaṣd fī ṣināʿat al-faṣd* (“The End of Search in the Art of Phlebotomy”) of Ibn al-Akfānī (1348AD). It highlights consistent transmission patterns and modifications observed across various versions of the composition in Garshuni, Judaeo-Arabic, and Arabic. Beyond a pure linguistic perspective, this research casts light on the evolution and spread of Jewish medical knowledge, meticulously shaped by intellectual influences from both Eastern and Western traditions. Jewish communities, especially during the Islamic Golden Age, served as custodians and interpreters of an expansive body of medical knowledge, merging Graeco-Roman insights with their own perspectives. Western regions, like Andalusia and Southern France, saw the emergence of a distinctive Jewish medical discourse, uniting Islamic and classical antiquity traditions.
Open Access
Books, Homilies, and Medicine: Sogdian Christians and Christian Networks along the Silk Roads
Sheridan, Daniel John
Along the trade routes of late antique and early medieval Eurasia, Sogdian Christians stood within a confluence of networks. As Sogdians, they belonged to a people recognized for maintaining one of the most expansive and renowned trading networks in history. On these so-called Silk Roads, Sogdian trading prowess reached its zenith during the first few centuries of the second half of the first millennium AD. As Christians, they possessed an additional identity, which also had tremendous geographic reach, membership in the wider Christian world. Given their access to both Sogdian trading networks and Christian circles, this study presents evidence of the regional and trans-regional impact of this particular standing of Sogdian Christians. In pursuing this line of inquiry, the long-distance nature of these affiliations invokes a wide range of fields of study. The present research chiefly focuses on Chinese primary sources, while also making needed comparisons with the Christian Sogdian and Syriac literary corpuses, among others. Consideration of material culture, particularly as concerns manuscripts, also features prominently in this study. Within the burgeoning scholarship on Christianity outside of the Roman empire, the high degree of Sogdian involvement in Christian activities along the Eurasian trade routes has occasionally been suspected but usually overshadowed by discussions of “Nestorian Christianity” or “Persian Christians.” This association with the Church of the East, based in Mesopotamia, is not surprising yet in many cases obscures a more nuanced reality. This study asserts Sogdian Christians had connections to wider Christian circles rather than access exclusively mediated through an East Syriac lens. Furthermore, in areas such as book technology and culture, medicine, and knowledge transmission more generally, this study shows how Sogdian Christians were instrumental not just in processes of transmission but exercised varying degrees of autonomy as adaptors and creators. By scrutinizing the evidence of Sogdian Christians and Christian networks along the Silk Roads, this study also speaks to the impact made by Christians in lands, whose previous Christian pasts have largely been forgotten. These Christians lived in places outside of the direct reach of Roman “Christian” power, therefore, the story of the influence of these particular Christians offers a more holistic understanding not just for the history of Christianity but also for the interrelated histories of the Sogdians, Central Asia and many others.
Open Access
The Power of a Tourney: Physical Competitions in Heian Japan
Runyan, Colton
My thesis discusses the social, political, and economic importance of organized physical competitions at the Heian court during the Heian period (794–1185) with an emphasis on the late tenth and early eleventh centuries when the frequency and importance of these physical competitions reached their zenith. I conducted this research by reading the thousands of extant court records and contemporary diary entries from the most powerful courtiers of their age detailing the many facets of physical competition in their time as well as contemporary and near-contemporary literature that includes scenes of physical competition. My work answers to what extent physical competitions were integral to Heian life; why that was the case; and challenges the lack of historiographical analysis in both anglophone and Japanese scholarship on the topic despite the prevalence of physical competitions in Heian society. The three physical competitions I use are sumo wrestling, horse racing, and archery. I describe the unique facets of each competition individually as well as the greater conclusions made from their congruous impact. Some individual examples include the relationship between the Annual Sumo Tournament and the capitulation of the provinces to the emperor, the boom of horse racing as a privately funded spectacle being due to one man’s singular love of horse racing, and how princes and elite courtiers regularly participated in archery competitions on top of the annual competition between the skilled archers in the guardhouses. When the three competitions are viewed together, the influence physical competitions had on the lives of courtiers from the highest ranks to the lowest can be seen. I examine the competitors, spectators, organizers, and hosts of these large spectatorial occasions as each group used physical competitions to further their careers, increase their livelihoods, and define their standing within the social pecking order. Finally on the macro level, my research adds to historiographical debates on the Heian period including political competition, courtier activity, personal agency, and privatization.
