Browsing by Department "Asian and Middle Eastern Studies"
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Item Open Access Ainu as the Other(2017-04-29) Stathis, JohnThe Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, have often been referred to both in Japan and in the West as being a “dying race”. This thesis seeks to deconstruct that myth and contextualize it within the framework of 19th century colonization of Hokkaido and subsequent nation building process by the newly formed Japanese Meiji state. In doing so, this thesis will address the relationship between the formation of Japanese national identity and the otherization and erasure of Ainu individuals from both political life and popular media. This thesis will first expose the ways in which the Japanese state has systematically mythologized the racial and political behavior of the Ainu. Subsequently, this thesis will expose current forms of Ainu cultural mobilization that defy these imperial narratives. In doing so, this thesis will examine contemporary Ainu decolonial thought and thus hopefully aid in that process of decolonization.Item Open Access "Are You Gay?": A Queer Ethnography of Sex and Sexuality in Cairo(2014-10-17) Revelo La Rotta, FernandoFocusing specifically in urban cosmopolitan Cairo during the aftermath of the alleged January 25th Revolution, this ethnographic project is an invitation to a deeper exploration of sex and sexuality in the Middle East. During the 18 days of the January 25th Revolution, media outlets worldwide discussed the historic event as not only a site of political opportunity, but also as the beginning of a sexual(ity) revolution that had the potential to transform understandings of gender and sexuality in Egypt, the “gay isues” by pointing towards the colliding assemblage of revolutions, same-sex practices, Arabness, identity construction, human rights activism, Islamic theology and cyberspaces. “Are You Gay?” conceptualizes the sexualities of Egyptian men from within the interweaving of institutions, religions, culture and histories that produce them. This thesis also deploys queer theory to queer ethnographic practice by analyzing sexual experience and deconstructing the normalized ethnographic time and space by entering fluid cyberspaces—a virtual manifestation of the forces of globalization. This project also seeks to mobilize queer theory towards the East, specifically Cairo and the Middle East, to conceptualize how sexual subjectivities are created at the nexus of encounters between Western understandings of sexuality and traditional expressions and understandings of male same sex practices in the Middle East. Lastly, by using queer theory, “Are You Gay?” seeks to open up sites of resistance through the conceptual power of queerness for what I term queer subjects in Egypt.Item Open Access Arguing Justice in Yemen’s Civil War: A Researcher’s Notebook(2019-04-08) Vadapalli, AmulyaThis research project explores the question of how and which stories nations and people construct about justice in international relations through the case study of the conflict in Yemen. The war in Yemen has raged since 2015, and is currently considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with close to 80% of Yemen’s population in need of some kind of humanitarian aid. On one side of the war is the U.S. backed Saudi-led coalition. The coalition is composed of more than ten countries, but primarily led and funded by Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent, the United Arab Emirates. On the other side of the conflict are the Houthi movement known as Ansar Allah and their Iranian allies. The war in Yemen bears geopolitical significance beyond the immense scale of human suffering in the war. It exposes what a complex, modern day proxy war looks like in the Middle East. It combines several economic factors, including oil and fishing resources, with purported religious rifts and the regional rivalry of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In terms of justice, the war in Yemen poses unique problems of social and legal conceptions of justice in contemporary international relations. I will explore the competing meanings of justice through interviews with the Yemeni diaspora, and legal justice through a review of international humanitarian law, and a state conception of justice through the statements of Saudi Arabia and United States. In essence, this study will explore Yemeni people’s conceptions of justice, how international law has defined justice previously, and may define it for Yemen, and how the United States of America and Saudi Arabia choose to define justice in Yemen. At the end of this project, I synthesize these three conceptions of justice in Yemen conflict to explore what impact these differing conceptions will have on a sustainable peace processItem Unknown Child Valuation in Contemporary China: Abandonment, Institutional Care, and Transnational Adoption(2020-04-17) Marlow, JessicaIn this thesis, I contend that orphaned and relinquished children’s positionality in Chinese society reveals a complex entanglement between changing domestic and international policies and popular Western perceptions of China. Initially inspired by my personal experiences evaluating the mental health of children in institutional care centers in Delhi, India, this thesis focuses on socio-political and economic factors which influence how children in institutional care are valued on the state and individual level. The orphaned child’s value within economic, moral, and political spheres is not objective or easily quantifiable; rather it is determined in relation to