New Books in East Asian Studies
Episodes
Mark Gamsa, “Manchuria: A Concise History” (Bloomsbury, 2020)
29 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The term ‘Manchuria’ conjures up all manner of evocative associations for people interested in East Asian and world history, from the Manchu found...
Filippo Marsili, "Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to 'Religion' and Empire in Ancient China" (SUNY Press, 2018)
17 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to 'Religion' and Empire in Ancient China (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a new comparative perspective on the ro...
Ching-yuen Cheung, "Globalizing Japanese Philosophy as an Academic Discipline" (VR Unipress, 2017)
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ching-yuen Cheung's and Wing-keung Lam's edited volume Globalizing Japanese Philosophy as an Academic Discipline (V&R Unipress, 2017) is a collection ...
Elizabeth Economy, "The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State" (Oxford UP, 2018)
15 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A trade war with China has dangerous implications for the global economy. What began more than a year ago with President Trump’s decision to impose ...
Christopher Lovins, "King Chŏngjo: An Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea" (SUNY Press, 2019)
06 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Though traditionally regarded as a monarch who failed to arrest the gradual decline of his kingdom, the Korean king Chŏngjo has benefited in recent d...
Charlotte Brooks, "American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901–1949" (U California Press, 2019)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1901 and World War II, up to half of all U.S.-born Chinese Americans relocated to China in search of better lives due to the discrimination th...
Sandra Fahy, "Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record" (Columbia UP, 2019)
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“The things that are happening to North Korea are happening to all of us…they are part of the human community. To say that this is just a problem ...
M. Sheehy and K-D Mathes, "The Other Emptiness: Rethinking the Zhentong Buddhist Discourse in Tibet" (SUNY Press, 2019)
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Michael R. Sheehy and Klaus-Dieter Mathes's edited collection The Other Emptiness: Rethinking the Zhentong Buddhist Discourse in Tibet (SUNY Press, 2...
Xiao Liu, "Information Fantasies: Precarious Mediation in Postsocialist China" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
21 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
International and transnational historiography has given us vivid glimpses of the development and impact of cybernetics on a national scale in such co...
Miriam Driessen, "Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia" (Hong Kong UP, 2019)
13 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I met Dr Miriam Driessen at Oxford University where she works at the China Centre. We spoke about her wonderful new book Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitt...
Erin Schoneveld, "Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-Garde" (Brill, 2018)
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Befitting an art history book, Erin Schoneveld’s Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-Garde (B...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
Lian Xi, "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China" (Basic Books, 2018)
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education. Years before, she had ...
Charles B. Jones, "Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Charles B. Jones, Associate Professor and Director of the Religion and Culture graduate program in the School of Theology and Relig...
Noelle Giuffrida, "Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America" (U California Press, 2018)
09 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Noelle Giuffrida’s book, Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America (University of California Press, ...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...
Wang Gungwu, "Home is Not Here" (NUS Press, 2018)
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Wang Gungwu has long been recognized as a world authority on the history of China and the overseas Chinese. His work has been inspired by his own expe...
Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg, "Japan's Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
31 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg’s coauthored Japan's Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2019) uses the fa...
Christian Sorace, "Afterlives of Chinese Communism” (Verso-ANU Press, 2019)
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What to make of the fact that China is ruled by a Communist Party which detains and arrests people studying Maoism, organising workers, or campaigning...
Elisabeth Köll, "Railroads and the Transformation of China" (Harvard UP, 2019)
28 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Railroads and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press, 2019) looks at the development of railroads in China from the late 19th century t...
Michael Mandelbaum, "The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth" (Oxford UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the twenty-five years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth (Oxford Univiersity Press,...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...
Ricky W. Law, "Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German Japanese Relations, 1919-1936" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German Japanese Relations, 1919-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), associate prof...
Larry Diamond, "Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency" (Penguin, 2019)
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Larry Diamond joins us this week to talk about the threat China’s model of authoritarian capitalism poses to liberal democracy in the United States ...
Nianshen Song, "Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881-1919” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Land borders in East Asia have played just as big a role in the region’s social transformations as their more recently debated maritime counterparts...
Jolyon Baraka Thomas, "Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jolyon Baraka Thomas’s Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2019) challenges the commonsensi...
Evan N. Dawley, "Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City, 1880s-1950s" (Harvard UP, 2019)
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How was the Taiwanese identity constructed? Dr. Evan N. Dawley, an associate professor of history at Goucher College, explores this question in his ne...
Yan Li, “China’s Soviet Dream: Propaganda, Culture, and Popular Imagination" (Routledge, 2018)
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The warmth of China and Russia’s present-day relationship is sometimes said to reprise 1950s ties between Mao’s PRC and the Soviet Union, even if ...
Nicholas Walton, "Singapore Singapura: From Miracle to Complacency" (Hurst, 2019)
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nicholas Walton’s Singapore Singapura: From Miracle to Complacency (Hurst, 2019) is far more than a portrait of the rise of a resource-poor nation t...
