Browsing by Author "Xie, Shaobo"
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- ItemOpen AccessAdult Beginning Learners’ Engagement in Learning Mandarin as An Additional Language at a Canadian Post-secondary Institute(2017) Wu, Xueqin; Guo, Yan; Becket, Gulbahar; Xie, Shaobo; Cai, Wei; Roy, SylvieThis research investigates the Mandarin learning experience of both heritage and non-heritage beginners in a Canadian post-secondary institution to understand students’ engagement in learning Mandarin as an additional language (MAL). It integrates the complexity theory with an ecological perspective on second language education to capture the dynamic relationship between the learning context and the learners’ engagement in learning MAL. The case study methodology was chosen for the research purpose, and data were collected through classroom observations, focused group conversations and individual interviews. Research findings are presented from two perspectives: the learning experience and the classroom teaching and learning practices. Issues related to student engagement were discussed, including motivation, identity, curriculum, and teaching practice. Analysis on the findings reveals the complexity and ambivalence of Chineseness to heritage and non-heritage MAL learners, which must be understood in their particular socio-cultural context. It also advocates for promoting learner agency through the development of their own “Chinese voice”. In addition, in order to encourage students’ long-term engagement in learning MAL, it is important for the curriculum designers to allocate more time for students to practice Mandarin, make the teaching content more relevant to students’ knowledge and experiences, and develop an assessment system that values learner difference while remaining fair to both heritage and non-heritage students. Implications for MAL education are discussed at the end of the thesis.
- ItemEmbargoAllegory and Apocatastasis: Walter Benjamin and the Image of Neoliberalism(2023-08) Groh, Benjamin; Xie, Shaobo; Camara, Anthony; Lai, LarissaThis dissertation argues that Walter Benjamin’s image of allegory as at once an encounter with a “ruin” and “a petrified, primal landscape” can only be analysed through the prism of a wider critical program that takes into consideration a larger aggregate of his key concepts. The term apocatastasis does not appear often in his writings, but it refers to a sudden intensity of recognition wherein “the entire past is brought into the present.” Rather than a mythic moment of total knowledge, this dissertation argues that Benjamin uses apocatastasis to conceptualize the recognition and preservation of dialectically (i.e., historically) cancelled values. This moment of recognition, or Jetztzeit, corresponds to an authentic political experience—an understanding that the present is not a repetition of previous historical events, but a unique string of values that requires unique, political actualization. Apocatastasis, as this dissertation conceives of it, is a mode of reading that places three key terms in tension: allegory, image, and secularization. These three terms contain a multitude of others that all contextualize the scene of an encounter with some ruined, historical phenomenon (allegory). This dissertation will then use this reading method to critique the ruin of neoliberalism—an allegorical scene par excellence. Through Benjamin’s unfinished writings about the allegorical nature of the commodity form, this dissertation argues that the unique value that emerges in neoliberalism is display value. Display value enables the reification of—and the continuing commodification of—language itself, in ways that were still developing in classical liberalism. With the origins of this value emerging in Baudelaire’s Paris, this dissertation will also attempt to contextualize the extent to which display alters the scene that is still unrecognizable as anything but liberalism to the majority of readers today.
- ItemOpen AccessBeyond the linguistic moment: allegories of the political unconscious(1993) Xie, Shaobo; McCallum, Pamela M.
- ItemOpen AccessBeyond Virus(2022-09) Qu, Shuduo; Huynh, Kim; Wong, Yoke-Sum; Xie, ShaoboBeneath the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, we have witnessed not only a global public health emergency but also other social crises, such as anti-Asian racism, the Black Lives Matter movement, etc. The pandemic has created an environment for potential social crises and has exacerbated existing social crises. However, when social and cultural crises explode, art responds to them. As an Asian artist who was educated in China and Canada, the existing social issues toward people of color inform my concerns about North American multiculturalism and my art practice. This thesis is divided into five sections: a brief introduction of the background of discrimination in North America and my art practices (Chapter One); the illustration of art appropriation, text-based and comic style artworks that influence my art practices (Chapter Two); how artists’ works reflect their position on social issues (Chapter Three); my thesis exhibition (Chapter Four); and my conclusion (Chapter Five). This paper, alongside the paintings created for my exhibition, explores the usage of appropriation in my art practice and the strength between original works and my recontextualization as well as the roots of racial discrimination and stereotypes.
