Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast
Episodes
Marcia Yonemoto, “The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan” (U of California Press, 2016)
25 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Were women a problem in early modern Japan? If they were, what was the nature of the problem they posed? For whom, and why? Marcia Yonemoto‘s new bo...
Emily K. Hobson, “Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left” (U. Cal Press, 2016)
16 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left (University of California Press, 2016), Emily K. Hobson challenges concepti...
Tyina Steptoe, “Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City” (U. California Press, 2015)
09 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What do you know about Houston, Texas? That Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States? That Houston was the home of the 2016 NCAA Final ...
Ruth Rogaski, “Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China” (U. California Press, 2014 reprint)
07 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Pre...
Charles Keith, “Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation” (U of California Press, 2012)
06 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between religion, imperialism, and national identity can be quite complex. At the same time, nationalist readings of history, particu...
Gabriel Thompson, “America’s Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century” (U of California Press, 2016)
16 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” This axiom encapsulates both the approach and dedication exhibited...
Garrett M. Broad, “More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change” (U of California Press, 2016)
13 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Resistance to the industrial food system has, over the past decades, led to the rise of alternative food movements. Debate about genetically modified ...
Matthew H. Sommer, “Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China” (U of California Press, 2015)
04 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
First things first: Matthew H. Sommer‘s new book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the history of China and/or the history of gender...
Birgit Meyer, “Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana” (U of California Press, 2015)
30 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Anthropologist Birgit Meyer‘s most recent book, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana (University of California Press, 2015),...
Jason Mokhtarian, “Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran” (U of California Press, 2015)
22 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran (University of California Press, 2015), Jason Mokhtarian, Assistan...
Sarah Bowen, “Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production” (U of California Press, 2015)
06 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production (University of California Press, 2015), Sarah Bowen presents the cha...
Joan Judge, “Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press” (U of California Press, 2015)
19 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Judge‘s wonderful new book takes readers into the pages of the Funu shibao (the Women’s Eastern Times), a “Shanghai-based, nationally distr...
Christopher Rea, “The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China” (University of California Press, 2015)
21 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher Rea‘s new book explores five kinds of laughter that emerged from the tumultuous first decades of China’s twentieth century: jokes, pla...
Sarah Maza, “Violette Noziere: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris” (U. of California Press, 2012)
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
On August 21, 1933, the teenaged Violette Noziere attempted to kill both her parents. At first, seemingly so clearcut, the case ultimately came to be ...
Arlene Davila, “Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People” (U California Press, 2012)
11 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (University of California Press, updated ed. 2012) Arlene Davila, Professor of Anthropology at N...
Mario T. Garcia, “The Chicano Generation: Testimonios of the Movement” (U of California Press, 2015)
12 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
As multifaceted as it was multinucleated, the Chicana/o Movement of the late-1960s and 1970s was “the largest and most widespread civil rights and e...
Erika Robb Larkins, “The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil” (U of California Press, 2015)
09 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
After the emancipation of slavery in the late nineteenth century, Afro-Brazilians moved to cities like Rio de Janeiro in search of employment. Because...
Amanda Lucia, “Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace” (University of California Press, 2014)
26 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Waiting several hours in line for a hug is well worth it for thousands of people, the devotees of the Guru, Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi. In Reflections...
Suzanna Reiss, “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire” (University of California Press, 2014)
14 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Though the conventional history of the U.S.-led “War on Drugs” locates the origins of this conflict in a reaction to the domestic culture of exces...
Phil Tiermeyer, “Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants” (U of California Press, 2013)
14 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest discusses the history of sexuality in the workplace through the lens of male flight attendants. We speak with Phil Tiemeyer about the ...
Natalia Molina, “How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts” (University of California Press, 2014)
02 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“America is a nation of immigrants.” Either this common refrain, or its cousin the “melting pot” metaphor is repeated daily in conversations a...
Alejandro Velasco, “Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela” (U of California Press, 2015)
28 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-1950s, Venezuela’s military government razed a massive slum settlement in the heart of Caracas and replaced it with what was at the time ...
James Laine, “Meta-Religion: Religion and Power in World History” (U of California Press, 2015)
23 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Most world religions textbooks follow a structure and conceptual framework that mirrors the modern discourse of world religions as distinct entities r...
Ana Elizabeth Rosas, “Abrazando el Espiritu: Bracero Families Confront the U.S.-Mexico Border” (U of California Press, 2014)
20 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Emergency Farm Labor Program (a.k.a. Bracero Program) was initiated in 1942 as a bilateral wartime agreement between the governments of the United...
Kevin O’Neill, “Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala” (U of California Press, 2015)
02 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin O’Neill‘s fascinating book Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala (University of California Press, 2015) traces t...
