New Books in Chinese Studies
Episodes
Denise Y. Ho, “Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“In Mao’s China, to curate revolution was to make it material.” Denise Y. Ho’s new book explores this premise in a masterful account of exhibi...
Philip Thai, “China’s War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842-1965” (Columbia UP, 2018)
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
From petty runs to organized trafficking, the illicit activity of smuggling on the China coast was inherently dramatic, but now historian Philip Thai ...
Maria Repnikova, “Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite its extraordinary diversity, life in the People’s Republic of China is all too often viewed mainly through the lens of politics, with dynami...
Gordon Mathews, “The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
03 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of globalization and global cities, we might be inclined to think of New York or London. Yet in recent years, Guangzhou, the central man...
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford UP, 2018)
29 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“Knowing about China,” Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom note in the preface to China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to...
Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018)
25 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Hongwei Bao’s book is a thoughtful exploration of gay identity and queer activism in China. This work stems from the term and identity tongzhi, whic...
Erik Mueggler, “Songs for Dead Parents: Corpse, Text, and World in Southwest China” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Lòlop’ò of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province have a folktale in which they, Han Chinese, and Tibetans were given the technology of writing. ...
Kathlene Baldanza, “Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
07 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Kathlene Baldanza explores the complex diploma...
Ji-Young Lee, “China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination” (Columbia UP, 2017)
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ji-Young Lee’s book investigates the changing nature of tribute relations during the Ming and High Qing between a dominant China and its less powerf...
Yutao Sun and Seamus Grimes, “China and Global Value Chains” (Routledge, 2018)
30 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I was joined by Seamus Grimes from Ireland where he is Emeritus Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. With Yutao Sun (Dalian ...
Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday, “Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday spent ten years interviewing criminal defense attorneys throughout China in order to compile the evidence on the prof...
Taisu Zhang, “The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship Property in Preindustrial China and England” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Taisu Zhang ties together cultural history, legal history, and institutional economics in The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property...
Kristian Petersen, “Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab” (Oxford UP, 2017)
10 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his monumental new book, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017), Kristia...
John Powers, “The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism” (Oxford UP, 2016)
07 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent book, The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2016...
Bradley Camp Davis, “Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands” (U of Washington Press, 2017)
29 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Recent years have seen an upsurge in studies asking questions about, and in, borderlands. The topic is certainly not new to scholars of mainland South...
Eileen Le Han, “Micro-Blogging Memories: Weibo and Collective Remembering in Contemporary China” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
12 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Since its invention, the Internet has become a fundamental part of our lives. Since the invention of social media, communicative technologies have cha...
Edward Vickers, “Education and Society in Post-Mao China” (Routledge, 2017)
22 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Edward Vickers, Professor of Comparative Education at Kyushu University, joins New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, entitled ...
Dorothy Ko, “The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China” (U. of Washington Press, 2017)
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Dorothy Ko‘s new book is a must-read. Troubling the hierarchy of head over hands and the propensity to denigrate craftsmen in Chinese history, The S...
Phoebe Chow, “Britain’s Imperial Retreat from China, 1900-1931” (Routledge, 2016)
07 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
At the start of the twentieth century Britain’s relationship with China was defined by the economic and political dominance Britain exerted in the c...
Richard Jean So, “Transpacific Community: America, China, and the Rise and Fall of a Cultural Network” (Columbia University Press, 2016)
23 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Jean So’s new book studies a group of American and Chinese writers in the three decades after WWI to propose a conceptual framework for unde...
Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup, eds., “Recovering Buddhism in Modern China” (Columbia UP, 2016)
23 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The essays in Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup’s new edited volume, Recovering Buddhism in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2016), collectivel...
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...
Kristin Stapleton, “Fact in Fiction: 1920s China and Ba Jin’s Family” (Stanford UP, 2016)
05 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Kristin Stapleton’s new book opens onto a political crisis in China, and into a spirit of reform touched off by student demonstrations on May 4, 191...
Ellen Widmer, “Fiction’s Family: Zhan Xi, Zhan Kai, and the Business of Women in Late-Qing China” (Harvard UP, 2016)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ellen Widmer’s new book tells a story of the life and work of a literary family in China, in order to open out into a fascinating discussion of the ...
David Brophy, “Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier” (Harvard UP, 2016)
13 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing together secondary and primary sources in a wide range of languages, David Brophy’s new book is a masterful study of the modern history of ...
Miranda Brown, “The Art of Medicine in Early China: The Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Miranda Brown‘s new book takes a sustained look at the role and significance of the medical fathers in the historiography of Chinese medicine. Payin...