- ItemOpen AccessBridging Representations of North American Chinese Diaspora with Homi Bhabha(2014-09-24) Tsai, Sungfu; Xie, ShaoboThis dissertation investigates how Wayson Choy and Laurence Yep deploy discursive strategies for increasing Chinese North Americans’ visibility in North America. So far, there has been a tremendous amount of published research on their works, but very few scholars have considered their representations of North American Chinese diaspora through the lens of postcolonial theory. In response to this insufficiency, my dissertation examines their Chinese diasporic writings with Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial theory and addresses the inseparable link between postcolonial studies and Chinese North American literature. The dissertation argues that the liminal moment of cultural signification—“neither Chinese nor American/Canadian”— foregrounded in the works by Choy and Yep destabilizes the power of North American cultural hegemony and rearticulates the unsettling difference in the narration of the nations of Canada and the United States. This argument is developed in the course of four chapters: Chapter one theorizes postcolonial Chinese North American literature and argues that postcolonial theory offers a productive approach to the issues of transnationality and globalization represented in Chinese North American literature. Chapter two conducts a radical reading of Chinatown as “the third space” in Choy’s Paper Shadows and Yep’s The Lost Garden. The chapter argues that the memoirs of Yep and Choy reconfigure the image of Chinatown and reconstruct Chinese North American history through their childhood memories. Chapter three studies Jook-Liang’s Hollywood fantasies in Choy’s The Jade Peony and argues that her mimicry constitutes a double disarticulation of both Chinese and Canadian cultures and reverses the ideological and sexual gaze by Western male audience. Chapter four investigates how Yep’s discursive strategies in The Traitor disrupt the normalization of the English language. The chapter argues that Yep consciously mistranslates both the Chinese and English languages to reconstruct the history of Rock Springs Massacre in Wyoming. The dissertation concludes with the assertion that the writings by Choy and Yep represent the hidden or repressed voices of Chinese North Americans whose contributions to the development of North America must be properly recognized.
- ItemOpen AccessDiasporic Narratives and the Discourse of the Other in Marina Lewycka’s Novels(2018-04-13) Krochak Sulkin, Olga Eliya; Joseph, Clara A. B.; Xie, Shaobo; Wong, Lloyd L.This thesis examines Marina Lewycka’s earlier novels to show how they represent the intrinsic discourse of the other evident in diasporic groups of East European communities in the UK. It also looks at how Lewycka’s narratives engage and challenge the view of diaspora groups as unified and homogenous entities. As the field of diaspora studies continuously becomes more inclusive, it still overlooks the importance of the inner connections extant within diaspora groups and reduces the linkage of the diasporans to national solidarity and ethnicity. This thesis questions those relationships and proposes a Levinasian reading that demonstrates how, in Lewycka’s novels, groups are formed based on the ethical responsibility of the self to the other. I prove my thesis by researching the novels as follows: firstly analyzing the diasporic representation of alterity and migration, secondly by looking at the possibility of hospitality and responsibility to the newly arrived migrant, and finally I examine how guests and hosts engage with the concept of justice in its cultural and universal understandings in a liminal space. One of the conclusions of this thesis is that an ethical reading of diasporic narratives is not only possible but also needed.
