UC Irvine

This dissertation, a history of the development of an institutional body at the Northeast Military Academy in the early twentieth century, sets out to show that focusing on regional military institutions such as this school can shed light on how, in addition to shaping the political landscape of early twentieth-century China through their actions, the military men of this time also influenced notions of what was progressive, masculine, and modern, and what kinds of visual, material, and institutional forms Chinese masculinity would take. By closely examining the fragmentary documents produced by the Northeast Military Academy, this dissertation explores the ways in which the men affiliated with the school affirmed their membership in an elite military cohort and their connection to the school and to each other. The school sought to train officers who would be physically fit, psychologically astute, technically skilled, but most importantly of all, act as leaders in battle and embody a source of pride and support for other soldiers, a task that was only partially realized. The textual and visual archive of the Northeast Military Academy chronicle the efforts of instructors and students to absorb, implement, and improve upon new military skills and an effort not simply building strong bodies in the form of its graduates, but also creating bodies that could properly digest specific kinds of knowledge and make it their own. The dissertation attempts to reconstruct their fragmentary experiences by taking the reader on a journey through the rapidly shifting political terrain of Northeast China in the early twentieth century.