Susan Turner Haynes, “Chinese Nuclear Proliferation: How Global Politics is Transforming China’s Weapons Buildup and Modernization” (Potomac Books, 2016)
01 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
While the world’s attention is focused on the nuclearization of North Korea and Iran and the nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, China ...
Kirk A. Denton, “Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2014)
15 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Kirk A. Denton‘s recent book explores the role of the state in China in shaping particular visions of the past through work in and with museums. Foc...
Mingwei Song, “Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900-1959” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2016)
03 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be young? Mingwei Song‘s new book explores this question in the context of a careful study of the nature and significance of th...
Ho-fung Hung, “The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World” (Columbia UP, 2016)
18 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ho-fung Hung‘s new book has two main goals: to to outline the historical origins of Chinas capitalist boom and the social and political formations i...
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...
Douglas Clark, “Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943)” (Earnshaw Books, 2016)
11 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Douglas Clark’s new Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943) (Earnshaw Books Limited, 2016) is a three-volume...
Sigrid Schmalzer, “Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China” (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
11 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sigrid Schmalzer‘s new book is an excellent and important contribution to both science studies and the history of China. Red Revolution, Green Revol...
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, “Eight Juxtapositions: China through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo” (e-Penguin, 2016)
04 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey Wasserstrom‘s wonderful new book in the “China Specials” series at Penguin opens with two main premises. First, it is more important tha...
J. Brown and M. D. Johnson, eds., “Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China’s Era of High Socialism” (Harvard UP, 2015)
07 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Brown and Matthew D. Johnson‘s new edited volume offers a fresh perspective on the history of the Mao Zedong era (1949-1978). Maoism at the G...
Agnieszka Joniak-Luthi, “The Han: China’s Diverse Majority” (U of Washington Press, 2015)
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Agnieszka Joniak-Luthi‘s new book opens with a series of questions that animate the study. They include but are not limited to: What does being Han ...
Erica Fox Brindley, “Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c.400 BCE-50 CE” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
03 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Erica Fox Brindley‘s new book is a powerful study of the history of conceptions of ethnicity in early China that focuses on the Hua-xia and the peop...
Miao Li, “Citizenship Education and Migrant Youth in China: Pathways to the Urban Underclass” (Routledge, 2015)
03 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Miao Li, assistant professor, Department of Sociology and School of Philosophy and Social Development at Shandong University, joins New Books in E...
Lisong Liu, “Chinese Student Migration and Selective Citizenship” (Routledge, 2015)
29 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Lisong Liu‘s thoughtful new book is an important and insightful read for any of us who are currently engaged in conversations about supporting the i...
James A. Benn, “Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History” (U of Hawaii Press, 2015)
04 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
James A. Benn‘s new book is a history of tea as a religious and cultural commodity in China before it became a global commodity in the nineteenth ce...
Nanxiu Qian, “Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform” (Stanford UP, 2015)
11 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nanxiu Qian, professor at Rice University, discusses her new book Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform ...
Peter van der Veer, “The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India” (Princeton UP, 2013
07 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What are the differences between religion, magic, and spirituality? Over time, these categories have been articulated in a variety of ways across diff...
Linda Rui Feng, “City of Marvel and Transformation” (U of Hawai’i Press, 2015)
27 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Linda Rui Feng‘s beautiful new book shows us the Tang city of Chang’an as we’ve not seen it before. City of Marvel and Transformation: Chang’a...
Joseph R. Dennis, “Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100-1700” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2015)
18 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In late imperial China, how did local elites connect with and influence the central government? How was local information made and managed? How did th...
Minghui Hu, “China’s Transition to Modernity: The New Classical Vision of Dai Zhen” (U of Washington Press, 2015)
15 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Minghui Hu‘s new book takes Dai Zhen as a case study to look at broader transformations in classical scholarship, technical methodologies, politics,...
Anna M. Shields, “One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China” (Harvard UP, 2015)
04 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Anna M. Shields has written a marvelous book on friendship, literature, and history in medieval China. One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Cultu...
Gordon H. Chang, “Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China” (Harvard UP, 2015)
30 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“There was China before there was an America, and it is because of China that America came to be.” According to Gordon H. Chang‘s new book, the ...
Shellen Wu, “Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920” (Stanford UP, 2015)
25 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Shellen Wu‘s new book is a fascinating and timely contribution to the histories of China, science, technology, and the modern world. Empires of Coal...
Andrew G. Walder, “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed” (Harvard UP, 2015)
14 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that 1949 was actually the beginning, not the end, of the Chinese revolution.” Building from this prem...
Parks M. Coble, “China’s War Reporters: The Legacy of Resistance against Japan” (Harvard UP, 2015)
10 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Parks M. Coble‘s new book is a wonderful study of memory, war, and history that takes the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 and its aftermath as its fo...