Embargo
Presidential, Post-Imperial and Personal: Envoy Diplomacy in Japan, 1960s-1980s
Garbagni, Giulia
This dissertation is a case-study-led analysis of the role of special envoys in Japanese postwar diplomacy based on multiarchival research in Japan, the UK, the US, and South Korea. It examines how and why, in the early postwar period, Japanese prime ministers often relied on trusted individuals with no diplomatic experience or oﬃcial aﬃliation as their personal ‘special envoys’ (technically, ‘executive agents’) – an informal, extra-institutional tool of diplomacy operating outside of established bureaucratic channels. By exploring the promises and pitfalls of ‘one man diplomacy’, it advances an innovative interpretation of envoy diplomacy as both a ‘post-imperial’ and a ‘presidential’ phenomenon: a holdover of imperial-era ways of conducting foreign policy as well as a stretch of prime ministerial power, channelling great power ambitions and aspirations of executive leadership over policy-making. Special envoys played a central (yet understudied) role in some of the most critical junctures of postwar Japanese history. This dissertation examines their role in the mediation of the Indonesia-Malaysia dispute of 1963-66, led by LDP vice-president Kawashima Shōjirō; the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from US military administration, negotiated by scholar Wakaizumi Kei; and the 1983 rapprochement with South Korea, liaised by business strategist Sejima Ryūzō. Special envoys – be they businessmen, lawmakers or scholars – challenged the two fundamental tenets of Japan’s postwar foreign policy: diplomatic restraint and bureaucratic control over policy-making. Being unconstrained by institutional accountability, formal process, and often even public scrutiny, they pursued an assertive diplomatic style and pushed the limits of prime ministerial authority in foreign policy. Envoy diplomacy offers a rare glimpse into the political fault lines that accompanied the self-definition of the postwar Japanese state, revealing the contested cleavages in defining Japan’s role in the world and the prerogatives of its political leadership in foreign policy. As late Premier Abe Shinzō’s ambitious vision for Japan’s international role (as a ‘tier one’ nation) and proactive leadership style (as a ‘diplomat in chief’) have shown, these questions remain at the forefront of Japan’s foreign policy debate to this day. It is by looking at the disruptive, unbridled diplomacy of special envoys that we can trace their genealogy back to the contested political arena of early postwar Japan.
Embargo
Creating the Leader-centred Modernity: the birth of the successor in North Korea
Roy, Ria
This dissertation examines the history of political succession in the professedly socialist state of North Korea. Against the backdrop of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the general disillusionment with socialist ideals, I examine how North Korea self-consciously bypassed the transience of the charisma of the leader predicted by Max Weber. Opposing the common view that academics in North Korea are hermetically sealed off from Western influences, I use original North Korean sources to examine how the intelligentsia, who were in fact well versed in Western political thought, engaged in a pan-societal project of creating a ‘successor’ for over three decades before the first succession in 1994. In particular, this dissertation examines how North Korean intellectuals’ pursuit of a Marxist-Leninist political, moral and social vision, one bearing the educational legacy of the Japanese Empire, carved out a pioneering space for a successor, in a manner quite unlike their Soviet and Chinese counterparts. This diverges from the previous treatment of the North Korean leadership succession as simply a return to a dynastic succession. This dissertation includes four chapters, divided into three themes: the origins of the North Korean intelligentsia; the making of the cultural sphere; and the birth of the successor. In Chapter 1, I focus on the birth of Kim Il Sung University, founded in 1946, and the origins of the intelligentsia in North Korea. Starting with the ‘twin birth’ of Seoul National University (the former Keijō Imperial University) in the South and Kim Il Sung University in the North in the same year, I trace the post-colonial origins of the intelligentsia who moved from the South to the North shortly after the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) issued its plan for restructuring Seoul National University. In Chapter 2, I examine the foundation of the Academy of Sciences in 1952 during the Korean War. The Academy of Sciences marked North Korea’s symbolic integration into the academic nexus of the Soviet revolutionary bloc. In Chapter 3, I focus on the sacralization of politics and the revolutionary themes adumbrated in the cultural sphere of North Korea, as the state weathered the reverberations of the 20th Party Congress in the Soviet Union. In Chapter 4, I examine the rise of Kim Jong-il in the cultural scene. In the absence of a legal-rational legitimation of the successor in the professedly socialist revolutionary state, I explore how the state skilfully ensured that the notion of the ‘successor’ would be first born in the cultural sphere, and then subsequently transmitted to the political and legal spheres. Eventually, I demonstrate how North Korean scholarship engaged with the rise of the successor from the early 1960s, preceding the first formal succession in 1994, by three decades. By exploring the relationship between the intellectuals, political leadership, and the academic debates that took place in North Korea, I explore how the very quest for an egalitarian, revolutionary ideal paradoxically transitioned into an illiberal modernity centred around the primacy of the leader and the novel space of a successor in the revolution. I hope my work contributes to our understanding of the history of socialism, political resilience, illiberal modernity, and political religion, shedding light on the challenges of both the past and the present.
