Date of Award
5-12-2024
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Communication and Rhetorical Studies
Advisor(s)
Kendall Phillips
Keywords
Comfort Women;Embodied Witnessing;Materiality;Public Memory;Victimhood Nationalism
Subject Categories
Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
In this thesis project, I explore two museums that memorialize the history and trauma of comfort women, which are the Liji Alley Comfort Station Museum in Nanjing, China, and the War & Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul, South Korea. I seek to bring these concepts of public memory, museums, materiality, witnessing, and trauma together to think about the ways the memory of comfort women is constructed and conveyed to patrons of museums in China and Korea. This project will add an important global dimension through its comparative focus on spaces in China and Korea. Although China and South Korea share the transnational trauma of the comfort women issue, both museums take very different approaches to narrate this historical injustice. The Liji Alley Comfort Station Museum employs forensic rhetoric and focuses more on portraying how Japan committed the sexual crimes with a clinical, systemic, and dehumanizing approach to these women during WWII. Furthermore, the museum invites its audience to experience this dynamic of victimization as a way of not only acknowledging the past trauma of individual women but also as part of contemporary Chinese national identity. In contrast, WWHRM focuses more on providing visitors with an immersive experience and invites visitors to take on the future-oriented responsibility of becoming witnesses. WWHRM’s temporal orientation also frames comfort women issues as part of continuity to the present moment and into the future. In the end, I hope that this project contributes to the growing global recognition of the transnational trauma experienced by so-called “comfort women” and provides useful insights into the complexities of global memories.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Tao, Xinyue, "Remembering the Historical Injustice of Comfort Women and Be(com)ing A Witness: A Rhetorical Analysis of the War & Women’s Human Rights Museum and the Liji Alley Comfort Station Museum" (2024). Theses - ALL. 882.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/882