Carlos Rojas, “Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation in Modern China” (Harvard UP, 2015)
08 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Carlos Rojas‘s new book is a wonderfully transdisciplinary exploration of discourses of sickness and disease in Chinese literature and cinema in the...
Ruth Hayhoe, “China Through the Lens of Comparative Education: The Selected Works of Ruth Hayhoe” (Routledge. 2015)
14 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Ruth Hayhoe, professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, has dedicated her academic career to the st...
Winnie Won Yin Wong, "Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade" (U Chicago Press, 2014)
26 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Reading Winnie Wong's new book on image production in Dafen village will likely change the way you think about copying, China, and the relationship b...
Winnie Won Yin Wong, “Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
26 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Reading Winnie Wong‘s new book on image production in Dafen village will likely change the way you think about copying, China, and the relationship ...
Lu Zhang, “Inside China’s Automobile Factories” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
10 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
China’s automobile industry has grown considerably over the past two decades. Massive foreign investment and an increased scale and concentration of...
Michael Nylan and Griet Vankeerberghen, “Chang’an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China” (U of Washington Press, 2015)
05 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Nylan and Griet Vankeerberghen have produced a landmark volume. Chang’an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China (University of Washington Press, 2...
Stuart Young, “Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China” (U of Hawaii Press, 2014)
25 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), Stuart Young examines Chinese hagiographic representation...
David A. Pietz, “Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China” (Harvard UP, 2015)
06 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
David A. Pietz‘s new book argues that China’s water challenges are historically grounded, and that these historical realities are not going to dis...
Eugene N. Anderson, “Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
15 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Eugene N. Anderson‘s new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming a...
Sarah M. Allen, “Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narratives from Tang Dynasty China” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014)
09 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah M. Allen‘s new book looks at the literature of tales in eighth- and ninth-century China. Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narrat...
Kenneth M. Swope, “The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-44” (Routledge, 2014)
11 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Our interview with Kenneth M. Swope about his book, The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-44 (Routledge, 2014), published through Rout...
Paola Iovene, “Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China” (Stanford UP, 2014)
19 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Paola Iovene‘s new book is a beautiful exploration of visions of the future as they have shaped a range of texts, genres, and editorial practices in...
Peter Peverelli, “One Turbulent Year – China 1975” (Boekscout, 2013)
24 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
China today attracts one of the largest foreign student populations in the world. In 1975, though, very few foreign students were allowed to study in ...
Peter Peverelli, "One Turbulent Year - China 1975" (Boekscout, 2013)
24 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
China today attracts one of the largest foreign student populations in the world. In 1975, though, very few foreign students were allowed to study in ...
Ernest P. Young, “Ecclesiastical Colony: China’s Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate” (Oxford UP, 2013)
08 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In theory, Christian missionaries plan only on working in a country until an indigenous leadership can take over management of the church. Theory is o...
Michael Gibbs Hill, trans., Wang Hui, “China from Empire to Nation-State” (Harvard UP, 2014)
17 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Gibbs Hill‘s new translation renders into English, for the first time, the introduction and overview to Wang Hui‘s 4-volume Rise of Modern...
Kenneth Brashier, “Public Memory in Early China” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014)
29 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Ken Brashier’s new book is another tour de force and must-read for scholars of Chinese studies. Public Memory in Early China (Harvard University Asi...
Leslie Grant, “West Meets East: Best Practices from Expert Teachers in the United States and China” (ASCD, 2014)
14 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Teachers have recently become a target in the educational reform debate. Most would agree that great teachers are crucial for education. However, ther...
Donovan Chau, “Exploiting Africa: The Influence of Maoist China in Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania” (NIP, 2014)
07 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Donovan Chau is the author of Exploiting Africa: The Influence of Maoist China in Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania (Naval Institute Press, 2014). Chau is ...
Craig Clunas, “Screen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming China” (University of Hawaii Press, 2013)
02 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Craig Clunas‘s new book explores the significance of members of the imperial clan, or “kings” in Ming China. A king was established in a “stat...
Wensheng Wang, “White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire” (Harvard UP, 2014)
23 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Wensheng Wang‘s new book takes us into a key turning point in the history of the Qing empire, the Qianlong-Jiaqing reign periods. In White Lotus Reb...
James Carter, “Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth-Century Monk” (Oxford UP, 2011)
11 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Jay Carter‘s new book follows the life of one man as a way of opening a window into the lived history of twentieth-century China. Heart of Buddha, H...
Stephen R. Platt, “Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War” (Vintage, 2012)
03 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen R. Platt‘s new book is a beautifully written and intricately textured account of the bloodiest civil war of all time. Autumn in the Heavenl...
