Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast
Episodes
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...