factors which extend far beyond the reach of the individual. Nevertheless, these value-decisions have tangible effects on children’s lived experiences. Key questions I will address in subsequent chapters are as follows: (1) To what extent do adult economic concerns and expectations influence the abandonment and/or adoption of children and their status in alternative care?; (2) What are the moral considerations of care in alternative care environments and how do these differ for domestic workers, international volunteers, and potential adoptees?; and (3) How do international perceptions of the China’s orphan care influence transnational adoption narratives and transnational adoption, and how do these perceptions intersect with the China’s political development of soft power overseas? This thesis foregrounds the complex, intercultural nature of institutional care in the contemporary period which are influenced by socio-historical and political changes in China and beyond.Item Unknown Denying Difference: Japanese Identity and the Myth of Monoethnic Japan(2015-07-09) Powell, Jaya Z.In this thesis, I tackle the notion of identity within the very specific sociocultural space of Japan. I critique the conception of Japanese identity as it has emerged in concert with the West through the 19th and 20th centuries. Though there exists a plurality of identities in Japan, there also exists a dominant ideology that selectively denies difference in favor of a monolithic “Japanese” people. Tracing the historical factors leading to its creation, I examine the (naturalized) exclusionary practices that serve to mediate the perception and marginalization of certain bodies within Japan. I bring this problematized “Japanese identity” into the zone of close contact with the experiences of black women in contemporary Japan. Using the methodology of black feminist autoethnography, I explore the ways in which one specific “non-Japanese” body is marked out and not permitted to fully participate in this Japanese space. My own autoethnographic analysis is placed in concert with stories gleaned from other diasporic black women. I choose black women because our stories have a history of invisibility and erasure, and our bodies represent the “extreme Other” with respect to conceptions of Japaneseness. I conclude by returning to the persistent challenge that marks this thesis: the critique of the carefully nurtured ideology of Japan as a homogeneous nation. I argue that Japan has been multiethnic since at least the late 19th century, and that ideas of monolithic Japanese identities were developed in reaction to Western threats, and further that these notions of “Japaneseness” can – and should – be deconstructed. In striving for a more inclusive definition of “Japanese,” we allow for a much larger number of people to coexist within this Japanese sociocultural space in relative harmony.Item Open Access Fast Food, Street Food: Western Fast Food's Influence on Fast Service Food in China(2018-05-01) Steven, QuinnThe phenomenal success of Western fast food brands in China has fascinated researchers and business people alike since its dawn in the late 1980’s. The two largest Western fast food brands in China, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), have been heavily researched to understand origins of their success. However, a current gap in the research is the impact of these Western brand’s influences on Chinese quick service food culture. In this thesis, I will explore the conditions that allowed the brands to be so successful in China, the brands themselves and the perception that their Chinese clientele have of these brands, but then go on to use that information, in conjunction with existing research about native Chinese quick service dining venues, to propose how these brands may have influenced Chinese quick service dining culture. Before I can even begin to explore these brands’ presence in China, I must first establish their origins and brand identity in the United States. In the introduction of my thesis, I first contrast the developments of McDonald’s and KFC. McDonald’s was the first American fast-service restaurant and their menu centered on the hamburger, a dish that first gained national fame at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. McDonald’s pioneered the American model of quick-service by placing greater emphasis on take-away food, best eaten quickly, and ready to be eaten on the go, rather than fitting the existing dining model of a sit-down restaurant. While McDonald’s was more modern, KFC built its brand on home-style, Southern cooking, made available to weary drivers as a quick rest-stop meal. Fried chicken originated in Southern kitchens as a result of the Western African cooking traditions brought by African slaves in the antebellum period before the Civil War. While McDonald’s sold primarily the hamburger and KFC sold primarily fried chicken, both restaurants’ business models relied on quick, standard, reliable, and convenient service for success, and maintaining those standards consistently across all their restaurant branches. This stands in stark contrast to fast service dining in China. Although China has a long history of fast service food, the first street food market is estimated to have operated during the Song Dynasty in the early 13th century, these street food operations lacked the standardization and commercialization of Western fast food chains. However, while the definition of fast service that China associated with street food did not directly align with the Western fast food model, it may have primed a Chinese market to readily accept a new