Open Access
Independent Content Creators Online: A Paradigm Shift in Film Aesthetic and Production, the Case of Israel
Rosen, Ido
The emergence of Web 2.0, along with online video platforms, and the widespread of social networks, have enabled new forms of creation where content makers no longer need a reputation, funding, broadcasting apparatuses, marketing deals, or distribution systems to reach their audiences. The ability to dispense with mediators upends the traditional hierarchy and leads to what is often perceived as a pluralistic free market where artists connect directly with the viewers, whose approval/disapproval impacts straightforwardly their careers. The revolution does not have to do with mere logistics. The new abilities freed the creators from the need to conform to the norms in aspects such as storytelling, genre, humor, and aesthetics. The artistic output generated by these new technologies has revolutionized typical strategies in the substructure of the entertainment industry and imposed radical changes on the cultural and social superstructure. Today we may be witnessing no less than a fundamental paradigm shift in the notion of art itself. In Israel, which stands at the center of this research, such names as Sugar Zaza, Bne-El, Nitza and Lechem, Dudu Faruk, Messiah, Arutz Hakibud, and Tutit have enjoyed a broad loyal fan base and garnered the enthusiastic attention of the traditional media. After they achieved their fame online, in the last few years, this first generation of online content creators has made a transition to prime-time television and cinema. Their careers have a strong inseparable connection to social networks, especially Facebook, which has been the most popular one in Israel. A few years before the age of social networks, there have already been a handful of successful artists who started their careers by creating on and for the internet. However, unlike them, the Facebook-launched creators form a consolidated group. They share distinct style, aesthetic, humor, and artistic agenda. Therefore, their works can even be seen as a new digital wave. There is another significant difference - the earlier individuals who began their careers on the web were spotted by talent agents from traditional media that sponsored and assisted them to reach the mainstream. However, the independent creators from the social networks era became well known among the general public by themselves, through organic viral spread, before traditional platforms opened their gates to them. Now that their path to glory has reached an embrace by mainstream culture, the time is right to examine this phenomenon in depth. In this dissertation, a thorough analysis of prominent works by various new media creators will expose significant changes in culture in general and Israeli culture specifically. It will shed light on a new generation whose groundbreaking works have not yet received scholarly attention, despite proving themselves as highly influential. It will present and explain how they are reforming and designing the aesthetics, business models, and typical themes of moving images. It will identify how they set an alternative to traditional media, but also where they fail to do so. This examination enables to deduce substantial socio-anthropological processes which Israel has been going through in the 21st century, and how they manifest in the arts. It might even allow to speculate more precisely about the consequences for the industry and the culture in general. I claim that there is a strong connection between youth culture, specifically of the Millennials (Generation Y, who were born in the 1980s-1990s), and the unique characteristics of the first generation of independent online content creators in Israel. Through an in-depth analysis of several case studies, I will articulate the fresh concepts that make these examples stand out. I will highlight the brilliant innovations that led to their success, but I will also place warning signs around obstacles and mistakes that failed them. I will present and analyze the artistic developments in these creations. This pioneering research aspires to provide the next generation of content creators and scholars with valuable knowledge and set a framework for future researchers and practitioners.
