Dissertation Information for Christopher Vaughan NAME: - Christopher Vaughan
- (Alias) Christopher Alan Vaughan
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- University of California, Berkeley (USA) (1997)
ADVISORS: - Diane Shaver Clemens
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - None
MPACT Status: Incomplete - Inspected
Title: Obfuscating a new other, defining a new self: Popular discourses on the colonization of the Philippines
Abstract: "The American colonization of the Philippines generated deeply entangled strands of discourse about national, racial and personal identity. Propelled more forcefully than ever before by a revolution in the speed and spread of mass communication, ideas and images collided with circumstance, culture and audience to produce a cacophony of conclusions about the new subalterns across the Pacific, the most salient of which held Filipinos to be a ""savage"" race. The cumulative effect of media efforts to meet popular demand for images of the new Other occupies the central area of focus in this work.
Translation of so complex a question into terms readily accessible to an increasingly polyglot readership required condensation of a complex reality, a simplification best accomplished through appeal to the visual sense. Working from that presumption, most of the press and other purveyors of information in the United States took their cues from the market response to the various ideas and images put before the Self. Obfuscating the reality of the new Other was an integral aspect of the discourse of the American colonization of the Philippines, not least for its key role in defining a new American identity for the twentieth century.
Organized chronologically to show the evolution of the dominant discourse from first encounter in 1898 to the loosening of colonial control and the slackening of public interest that accompanied the 1913 transition from Republican to Democratic presidents and the process of reduced U.S. control known as ""Filipinization,"" this study traces the passage of the United States across its chastening experience with imperial hubris and colonial responsibility, using the rhetoric and images of the American press and popular culture to assess the interests of the American public in the novel encounter.
Drawing on archival sources, contemporaneous and subsequent publications and popular culture artifacts, this work aims to direct attention to the role of popular media in establishing the framework for American construction of a new ethnic, racial and national self in a globalizing world filled with new and often baffling ""Others."""
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MPACT Scores for Christopher Vaughan A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2010-11-04 15:40:58
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