- ItemOpen AccessHow do International Students Reconstruct their Identity as Readers when they Transition into Canadian Post-Secondary Education?(2019-01-22) Chen, Danni; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Lund, Darren E.; Xie, ShaoboWith increased numbers of Chinese international students in the Canadian higher education system and their growing needs to transition into a new cultural reading environment, this study endeavours to explore the difficulties that four Chinese students encountered, and figure out how they experienced, responded to, and transformed to a new cultural reading environment. With data from semi-structured interviews and journal entries, this study brings each individual participant’s experiences, perceptions, and feelings of reading in English to the fore. I analyzed participants’ unique experiences in order to understand their reading difficulties and readers’ identities. Through these examinations, this study shows that participants’ identities as readers are reconstructed in a new cultural reading environment, based upon their Chinese culture, academic fields, a new English cultural background, and their personalities. Moreover, data analysis reveals that, while reading in English, participants constructed the meaning of different language reading materials through the different lens of their identities as readers. Based on my findings, second language reading is discussed regarding the second language reader’s cultures and identities. The present study highlights the importance of social dimensions in second language reading. It concludes that readers’ identities reflect readers’ different cultural memberships. As Chinese international student cross cultural boundaries, their identities as readers shape how they interpret and understand the meaning of reading materials. When readers apply different reader’s identities while reading, they have the potential to interpret reading materials differently.
- ItemOpen AccessHybrid Mysticism: The Journey to Enlightenment in the Works of Sir Richard Burton and Rudyard Kipling(2016) Rahim, Sheba Aniqua; Xie, Shaobo; McCallum, Pamela; Srivastava, ArunaThis dissertation examines the significance of the themes of hybridity and enlightenment in select works by Sir Richard Burton and Rudyard Kipling. The thesis proposes that a more sustained examination be given to the spiritual and religious elements of Kipling’s and Burton’s works. This thesis establishes the importance of identifying and interpreting the uniquely wrought mystical treatises that are present in the following works by Kipling and Burton: The Jungle Book (1893-95), Kim (1901), Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah (1855-56), Stone Talk (1865), and The Kasidah (1880). The chapters discuss how the authors’ esoteric faith systems—with attention to Burton’s allegiance to Sufism and Kipling’s ties to Freemasonry—inform and give rise to the trope of the hybrid trickster/god in their respective works. For Kipling and Burton, the specific figure of the hybrid hero—as the disruptor of boundaries—is a recurring emblem that serves to interrogate, articulate, and define the elusive concept of “enlightenment.” By tracing the deployment of hybridity in the works of Burton and Kipling, it is argued that there are striking parallels between the two writers’ use of and reliance on the hybrid trickster/god figure to examine the mystical themes of unity, universality, and “oneness.” In striving to define “enlightenment,” both veer away often from Western models of reason and rationalism to weave rich and complex narratives that draw upon Eastern conceptual models depicting syncretism and the worlds of spirit, myth, magic, and lore.
- ItemOpen AccessPainting Protests: The (Dis)Harmonious Relationship between Nature and Humans in My Art(2022-05-03) Zhang, Shuoyuan; Hushlak, Gerald; Xie, Shaobo; Schwartz, DonaThrough my research creation, I aim to highlight environmental issues that are unfolding around us in real time regarding climate change and plastics pollution to enhance vigilance towards these issues. This research creation looks to increase cultural sensitivity as this is essential when it comes to advocating for environmental awareness and encouraging considerate and responsible custodianship. Such an approach as this is a means of changing discussions, challenging mindsets, and promoting positive cultural responses to climate change. A major part of my work consists of handmade masks (alike to those used by the masses during the COVID-19 pandemic) that are painted with abstract landscape images to give viewers a sense of where they could possibly end up if they are not disposed of responsibly. This highlights the disposable quality of the masks as objects and the damage they are already having on the environment. The masks and other disposable plastic items are displayed as installations aiming to directly confront viewers with the reality of environmental pollution and its negative effects on human health and the health of the ecology and the environment. My work directs people to reconsider their choices and habits when it comes to their consumption of plastics for the sake of the natural environment.