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Low Culture Fever: Pulp Science in Chinese Comics After Mao
Stember, Nicholas
This study presents an interlinked close reading of six science popularization picture stories (*kexue puji lianhuanhua*) from the late 1970s and early 1980s, contending that, in taking children and the less educated as their primary audience, these understudied texts represent a doubly abject form of transmedia storytelling. In contrast with adaptations of works of revolutionary romanticism and realism, these fantastic narratives were evaluated in terms of moral messages, literary craft, and illustrative skill. Employing a mix of literary, media, and cultural studies to draw out hidden subtexts and formal innovations, Low Culture Fever places science popularization picture stories within the context of their reception by censors and readers, as presented in first-person accounts. This multi-pronged approach brings to light the influence of the much longer legacy of “pulp science” (*wei kexue*) in sensational and fantastic romance and adventure fiction, otherwise obscured by the revolutionary fiction of the preceding decades. Providing far more than mere “escapism,” however, the popularity of science popularization comic books is shown to derive from their unique willingness to directly address the distinction between science and superstition; between socialism and capitalism; and between dystopia and utopia. Highlighting the heterogenous origins of science popularization comic books in the “science fables” (*kexue tonghua*) of the early to mid-1970s, meanwhile, supports a critical reassessment of the official launch of Reform and Opening Up (*gaige kaifang*) in December 1978, suggesting that this change in official policy can be more properly understood as a response to a social transformation that had already been set in motion more than a decade earlier. The lead up to the Anti-Spiritual Pollution (*jingshen wuran*) campaign in the fall of 1983, finally, is shown to have generated an awareness of the “otherness” of a new subculture: science fantasy fiction (*kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo*), drawing on the traditions of socialist “mass culture” while at the same time incorporating innovations from “Western” technothrillers and space operas.
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Leaves and Flowers of Paulownia: Aristocratic Legitimacy of the Ashikaga Warrior Leaders
Barducci, Polina
“Leaves and Flowers of Paulownia: Aristocratic Legitimacy of the Ashikaga Warrior Leaders” Polina Barducci Abstract This project investigates the intersection of courtly and warrior governance during the rule of the second warrior government, the Ashikaga shogunate (1336–1573) and focuses on the period of its political apex in the first half of the fifteenth century. During this time, the Ashikaga managed to consolidate power not only over warriors, but also established authority in the eyes of religious institutions and civil aristocracy. Every Ashikaga leader of this period pursued his own political course but nevertheless managed to elevate the status of the family and promote the legitimacy of the warrior government as the sole administrative body. This study considers political realities through the lens of ritual, which is understood in its broadest anthropological sense to include not only religious rites and prayers but also imperial court ceremonies, customs of sociability, and diplomatic protocol. Descriptions of these rites and ceremonies which are drawn from courtier diaries, temple records, diplomatic correspondence, and envoy testimonies reveal hidden tools of governance and aspects of non-verbal communication between members of the ruling elite. By giving special attention to ritual interactions between the Ashikaga and the holders of sovereign power, such as the imperial family in Japan and foreign monarchs in East Asia, it refutes the notion of usurpation of the imperial throne being the basis of warrior legitimacy. Instead this work argues that the warrior leaders established their political presence through ritual association with traditional sources of power and contributed to maintaining the legitimacy of the imperial institution. Premeditated ritual association with the sovereign power is particularly evident from the activities of shogunal advisors and immediate circle of supporters who formed the foundations of the aristocratic legitimacy of the Ashikaga family.
Open Access
Tuning In: Nationalist Radio in China, 1928–1937
Moriarty, William Joseph
This dissertation has three primary aims. The first is to decentre Euro-America in the Anglophone literature of radio broadcasting during the Interwar Period, and the second is to decentre China in the Sinophone literature on early-period broadcasting before 1949. As radio was a global medium, a history of one without the other would be incomplete. The third aim of this dissertation is to decentre Shanghai in the study of Chinese radio history. To this end, it introduces the history of the Central Broadcasting Station, i.e., Nationalist Radio. Founded by the Chinese Nationalist Party in 1928, Nationalist Radio was the inspiration of a conservative group of revolutionaries within the party called the CC Clique, whose belief in scientism led them to place radio broadcasting at the centre of the party state. During the Nanjing Decade (1928–1937), the CC Clique employed radio as both a tool of governance to promote political tutelage and a weapon of war to mobilise the nation as broadcast propaganda became a fourth front in modern warfare. The mission of Nationalist Radio was one of nationalisation in all senses of the word, which echoed developments in the global oecumene as countries mobilised on the fourth front. This dissertation looks at how the CC Clique carried out the radio nationalisation of China in three phases between 1928 and 1937. In the first phase, the CC Clique used broadcasting technology to unify the party state. As radio became a mass medium in China, the CC Clique embedded propaganda into entertainment to expand the reach of party-state broadcasting to a general audience from 1933 to 1935. During the third phase in 1936 and 1937 as China prepared for war against Japan, the CC Clique established a party-state broadcasting system and nationalised the industry in the name of radio education. Using primary sources from Mainland China, Taiwan, and abroad, this dissertation investigates the spirit of Nationalist broadcast propaganda to show how the CC Clique used radio broadcasting as a tool of governance and a weapon of war during each phase of radio nationalisation. This dissertation shows that CC Clique officials consolidated effective party-state control over a factious industry that they inherited in 1928 and established a national broadcasting network in 1937. It also shows that the spirit of political tutelage, i.e., broadcast propaganda, changed as the CC Clique focused on the radio nationalisation of the party state, the audience, and the industry.