Julie Sze, “Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis” (U of California Press, 2015)
19 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Julie Sze‘s new book opens by bringing readers into the wetlands of Dongtan, introducing us to an ambitious but unrealized project to create the “...
Lisa Stevenson, “Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic” (University of California Press, 2014)
05 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Lisa Stevenson‘s new book opens with two throat-singing women and one listening king. Whether we hear them sitting down to a normal night’s dinner...
Cabeiri Robinson, “Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists” (University of California Press, 2013)
19 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body...
Charlotte Eubanks, “Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (U of California Press, 2011)
06 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011), Charlotte Eubanks examines the rel...
John Renard, “Islamic Theological Themes: A Primary Source Reader” (U of California Press, 2014)
06 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Islamic theology is generally understood or approached in terms of its systematic or speculative forms. In Islamic Theological Themes: A Primary Sourc...
S. Lochlann Jain, “Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us” (U of California Press, 2013)
14 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Cancer pervades American bodies–and also habits of mind. Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013) is a sharp, advent...
Joseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan” (U of California Press, 2014)
31 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and repr...
Alex Nading, “Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health and the Politics of Entanglement” (University of California Press, 2014)
18 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Dengue fever is on the rise globally. Since it is transmitted by mosquitoes which reside and reproduce in human environments, eradication efforts invo...
Pamela Klassen, “Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity” (University of California Press, 2011)
21 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Liberal Protestants are often dismissed as reflecting nothing more than a therapeutic culture or viewed as a measuring rod for the decline of Christia...
Nadine Hubbs, “Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music” (University of California Press, 2014)
05 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Academics don’t pay enough attention to class. And when we do, too often we only magnify the tendency for working class subjects to be defined accor...
Anson Rabinbach and Sander Gilman, “The Third Reich Sourcebook” (U California Press, 2013)
26 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Primary source readers represent an unusual historical genre. Unlike editions, their aim is not to enable the reader to hear, as clearly as possible, ...
Todd A. Henry, “Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945” (U of California Press, 2014)
21 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Todd Henry’s new book is a wonderful study of public space as a laboratory for producing the experiences and engines of colonial society. Assimilati...
Tine M. Gammeltoft, “Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam” (University of California Press, 2014)
22 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Tine Gammeltoft‘s new book explores the process of reproductive decision making in contemporary Hanoi. Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Select...
Miriam Kingsberg, “Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History” (University of California Press, 2013)
08 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Miriam Kingsberg‘s fascinating new book offers both a political and social history of modern Japan and a global history of narcotics in the modern w...
Nathan Schneider. “God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet” (University of California Press, 2013)
07 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Nathan Schneider‘s monograph, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet (University of California Press, 2013), explores...
Marc Myers “Why Jazz Happened” (University of California Press, 2014)
06 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How did jazz take shape? Why does jazz have so many styles? Why do jazz songs get longer as the twentieth century proceeds? Marc Myers, in his fascina...
Marc L. Moskowitz, “Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities and the Game of Weiqi in China” (University of California Press, 2013)
02 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In contemporary China, the game of Weiqi (also known as Go) represents many things at the same time: the military power of the general, the intellect ...
Emma Teng, “Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842-1943” (University of California Press, 2013)
23 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Teng‘s new book explores the discourses about Eurasian identity, and the lived experiences of Eurasian people, in China, Hong Kong, and the US ...
Eduardo Kohn, “How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human” (University of California Press, 2013)
09 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When you open Eduardo Kohn‘s How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human (University of California Press, 2013), you are entering a f...
Michael J. Hathaway, “Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China” (University of California Press, 2013)
28 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Globalization is locally specific: global connectivity looks different from place to place. Given that, how are global connections made? And why do th...
Carla Bellamy, “The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place” (University of California Press, 2011)
27 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (University of California Press, 2011), Carla Bellamy explores the role of...
Ian Jared Miller, “The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo” (University of California Press, 2013)
10 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In The Nature...
Sienna R. Craig, “Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine” (University of California Press, 2012)
03 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Two main questions frame Sienna R. Craig‘s beautifully written and carefully argued new book about Tibetan medical practices and cultures: How is ef...
Eric Jennings, “Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina” (University of California Press, 2011)
29 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There is a city in the Southern hills of Vietnam where honeymooners travel each year to affirm their love at high altitude, breathing in the alpine ai...
Henrietta Harrison, “The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village” (University of California Press, 2013)
10 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Henrietta Harrison‘s new book is the work of a gifted storyteller. In its pages, the reader will find Boxers getting drunk on communion wine, wolf a...
Louise Young, “Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan” (University of California Press, 2013)
17 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
During the interwar period (1918-1937), the city began to take its modern shape in Japan. At the same time, development in the Japanese provinces beca...