- ItemOpen AccessPeripheral visions: the dissident geographies of Farley Mowat(2012) Nunez Toews, David Juan; Xie, ShaoboFarley Mowat's stories of the Arctic and its inhabitants are a valuable model for subverting hegemonic national ideologies that obscure the experiences of subaltern populations. Images of the North and the Arctic wilderness hold a central role in Canadian national iconography, yet such images often serve to mask the realities of the northern regions. Mowat mobilizes an idealized image of the Canadian nation as a champion for human rights and ecology, as a rallying cry to redress the injustices and destruction that he witnessed during his northern travels. Mowat's work focuses a northward national gaze on the obscured peripheral space of the Arctic with hopes of bringing about changed attitudes towards the North in the southern metropolitan centres of power. His texts, which defy the constraints of form and genre, establish a liminal literary space from which he can mount a more effective challenge to institutional power and authority.
- ItemOpen AccessSpirits in the Gutters: The British Invasion and the Haunting of the Twentieth Century(2023-01-27) Sewel, Tom; Beaty, Bart; Xie, Shaobo; Lai, Larissa; Mason, Derritt; Murray, Chris; Beaty, BartIn this dissertation, I analyze the significant artistic and literary shifts initiated in mainstream US superhero comics by the British Invasion authors Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis (among others), and argue that their restless curiosity in exploring how the comics page can come to make meaning is part of a tradition of literary production whose roots run back through the disruptive US/UK modernisms of the early twentieth century, the fragmented spiritual affects of Romanticism, and the dissonant overcomplications of Baroque art. I argue that that the impact of this group of writers instigated a sea change of generational proportions in the direction of American comics writing from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. This change began with an increased focus on textuality and the tropes of literary storytelling (such as unreliable narrators, non-linear narratives, and biting political allegory) but was always accompanied by and generative of an innovative and experimental approach to the mechanics of visual storytelling in terms of the manipulation of layouts, panelling, guttering, and other concrete elements of the comics page. US superhero comics written and illustrated by US creators published subsequent to the British Invasion and up to the present day, continue to reflect the deep shifts in aesthetic and literary preoccupations inaugurated by the authors of the British Invasion, with Moore, Morrison, and Ellis chief among them. At stake in this sea change is the figure of the unreconstructed, all-American superhero as a symbol of hope, justice, morality, and honour. I argue that the British Invasion authors brought a critical, intellectualized cynicism to their own superhero writing, which worked to create and sustain new audiences of more mature comics readers whose taste for overtly political or philosophical comics remains a powerful market force in the comics industry today. The Invasion writers changed the way that stories could be told in superhero comics, and while they may not have been successful in recouping the radical potential of the superhero as a figure of collective liberation, they heralded an enduring shift in the kinds of stories that mainstream comics were allowed to tell.
- ItemOpen AccessThe (de)constructed universe(al): Derrida and twentieth-century science(2006) Leipert, Jeremy; Xie, Shaobo
- ItemOpen AccessThe Importance of Reading Said: Orientalism, Women, and Postcolonial Literature After 9/11(2017) Mader, Allison; Joseph, Clara; Kertzer, Jon; Xie, Shaobo; ten Kortenaar, Neil; Schmidt, RachelEdward Said’s work, particularly Orientalism (1978), has fallen out of fashion after a number of criticisms aimed at its representation of history, its perceived reliance on (and potential entrenchment of) stark binaries, and its lack of attention to resistant cultural productions, as well as a more general reassessment of the utility and value of postcolonial studies. Yet never has his work seemed more urgent or suited to the cultural moment. Political and cultural discourse after 9/11 spawned a renewal of Orientalist depictions of Muslim societies and, in particular, women. This dissertation argues that postcolonial novelists have engaged with these narratives in a variety of ways: feeding into established narratives and fears and lending them additional credence as “cultural informants”; exploding false binaries and spotlighting the link between colonialism and globalization; and complicating the pervasive representation of 9/11 as a contained narrative. It finds examples of these approaches in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), and Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows (2009) and suggests that each novel engages differently with the post-9/11 figure of the Muslim Other and/or the language of Orientalism that continues to circulate. This dissertation contends that the global, political, and cultural events of the last fifteen years call for a regeneration of postcolonial studies and a reinvestment in Said’s work. Orientalism did not end with the dissolution of the age of Empire, and it is incumbent upon postcolonial scholars to draw attention to and dismantle it in its many contemporary forms. This dissertation aims to participate in this undertaking.