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Producing and Using Codices in Tenth Century Dunhuang
Feng, Jing
In 1900, a cave filled with tens of thousands of manuscripts was discovered near the oasis town of Dunhuang 敦煌 in northwest China. This dissertation, based on some 450 codices recovered from this cave, examines the codex culture in tenth century Dunhuang and explores the early history of the codex in the Sinophone world. Inspired by western codicology and palaeography, this dissertation pays particular attention to the materiality of manuscripts and reconstructs their production and use as well as the human activities and the specific circumstances that shaped the manuscripts. This dissertation includes a wealth of technical details about the codex production, which supplements the history of the Chinese book and benefits comparative codicological research. The dissertation also relates the materiality of manuscripts to the larger dimensions of the past and explores various research topics regarding the social and cultural history of local society, including medieval Buddhism, education and cultural exchange on the Silk Road.
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Guardians of the Social Collective: The Legal Regulation of Religion and Morality in Modern Egypt
Abdeltawwab, Ahmed
This dissertation examines the history of the legal regulation of religion and religious morality and the discourse of rights pertinent to religion within the modern Egyptian legal system. The dissertation assesses the influence of Islamic legal practices on the modernization of Egyptian juridical institutions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The common understanding in many historical, anthropological, and legal accounts is that Islamic Law was secularized in Egypt due to the translation of several Western or liberal legal concepts and integrating them into legal theory and practices prevailing in Egypt during this period. This process of secularization is understood to have transformed legal norms, and communal arrangements that used to regulate society were replaced by Western-styled state law enforced through obedience, punishment, and discipline. Therefore, Egyptian legal codes starting from 1883 are referred to as French codes or French laws. This interpretation is not necessarily based on studying the practices of Egyptian legal institutions but on looking at legal theories in isolation from the way they were applied. In this dissertation, I recognize the agency of Egyptian jurists, politicians, and bureaucrats and the Egyptian legal culture in the modernisation of law. The dissertation thus revises two common understandings of the legal historiography of modern Egypt: that religion and Islamic Law were relegated to the private sphere of family disputes and that positive Western law replaced them in the realm of public law. Based on archival work, the dissertation gives greater attention to the state's role in Egyptian legal thought and practice as well as in Islamic law. This study also considers several factors that influenced the development of the legal system and the legal regulation of religion during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Such factors include the transformations in the nature of state authority through the expansion of bureaucracy; the unprecedented growth of the public sphere, which, in turn, involved the emergence of a political press, the development of the urban landscape, and the establishment of various forms of political and intellectual platforms; and, finally, the bureaucratization of traditional Islamic authorities and mechanisms. Within this framework, I focus on how modern law regulated censorship on printing religious books; punished those who insulted, criticized, or questioned the main tenets of religion; imposed certain punitive and disciplinary measures on conversion from Islam, and policed public behaviour that violated accepted norms of decency and morality.
Controlled Access
Disentangling Colonial Migration: Koreans to the Metropole, 1910-1945
Cho, Mi Kwi
This study explores colonial Korea and its relation to imperial Japan through the lens of Korean emigrants to Japan who acted as a bridge between the periphery and metropole of the Japanese empire. Because Korean residents in the labouring class occupied the largest population of foreigners in imperial Japan since the latter years of World War I, much attention has been given to Korean labourers in existing scholarship. While rethinking the migration of Korean labourers to the metropole through the prism of immigration regulations issued by the Japanese authorities, this research also casts a spotlight on groups of Korean emigrants who either appear most or least frequently in dominant narratives: overseas students, Christian adherents, and women who were not mobilized to serve the Japanese Imperial Army. Through the examination of government documents, newspapers, journal articles, and memoirs, it probes the multifarious motives behind the migration of each group and the empire’s regulation of their activities and mobility within the empire. My project aims to unravel the dynamic mobility of Korean emigrants by depolarizing the memories of Korean migration that are not confined to a singular experience of colonial migration. Korean migration, in turn, will reveal the ability and the limitation of the Japanese empire in regulating and accommodating the mobility of Korean emigrants, while simultaneously working to integrate them into the tentacles of the empire.
