This dissertation purposely prioritizes Tibetan and Himalayan tsunmas’ perspectives on the topic of restoring a full ordination lineage for ordained women. To do so, it examines the gendered landscapes of Buddhist women’s ordination, which has been a contentious issue throughout Buddhism’s twenty-six-hundred-year history, beginning with the Buddha’s eventual acceptance of...
This dissertation investigates the muscle-powered transport technologies that pervaded the Japanese empire. It examines the production, adoption, evolution, and decline of draft animals, rickshaws, human-powered railways, and push-car railways in Japan and colonial Taiwan, 1850-1930. Invented in Tokyo in 1870, rickshaws proliferated across Asia and became a symbol of modern...
This dissertation examines how China’s involvement in transnational LGBTQ activism, adaptation and innovation of queer media technologies, and the global pink economy have influenced queer men’s understandings of selfhood, sexual desires, and the relationships among queer subjects. It is based on extensive fieldwork in Beijing and digital ethnography on China’s...
This dissertation theorizes and examines the revival of interest in figure painting (renwuhua) in Republican China (1911–49). I argue that, in this period, figure painting assumed a central role to painters who sought to reform Chinese art, which was commonly understood as “declining.” This investigation will focus on the achievements...