type of fast service cuisine. In addition to its existing fast-service food culture, a confluence of other major changes in China created the ideal milieu for these fast food companies to flourish. First, shortly following Mao’s death, his vice premier, Deng Xiaoping rose to power and enacted major economic reforms including opening China economically to the West. This meant that Western businesses were finally able to operate in China beginning in 1978, and by 1987 those businesses included KFC, which opened its first store in Tiananmen Square that year. The second effect of these economic policy changes was the rise of the Chinese middle class, which stemmed from the ability of young Chinese people to be entrepreneurial. This new middle class suddenly had an influx of money to spend and an uncertain place in society, and so used their new money to help establish their new, higher social status. Dining at Western fast food restaurants was one way that the new middle class could be “seen;” if their coworkers, friends, or family members saw them dining out at relatively expensive Western fast food venues, it made their wealth apparent. The Western fast food chains remained a universal status-symbol in China, however that status as a luxury was entirely contingent on their perception as a clean, high-quality, and service-oriented venue. Chinese customers had interest in the Western goods KFC and McDonald’s sold, but only because they represented Western culture, not necessarily because they enjoyed the taste of the food. To keep customers coming back, the restaurants adapted in ways reminiscent of their origins: McDonald’s created new foods by hybridizing Western and Eastern flavors, while KFC adopted some of China’s traditional street foods as sold them in their restaurants for a higher cost. The restaurants also adopted restaurant floor plans that better suited their Chinese customers’ dining preferences and service styles that met new needs such a social events or family-style meals. It was the restaurants’ decisions to adapt to the Chinese palette and dining needs that lead to their continued success. The influence that Chinese dining and food culture have had on the Western fast food chains entering China is well-documented, there is little formal research on the reciprocity of that exchange; have these Western fast food chains been able to influence Chinese food culture? In the second chapter, I will begin to examine this question by first trying to understand what the words “fast” and “service” mean in a traditionally Chinese context, and how those meanings may have shifted or fit a Western fast food model. Once the two words are defined and their relation to Western fast food are established, I will look at one case study of Lanzhou Lamian, a traditionally Chinese restaurant franchise. While there are other native Chinese fast food companies that have begun since the entrance of Western fast food companies, I chose to look at Lanzhou lamian because it had differed from Western fast food’s model in all aspects but one until 2010. Lanzhou lamian was a dish created in the 1800’s by a Hui Muslim chef that had become the identifying food of the city of Lanzhou and highly acclaimed across the country. In 2010, the city of Lanzhou created an official brand for “Lanzhou Beef Lamian” and licensed it to a company named Eastern Palace, which caused great uproar from the Hui community who continued to operate the stores that their ancestors first opened, but had their stores’ statuses suddenly delegitimized. While branding in food is not a foreign concept to Western businesses, restaurant brands had not really existed before the entrance of Western fast food brands. There has not been enough research in this area to prove that branding the dish and related store of “Lanzhou Lamian,” stems from a pressure to create an official brand caused by an earlier introduction of the concept branding restaurants that originated with the Western fast food brands, but the Western brands’ potential to have that kind of influence cannot be ignored either. This particular case helps create boundaries for how Western fast food made have inserted itself into the definition of quick service restaurants in China: it could have had as little influence as simply encouraging the creation of a brand, or gone so far as to reinvent service styles and architectural ideas. It exemplifies the impact that an outside influence can have on a tradition that is thousands-of-years old. Other influences may have similarly been introduced then integrated into Chinese food culture and created the complex existing Chinese food culture. By recognizing that the introduction of fast food to China is an opportunity to show how a definition, such as “quick service,” can expand, it provides an opportunity to better understand cultural development and acceptance of novel introductions. In the conclusion of my thesis, I will be looking forward to the next potential frontier for an expansion of our current understandings of food culture through the introduction of technology. In China, because of the continuing rise of the middle class and their increasing ability to spend money dining out, companies and restaurants are developing technologies to make it easier to serve an ever-growing customer-base. Those technologies include phone applications to order a seated meal at a restaurant even before arriving, online delivery services, and online customer review sites, all of which move most of a customer’s interaction with a restaurant, besides the actual dining, online.Item Open Access Female Labor Force Participation in Turkic