Open Access
Navigating the Smellscape of Medieval China
Fang, Xi
Smell mattered in medieval China. Through the sense of smell, people navigated the natural and social world, structured human-divine relationships. Medieval Chinese texts are replete with references to smells of people, things, and places. Mediated through the minds of their recorders, olfactory accounts vividly reveal hitherto overlooked patterns of the beliefs and ideas that people in medieval China had on the human person, their surrounding world, as well as the unseen realms of the dead and divine. This study traces historical smells of medieval China and examines how the people navigating that smellscape made sense of their olfactory perceptions. It analyses the moral significance of olfaction in medieval China and its expression in ethno-cultural discourse as well as in the relationship with the unseen worlds of ghosts, spirits, and the divine. Through its analysis, this dissertation makes two interrelated claims: first, for medieval Chinese people, smell was not only a physical sensation, it also embodied a combination of social, moral, and cosmological significance. It was the conduit to the worlds of the gods and the spirits; it was a marker of social status and cultural alignments; it symptomised virtue or moral decadence; and it could also signify a divine manifestation. Second, smells were not only perceived, but also constructed. Conscious of the social, moral, and cosmological connotation odours implied, medieval Chinese literati employed smells – both in their own right and in the form of rhetoric – to create and assert social and cultural distinctions. Smells separated us from the Other, the poor from the wealthy, the virtuous from the corrupted, the civilised from the barbarians, and the sacred from the profane. This study situates medieval Chinese olfactory history in the context of an increasingly open world characterised by dynamic cross-cultural contacts, remaking of demographic and religious landscapes, as well as growing knowledge about hygiene and medicine. Building on the established scholarship in multiple disciplines, this first study on smells and smelling in medieval China seeks to contribute to the understanding of medieval views and practices regarding the body, identity, religion, culture, and society.
Controlled Access
Native and Non-native Grammars of Chinese Gapping-like Verb Ellipsis
Zhang, Chenyang
This study sets off to fill in a gap in the L2 research literature on empty categories in Mandarin Chinese by examining second language (L2) acquisition of a type of Chinese verb-less constructions by English-speaking learners. The verb-less constructions in question are Chinese gapping-like constructions which bear a surface resemblance to English canonical gapping constructions. Despite the surface similarities shared by Chinese gapping-like constructions and English canonical gapping, the two verb-less constructions derive from different syntactic representations, which is reflected in their different distributions. Moreover, there exist some semantic constraints unique to Chinese gapping-like constructions. The present study investigates both offline acceptability judgment and online production of Chinese gapping-like constructions by native MC speakers and L2 learners. It sets off to explore whether the similarities and differences between Chinese and English affect the developmental course and ultimate attainment of L2 Chinese gapping-like constructions at both the narrow syntax and the interface levels. The present study aims to contribute to the ongoing debates on two major topics in L2 research: i. the learnability of interface properties; ii. the effect of L1. 29 native Chinese speakers and 70 English-speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese ranging from beginners to advanced learners participated in the study, taking an online elicitation imitation task as well as an offline acceptability judgment task. It is found that both narrow syntactic properties and interface properties pose challenges in L2 acquisition of Chinese gapping-like VBE (Verb Ellipsis), which indicates that learnability issues are not specific to interfaces. The present study regards L1-L2 asymmetry as the primary cause for the persistent non-nativelike L2 attainment at both the narrow syntax level and the interface level. Meanwhile, other factors such as proficiency and input also play important roles in shaping learners’ L2 grammars and L2 speech production mechanisms.