Fabian Drixler, “Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950” (University of California Press, 2013)
05 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The book opens on a scene in the mountains of Gumna, Japan. A midwife kneels next to a mother who has just given birth, and she proceeds to strangle t...
Christine Trost and Lawrence Rosenthal, eds. “Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party” (University of California Press, 2012)
01 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Christine Trost is program director of the Center for Right-Wing Studies and associate director of the UC Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Soci...
Steve Waksman, “This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk” (University of California Press, 2009)
06 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
When I was a teenager growing up in the early 80s, I took it as an article of faith that punk rock and heavy metal were definably different genres. To...
Steven Hill, “Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age” (University of California Press, 2010)
09 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What can the United States learn from Europe? One good answer, says Steven Hill, is social capitalism, a form of economic management that is responsiv...
Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, “Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party” (University of California Press, 2013)
17 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
German military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz observed that many of the important variables in war exist in ‘clouds of great uncertainty’ which cre...
Jonathan E. Abel, “Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan” (University of California Press, 2012)
01 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There is much to love about Jonathan Abel‘s new book. Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan (University of California Press, 2012) ...
Elizabeth J. Perry, “Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition” (University of California Press, 2012)
05 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Anyuan was a town of coal miners. It was a place where local secret societies held power, where rebellion and violence were part of the life of local ...
Gennifer Weisenfeld, “Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923” (University of California Press, 2012)
01 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Gennifer Weisenfeld‘s gorgeous and thoughtful new book explores the visual culture that emerged in the wake of the Kanto earthquake of 1923. Imaging...
Shawn Bender, “Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion” (University of California Press, 2012)
13 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Since the “taiko boom” of the closing decades of the 20thcentury, taiko drumming has arguably become Japan’s most globally successful performanc...
Amy Stanley, “Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan” (University of California Press, 2012)
19 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
With prose that is as elegant as the argument is clear, Amy Stanley‘s new book tells a social, cultural, and economic history of Tokugawa Japan thro...
Robert Westman, “The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order” (University of California Press, 2011)
29 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This is an extraordinary book written by one of the finest historians of science. Ringing in at nearly seven hundred oversized, double columned pages ...
Sherine Hamdy, “Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt” (University of California Press, 2012)
20 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
One of the best things about co-hosting New Books in STS is the opportunity to discover books like this one. Sherine Hamdy has given us something spec...
Merry White, “Coffee Life in Japan” (University of California Press, 2012)
15 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Merry (Corky) White‘s new book Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, 2012) opens with a memory of stripping naked and being painted ...
Gail Hershatter, “The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past” (University of California Press, 2011)
23 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
When I teach my course on gender, sexuality, and human rights, my students invariably want to talk about China’s one-child policy. They imagine livi...
Melissa Caldwell, “Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside” (University of California Press, 2010)
15 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Russians’ dachas are regularly mentioned in a sentence or two in newspaper articles about life in Russia, and many of who have visited the lands of ...
E. Taylor Atkins, "Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945" (U California Press, 2010)
15 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Taylor Atkins' recent book is both an important contribution to East Asian Studies and an absolute delight to read. Primitive Selves: Koreana in the ...
Matthew Delmont, “The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia” (University of California Press, 2011)
20 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (Universit...
Carol Benedict, “Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010” (University of California Press, 2011)
16 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Carol Benedict‘s Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010 (University of California Press, 2011)is many things at the same time; ...
Erik Mueggler, “The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet” (University of California Press, 2011)
01 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
First things first: this is an outstanding book. In the course of The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China an...
Parna Sengupta, “Pedagogy for Religion: Missionary Education and the Fashioning of Hindus and Muslims in Bengal” (University of California Press, 2011)
24 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between religion, secularization, and education? Parna Sengupta, Associate Director of Introductory Studies at Stanford Unive...
Tong Lam, “A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900-1949” (University of California Press, 2011)
22 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
We tend to take for granted that we have bodies, that these bodies are knowable and measurable, and that we understand how to relate our own bodies to...
Yi-Li Wu’s book, “Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China” (University of California Press, 2010)
01 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In what must be one of the most well-organized and clearly-written books in the history of academic writing, Yi-Li Wu‘s book, Reproducing Women: Med...
Eric Rath, “Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan” (University of California Press, 2010)
04 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Cuisine in early modern Japan was experienced and negotiated through literature and ritual, and the uneaten or inedible was often as important as what...
Siva Vaidhyanathan, “The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)” (U. California Press, 2011)
04 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (University of California Press, 2011), Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of medi...
Elizabeth Abel, “Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow” (University of California Press, 2010)
07 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I think this is really interesting. Among the thousands of iconic and easily recognizable photographs of segregated water fountains in the American So...
Aram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010)
12 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But n...