Countries: A Study of Azerbaijan and Turkey(2019-04) Torrens, NatashaEncouraging female labor force participation (FLFP) should be a goal of any country attempting to increase its productive capacity. Understanding the determinants and motivations of labor force participation requires isolating the factors that influence a woman’s decision to enter or leave formal employment. In this thesis, I utilize data from the Demographics and Health Surveys to explain the role of social conservatism in promoting or limiting participation in the labor force. I focus on ever-married women in Azerbaijan and Turkey to provide a lens through which to explain the unexpectedly low FLFP of Turkey. Though most prior research attempts to explain Turkey’s low FLFP rate by comparisons to other OECD countries, my study looks at Turkey through the context of other Turkic cultures to explore cultural factors driving labor force participation for ever-married women. This study finds a negative correlation between conservatism and the likelihood of participating in the labor force for ever-married women in Azerbaijan, and a larger, positive relationship in Turkey.Item Open Access Heritage with a High Price Tag: The Rise of China's Luxury Automotive Industry(2018-03-28) Smith, SydneyThis thesis seeks to answer the question, “Which attributes in China’s market conditions during the past 40 years have led to the creation of the largest automotive industry in the world?” The first chapter provides a historical background and establishes the current context of the automotive industry in China through two strategy perspectives. Michael Porter’s “Five-Forces-Model” and “Clusters and the New Economics of Competition” provide a framework to evaluate the Chinese automotive industry’s development and global competitiveness. The second chapter argues how the industry’s highly competitive nature has transformed the role of luxury among Chinese automotive consumers. The chapter tackles three specific issues: what is luxury, who buys luxury and evolving trends in luxury. In conclusion, this thesis seeks to characterize the future of luxury in the Chinese automotive industry as “Cars with Chinese characteristics.” One way to understand “Cars with Chinese Characteristics” is through the lens of the Chinese philosophy, yin-yang, where yin and yang are complementary forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Through the creation of paradoxes, we learn that heritage is the bridge between the past and the future. The future of luxury in the Chinese automotive industry lies within the resilient and innovative brands that are able to manifest this heritage with a high price tag.Item Open Access Intertwining Narratives: The Copts and their Muslim Relations(2010-10-04) Simon, AndrewCoptic-Muslim relations are often portrayed in black-and-white binaries. The Copts are the oppressed minority, whereas the Muslims are the aggressive majority; the Copts are practitioners of a subservient faith, while the Muslims are followers of a superior doctrine; the Copts are loyal to the cross rather than the nation-state, and only the Muslims are fit to rule in a country where Islam is the official religion. These highly problematic discourses are traced and critiqued throughout three major narratives: polemics in popular culture, the British policy of “define and conquer,” and the efforts of iCopts to engage and empower their coreligionists from abroad. Only by intertwining these narratives and unveiling the polemical pitfalls that line Coptic-Muslim discourse is a greater understanding of the Copts and their relations with Muslims possible.Item Open Access On the Nature of 20th and 21st Century Gendered Marketing Strategies and Perceptions Toward Cigarette Products in the United States and China(2019-03) Goff, TripThis thesis examines the prevailing sentiments toward cigarettes and the targeted marketing strategies in the 20th and 21st century of the evolving markets in the United States and China. Specifically, marketing campaigns featuring women as the main subject are analyzed, as well as their effects on smoking rates and what cultural significance can be extracted by the advertisements’ portrayals. Through this analysis, a commentary on historically exploitative marketing tactics can be made, and themes and trends revealed can be extrapolated to the modern industry. Chapter 1 discusses the development of gendered marketing and perceptions toward tobacco and its gendered use in the early 20th century in the United States and China. The subsequent chapter compares contemporary 21st century public opinion in both markets and smoking trends, as well as modern incarnations of cigarette marketing. This thesis will argue that both markets heavily encouraged women to smoke in the early 20th century, and, while both demographics were slow to take up smoking cigarettes, the advertisements acted as a reflection of shifting sentiments toward women smoking and resulted in an increase in use, an increase resilient to today. Further evidence suggests an uptick in smoking among this demographic may be possible in China based on prevailing trends.Item Open Access Otome Games: Narrative, Gender and Globalization(2019-04-04) Lopez, CaitlinThe goal of the thesis is to answer the question of how otome (maiden) games, despite their heavily cultured origins, have been able to create playable romance narratives that a global audience can understand, relate, play, and enjoy. In order to do so, the thesis utilizes Hakuōki: Kyoto Winds, an otome game focused on romancing the young men of the Shinsengumi (special force who served under the military