Open Access
The Jewish Arabic Dialect of Gabes (Southern Tunisia): Phonology, Morphology, Syntax
Gebski, Wiktor
The thesis presents a linguistic study of the Arabic dialect spoken by the Jews of Gabes (Southern Tunisia). This variety belongs to the group of sedentary North-African dialects and nowadays is spoken by a limited number of native speakers in Israel and France. As with virtually all modern varieties of Judeo-Arabic, and indeed many other Jewish languages, Jewish Gabes faces imminent extinction. This thesis, therefore, aims at the documentation and the description of its major features while there are still good speakers alive. The data for this study have been collected during several stints of fieldwork in Israel and France between December 2018 and March 2022. Due to the COVID pandemic, the collection of data for the syntax chapter also involved the use of social media and other online methods of communication. The linguistic analysis is based on questionnaires, as well as a corpus of transcribed tales and memoires. The thesis attempts to answer some of the most immediate challenges posed by Maghrebi Arabic dialectology. In contradistinction to the eastern branch of Arabic, many North-African dialects have not received a thorough linguistic description, particularly those spoken outside of large, historic towns. Even less studied are Jewish dialects, whose linguistic features and isoglosses remain terra incognita. A lack of text corpora and appropriate data, in turn, has caused an almost complete absence of syntactic studies in the field. The main objective of the thesis is thus a detailed comparative analysis of Jewish Gabes with particular focus on syntax. The thesis comprises three main sections: phonology, morphology, and syntax. The first two sections follow a traditional grammatical model. Syntax has been approached from the historical and typological point of view. In order to ascertain if certain linguistic features are unique to Jewish Gabes, a comparison with other North-African dialects has been applied throughout the thesis.
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Interregional Style and Taste: Water-moon Avalokiteśvara Paintings From Goryeo and Beyond
Ma, Ye
This thesis examines the interregional style of Goryeo Water-moon Avalokiteśvara paintings, of which there are 51 around the world. The majority are anonymous, and are found in Japanese collections where they had once been mistakenly attributed to professional Chinese painters. The rediscovery of Goryeo Buddhist paintings in the twentieth century was enabled by an awareness of a “style”, which varied from the neighbouring countries of China and Japan, by groups of Japanese scholars. This ignorance or the uncertainty of the true Korean identity of the corpus of paintings, which had existed for hundreds of years, was in turn shaped by their interregional style and route of transmission. This is explored across the four chapters of this thesis. Chapter one surveys the core information related to connoisseurship, including the inscriptions, titles, Yuan-Goryeo relations and the history of transmission. Chapter two examines the studio production in which artisans created paintings using an assembly line system. The iconography, motifs, settings, and figures depicted in the Goryeo Avalokiteśvara paintings are studied as “movable segments”. The third chapter explores the mobility of the white-robe tradition and the exchanges of artifacts brought about by the travels of two Goryeo royals and the Goryeo embassies sent to China. The final chapter investigates the reasons behind the resemblances between Goryeo Water-moon Avalokiteśvara paintings and the Avalokiteśvara paintings excavated from the Khara Khoto site.
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Gifts from Afar: The Creation of an Imperial Lapdog in Tang–Song China
Granger, Kelsey
This thesis directly addresses a significant gap in the fields of sinology and pet studies by exploring pre-modern Chinese pet-keeping practices in detail for the first time in either discipline. More specifically, this thesis centres on the social and economic practice of lapdog-keeping across the seventh to twelfth centuries, i.e. the Tang and Northern Song dynasties. Not only does this study provide an adapted framework for identifying pets in medieval China, but the formation of a definitive corpus of lapdog references from this timeframe closely defines what a lapdog was and what it did, moving beyond prior cursory research into these diminutive trick-dogs. Analysis of how humans talked about, with, and through the lapdog further asserts the relevance of pets in the study of human history – revealing the lapdog to be a potent metonym for women and a medium for articulating male sexual desire. In sharing intimate human spaces and emotions as a living treasure, childhood playmate, and female companion, the lapdog thus uncovers nuanced insight into medieval elite culture. When considering the later trajectory of the lapdog in the Song period, we see an entire industry dedicated to producing and selling ornamental animals and animal accessories. Pets were not just emotional beings but economic products, shaped by the shifting socioeconomic dynamics of commercialisation and commodification. The lapdog, China’s first systematic pet, was both a physical creature and an abstract site of complementary, contradicting, and competing meanings. With relevance to the study of medieval Chinese animal studies; early childhood; the male gaze; female isolation; animal commodification; aesthetic connoisseurship; and the writing of official historiography, this thesis reaffirms that the history of humanity cannot truly be written without including the animals which shared their most intimate lives.