Robert A. Rhoads, et al., “China’s Rising Research Universities: A New Era of Global Ambition” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
31 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Robert A. Rhoads, Xiaoyang Wang, Xiaoguang Shi, Yongcai Chang are the authors of China’s Rising Research Universities: A New Era of Global Ambition ...
Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, “The Religious Question in Modern China” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
28 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Social phenomena that some people like to call ‘religion’ has long shaped Chinese culture. In the twentieth century, defining the boundaries of wh...
Michelle King, “Between Birth and Death: Female Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century China” (Stanford UP, 2014)
26 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Michelle King‘s new book explores the intertwined histories of imperialism and infanticide. Situating the histories of infant killing and abandonmen...
Tobie Meyer-Fong, “What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in Nineteenth-Century Century China” (Stanford UP, 2013)
01 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Tobie Meyer-Fong‘s beautifully written and masterfully argued new book explores the remains (in many senses and registers, both literal and figurati...
Benjamin A. Elman, “Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China” (Harvard UP, 2013)
09 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin A. Elman‘s new book explores the civil examination process and the history of state exam curricula in late imperial China. Civil Examinatio...
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 ...
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...
Timothy J. Brook, “Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer” (Bloomsbury, 2013)
29 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The story opens with a closing and closes with an opening. The closing is the sale of the map of Martin Waldseemuller, “America’s birth certificat...
Rowan K. Flad and Pochan Chen, “Ancient Central China” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
19 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most exciting approaches in the contemporary study of China is emerging from work that brings together archaeological and historical modes ...
Paul O’Connor, “Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China’s World City” (Hong Kong UP, 2012)
20 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What does the everyday experience of Muslim minorities look like? We have often heard about what Muslims deal with in the West. But what about Muslim ...
Jonathan Hay, “Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China” (University of Hawaii Press, 2010)
19 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) is a study of domestically produced, portable ...
John Osburg, “Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China’s New Rich” (Stanford UP, 2013)
09 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
John Osburg‘s new book explores the rise of elite networks of newly-rich entrepreneurs, managers of state enterprises, and government officials in C...
Matthew W. Mosca, “From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China” (Stanford, 2013)
22 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew Mosca‘s impressively researched and carefully structured new book maps the transformation of geopolitical worldviews in a crucial period of ...
Erica Fox Brindley, “Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China” (SUNY Press, 2012)
16 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Erica Fox Brindley‘s recent book explores the centrality of music to early Chinese thought. Making broad use of both received and newly excavated te...
Aminda M. Smith, “Thought Reform and China’s Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance, and the People” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013)
19 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Aminda M. Smith‘s fascinating new book traces the history of transformations in the way that the PRC understood social control, deviance, and though...
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 ...
Gene Cooper, “The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red Fire” (Routledge, 2013)
10 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Gene Cooper‘s new book is a multi-sited ethnographic study of market and temple fairs in the region of Jinhua, a city on the east coast of China and...
Christopher Bush, “Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media” (Oxford UP, 2010)
13 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Orientalism, the ideograph, and media theory grew up together. In Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media (Oxford University Press, 2010), Christ...
Shih-Shan Susan Huang, “Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2012)
31 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Shih-Shan Susan Huang‘s beautiful new book explores visual culture of religious Daoism, focusing on the tenth through the thirteenth centuries. Pict...
Christopher Nugent, “Manifest in Words, Written on Paper: Producing and Circulating Poetry in Tang Dynasty China” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2010)
13 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher Nugent‘s wonderful recent book will change the way you read. At the very least, Manifest in Words, Written on Paper: Producing and Circu...
Par Cassel, “Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan” (Oxford UP, 2012)
13 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Extraterritoriality was not grafted whole onto East Asian societies: it developed over time and in a relationship with local precedents, institutions,...
Gregory Crouch, “China’s Wings” (Bantam Books, 2012)
30 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
When I was a kid I loved the movie “The Flying Tigers.” You know, the one with John Wayne about the intrepid American volunteers sent to China to ...
Kenneth Brashier, “Ancestral Memory in Early China” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)
17 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
If New Books in East Asian Studies were an All-Powerful Force of Good In The Universe and if one of the perks that came along with being an All-Powerf...
Roel Sterckx, “Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China” (Cambridge UP, 2011)
11 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Roel Sterckx‘s book Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge University Press, 2011) had me at drunken seances. (Drunken seances! Do ...
Daniel Vukovich, “China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the P.R.C.” (Routledge, 2012)
17 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Using materials that range from poetry and fiction to historiography and film, China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the P.R.C. (Rou...
Xiaofei Tian, “Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteenth-Century China” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)
23 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Xiaofei Tian‘s Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteenth-Century China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is a mode...