government in the Bakumatsu period), as a focus. Chapter 1 examines otome games through its narrative structure and gameplay mechanics, such as: avatar immersion, historical narrative, and the visual style of dynamic immobility. Chapter 2 discusses otome games as gendered games for women with a focus on their portrayal of traditional gender roles and their ability to create game spaces in which women can play with their identity. Chapter 3 explores the globalization of the otome game genre, paying attention to the internationalization and localization of the games. This is especially a topic of interest because otome games, as their name would indicate, are culturally coded and yet that has not deterred the game genre’s success outside of Japan.Item Open Access The Effects of Everyday Discrimination on the Mental Health of Muslim Students at Duke University(2019-04-10) Nevid, DaniellaThis thesis seeks to elucidate the relationship between experiences of discrimination and mental health state among the Muslim population at Duke. In the first chapter, I argue that although the negative relationship between experiences of discrimination and mental health has been widely supported in minority racial groups, there remains a dearth in the literature on this topic in minority religious groups. The Muslim population in the U.S. is particularly vulnerable to experiences of discrimination given the Muslim religious identity has been racialized by the American public. In the second chapter, I give an overview of Duke’s relationship to the Methodist Church and a timeline of Duke’s relationship with its minority student population. Ultimately, university records teach us that the Muslim community at Duke has met harsh discrimination and lack of institutional support. The third chapter of this thesis includes interviews with four integral members of Duke’s Muslim population throughout the years to illuminate what it means to be Muslim at Duke. Finally, the fourth chapter presents the research I conducted this semester. I surveyed experiences of discrimination and rates of depressive and anxious symptomology among the current Muslim student population at Duke. Significant, positive correlations were found between anxiety and discrimination and anxiety and depression. These findings beg university reform including increased support for Duke’s Muslim student population.Item Open Access The Islamic State: The Manifestation of a Violently Intimate Utopian Imaginary(2016-05-06) Gold, JessicaThis thesis seeks a complex understanding of the Islamic State through a multi-layered analysis of its territorial construction and physical form, its ideology, and its virtuality. By analyzing the way each of these aspects is constructed, influences, and in turn is influenced by the other aspects, I offer an integrative perspective on the Islamic State. Specific elements under consideration include the organizational structure, membership, tactics, and factors driving the territorial construction of the Islamic State, the religious concepts and socio-political narratives assimilated into its Salafi-jihadist ideology, and its use of violence and virtual networks. My research combines primary source analysis with theoretical analysis. Sources consulted include media output of the Islamic State itself, personal correspondence and writings of key IS and other Salafi-jihadist thinkers, and existing expert analysis of the Islamic State. My own analysis leads me to propose that the Islamic State, as seen through its physical and ideological forms, is actually the manifestation of an imagined utopic vision animated and spread through virtual networks and the threat and seduction of intimate violence. Thus, this thesis complicates existing understandings of the Islamic State, which tend to see it as a fundamentally physical threat, a combination of a pseudo-state and terrorist organization acting according to an extreme Salafi-jihadist ideology, which employs sophisticated virtual methods. While valuable in some regards, such an understanding misses the scope and power of the Islamic State as a virtual entity. Ultimately, static, rationalist frameworks, many of which developed out of the Cold War context and are tied to the nation-state system, are insufficient to provide a complete understanding of the Islamic State. New frameworks must be developed that can account for continual change, transformation, and the manifestation of the virtual forces of individual and collective imaginaries.Item Open Access The role of national status in refugee narratives: A case study on Palestinian and Sudanese productions(2016-05-07) Nguyen, ThaoThe 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes two groups of refugees: one outside the country of his/her nationality and another group without nationality outside of the place of their habitual residence. However, because stateless displaced groups do not fall into the global nation-state paradigm, they are often overlooked within studies on refugees. As such, this thesis takes up the question of refugee memory as connected to place and the identities constructed through shared narratives, particularly those circulated through refugee-authored cultural productions such as literature and film. The tension between the status of the refugee within international law and the self-perception of separation from home are explored through two refugee archives: Palestinian (1960s to present) and Sudanese (2000s to present). The thesis analyzes the role of national status in shaping refugee narratives and collective identities, taking into account how passing time alters a group’s