- ItemOpen AccessThe revolution to come: towards a radical politics of deconstruction(2010) Parker, Brett; Xie, Shaobo; McCallum, Pamela M.
- ItemEmbargoTheory and Practice of Museum Translation: Translating and Translated Chinese Heritage in Xi’an(2023-12) Li, Qing; Mladenova, Olga; Hardy, Michele; Xie, Shaobo; Wright, David; Lupke, ChristopherThis thesis presents the outcomes of a pioneering study of translation activities in mainland China, specifically exploring the interplay between cultural translation, power dynamics, and the formation of English-language heritage discourse in Chinese museums. The focus is on understanding how English-language heritage discourse is constructed, with an emphasis on intercultural translation and the roles of intercultural translators. A comprehensive literature review underscores the limitations in the field of museum translation, highlighting the insufficient consideration of diverse factors and stakeholders shaping translation processes in museums. To address this gap, I establish a robust theoretical foundation that integrates Western and Chinese perspectives, facilitating the exploration of museum translation across cultures and addressing crucial questions about the feasibility, indispensability, and incommensurability of intercultural translation in Chinese heritage museums. The investigation centres on cultural outreach policies influencing translation practices within Chinese heritage museums. These policies advocate a Sino-centric approach, resisting the assimilation of Chinese culture into English-language discourse. Translator subjectivity and the new Chinese heritage discourse contribute to ‘telling Chinese stories’ in languages other than Chinese. Empirical evidence from field research in Xi’an, China, includes in-depth interviews, photographic documentation, and analysis of exhibits, shedding light on intended messages and translation strategies. The study reveals deliberate efforts to present distinct aspects of Chinese culture to international visitors, while safeguarding narratives from undue assimilation into Western discourse. The study identifies various influencing factors on English-language discourse within Chinese heritage museums, such as the intentions of cultural outreach policymakers, museum administration, translator efforts, and international visitor engagement. The final chapter revisits museum Sino-centric translation, aligning it with thick translation and exploring periperformative factors affecting intercultural communication between translators and museum visitors. In summary, this thesis explores how intercultural translation shapes English-language heritage discourse in Chinese museums, offering a detailed understanding of the relationship between translation processes, cultural policies, and diverse stakeholders. This research advances the comprehension of the dynamic nature of English-language discourse in the context of Chinese heritage museums.
- ItemOpen AccessWhat is Done in Silence: Agency, Narrative, and Silence in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe and Slow Man(2019-09-13) Bauhart, Stephen; Xie, Shaobo; Forlini, Stefania; Migotti, MarkMy thesis analyzes J.M. Coetzee’s novels Slow Man and Foe to show how Coetzee presents silence and agency in relation to each other. The two novels will be looked at separately, first with Slow Man revealing that Coetzee is rejecting a Platonic metaphysic of the self and adopting something like a Nietzschean construction of language in order to show how in the case of Paul Rayment, the protagonist, silence is productive and allows for him to become an agent in the world. Foe will show a different presentation of silence through which Coetzee makes the reader engage in a narrative overwrite of a main character, Friday, in a manner similar to the characters. This metaliterary trap will draw into relief how Friday reveals a dualism of engagement operating in Foe, with Friday’s silence making treating him as a subject all but impossible, while treating him as an instrumentalized object is very easy. These two presentations will show how Coetzee presents silence as productive of agency in Slow Man and cautionary of overwriting agency in Foe.