understanding of its collective history and shared present. In particular, I explore how national status impacts each group’s displacement experience and the process whereby they became refugees—examining how these factors play a role in shaping each group’s refugee narratives. These narratives are further explored through an analysis of the role of class, education and historical landscape in shaping refugee memory, identity and cultural production.Item Open Access “Three Tentacles of Terror”: Israeli Securitization after the Arab Spring(2016-04-25) Deardorff, TessaSecuritization theory, while designed to describe the politics surrounding extra-military threats to a nation, has rarely been used as a frame to analyze countries that exist in a state of deep and permanent securitization. In these nations, which include Israel, security is a mainstay of political and daily life and discourse. This thesis uses a modified version of securitization theory to analyze the reasoning and motivations behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s responses to regional and domestic events between the beginning of the Arab Spring in December 2011 and the end of Operation Protective Edge in August 2014. It argues that the Prime Minister maintains a set of three discourses – the enemy nation-state threat, the para-state threat, and the domestic militant threat – pervasive in modern Israeli society and anchored in the nation’s understanding of its political and military history. The Prime Minister skillfully deployed these discourses over the thirty-three-month period in order to garner national and international support for increased domestic securitization and military operations, both of which served to further his political and personal agenda. I break the discourses into three sections: first focusing on the history of the discourses, then analyzing the Prime Minister’s juggling of the discourses from the beginning of the Arab Spring to the end of Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 largely in the name of the Camp David Accords, and lastly analyzing his use of the domestic militant discourse in order to undermine the Palestinian unity government and provoke Operations Brother’s Keeper and Protective Edge during Summer 2014. My analysis underscores the utility of securitization theory in analyzing the complexity of Israeli politics. Even in a nation as subject to military threats as Israel, a leader may not always be acting in the state’s best interest.Item Open Access Tongzhi Tales in Mainland China: Chinese Gay Male Subjectivities in Online Comrade Literature(2013-04) Leng, RachelThis thesis considers Comrade Literature (同志文学tongzhi wenxue), a genre of contemporary Chinese homosexual (tongzhi) fiction, as it has emerged on the internet in Mainland China. Although Comrade Literature first emerged in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1980s, it was only after the mid-1990s with the advent of the internet that these gay-themed fiction were disseminated online in Mainland China. There are now hundreds and thousands of stories designated as “Comrade Novels” (同志小说 tongzhi xiaoshuo) archived on various Chinese websites. This thesis contends that online Comrade stories are not simply an expression of an underground Chinese gay culture; they are complex cultural texts with deeper meanings as a site of queer resistance facilitating the intersection of homosexual and heterosexual subjectivities. In addition to providing a catalyst for the local tongzhi subculture, Comrade fiction in Mainland China capitalizes on new media platforms to present same-sex desire to the broader public. A close analysis of four online Comrade stories focuses on the representation of male same-sex relations, turning a critical eye to the logics of these texts as tongzhi write out of a heteronormative milieu. The three chapters in this thesis will each examine distinct aspects of China’s Comrade Literature: 1) gender performance in same-sex romance narratives, 2) homosexual abjection in Comrade bildungsroman, and 3) the continuum of homosocial and homosexual intimacy in military Comrade fiction. Collectively, these four works span a stylistic and temporal timeline that reflect developments in the tongzhi subculture on the Mainland. These fiction renegotiate the boundary between heterosexual and homosexual behaviors, establishing a unique tongzhi identity that is at once assimilated into yet differentiated from mainstream Chinese heteronormative society to challenge hegemonic norms.Item Open Access Translation of Maithilisharan Gupt's Saket(2018-04) Dave, ShivamMaithilisharan Gupt’s Saket, written in 1932, is an epic Hindi poem presenting the story of the Ramayana from a humanized and highly emotional perspective. As the work of a National Poet written during a time in which nationalist sentiments were rising in India, this poem necessarily reflects the author’s views towards his country and its future. Additionally, Gupt has imbued the poem with his personal devotion as well as his insightful understanding of the emotional profiles of characters whose perspectives have gone unamplified in past retellings. This translation is prefaced with some analysis of the effects of these unique approaches to and interactions with the Ramayana epic. However, as a primarily creative work, this translation aims to articulate the bhaava or sentiments found in Gupt’s words and the feelings generated when reading this poem. Additionally, particularly salient literary features and cultural references have been highlighted to aid the reader in understanding some of the subtleties of Gupt’s poem.