Kyle A. Jaros, "China's Urban Champions: The Politics of Spatial Development" (Princeton UP, 2019)
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Discussions of China’s 21st-century ‘rise’ often focus on the country’s dazzling megacities and the dizzying pace of urbanization which has pr...
Shayne Legassie, "The Medieval Invention of Travel" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
06 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Shayne Legassie talks about medieval travel, especially long distance travel, and the way it was feared, praised, and sometimes treated with suspicion...
Amy Olberding, "The Wrong of Rudeness: Learning Modern Civility from Ancient Chinese Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2019)
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Amy Olberding’s The Wrong of Rudeness: Learning Modern Civility from Ancient Chinese Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2019) is a joy to read, both entertainin...
Jenny Huangfu Day, "Qing Travelers to the Far West: Diplomacy and the Information Order in Late Imperial China" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Historians in the English-speaking world have long studied how European and American travelers and diplomats conceptualized China, but, especially in ...
Levi McLaughlin, "Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of A Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
26 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Being Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization, Soka Gakkai (Society for the Creation of Value) and Soka Gakkai International...
Max Oidtmann, "Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet" (Columbia UP, 2018)
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995, the People’s Republic of China resurrected the technology of the “Golden Urn,” a Qing-era tool which involves the identification of the...
Martin T. Fromm, "Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With China’s northwestern and southern edges justifiably being sources of global attention at present, Martin Fromm’s Borderland Memories: Searchi...
Sabine Frühstück, "Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan" (U California Press, 2017)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan (University of California Press, 2017), Sabine Frühstück shows how children...
Meredith Oda, "The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city l...
Jessica Starling, "Guardians of the Buddha’s Home: Domestic Religion in Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
05 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her recent ethnography, Guardians of the Buddha’s Home: Domestic Religion in Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū (University of Hawaii Press, 2019), Pr...
Daniel Vukovich, "Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People's Republic of China" (Palgrave, 2018)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People's Republic of China (Palgrave, 2018) by Daniel Vukovich analyzes the 'intellectual political ...
Danny Orbach, "Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan" (Cornell UP, 2017)
18 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Danny Orbach’s Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan (Cornell University Press, 2017) provides new insights into the origins ...
Betsy Perabo, "Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War" (Bloomsbury, 2017)
18 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As Russian militarism becomes increasingly intertwined with Russian Orthodoxy theology in the 21st century, the history of the Church’s relationship...
Melissa McCormick, "The Tale of Genji: A Visual Companion" (Princeton UP, 2018)
17 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Genji Album (1510) in the Harvard Art Museums is the oldest dated set of Genji illustrations known to exist. In The Tale of Genji. A Visual Compan...
Nancy S. Steinhardt, "Chinese Architecture: A History" (Princeton UP, 2019)
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If there’s one thing that conjures up the – rightly contested – idea of a ‘civilisation’, it is grand palatial or religious buildings, and m...
Chika Watanabe, "Becoming One: Religion, Development, and Environmentalism in a Japanese NGO in Myanmar" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chika Watanabe’s Becoming One: Religion, Development, and Environmentalism in a Japanese NGO in Myanmar (University of Hawaii Press, 2019) is a rich...
Kate Harris, "Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road" (Dey Street Books, 2019)
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Harris — writer, scientist, and extreme cyclist – talks about the trip she made with her friend Mel, tracing Marco Polo’s route across Cent...
Jeremy Friedman, "Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World" (UNC Press, 2018)
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If today’s geopolitical fragmentation and the complexities of a ‘multipolar’ world order have led some to reminisce about the apparent stability...
Jakobina Arch, "Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan" (U Washington Press, 2018)
11 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan (University of Washington Press, 2018) is more than a history of whaling in J...
Dean Anthony Brink, “Japanese Poetry and its Publics: From Colonial Taiwan to Fukushima” (Routledge, 2018)
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Is classical Japanese poetry something to be enjoyed in private, an object of study for scholars, or an item of public life teeming with hints about h...
Lorenzo Andolfatto, "Hundred Days’ Literature: Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902–1910" (Brill, 2019)
08 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Hundred Days’ Literature, Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902–1910 (Brill, 2019), Lorenzo Andolfatto explores the landscape of e...
T. Brook, M. van Walt van Praag, M. Boltjes, "Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
03 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With thorny topics in Asian international relations, sovereignty, territory and borders in the news more or less daily, understanding what is at stake...
Yuen Yuen Ang, "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap" (Cornell UP, 2016)
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I spoke with Dr Yuen Yuen Ang, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She published in 2016 a great new bo...
Christopher Rea, "China's Chaplin: Comic Stories and Farces by Xu Zhuodai" (Cornell UP, 2019)
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hoaxes! Jokes! Farces and fun! Cristopher Rea's China’s Chaplin (Cornell University Press, 2019) introduces the imagination of Xu Zhuodai (1880–19...
Jonathan D. T. Ward, "China's Vision of Victory" (Atlas Publishing, 2019)
28 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Someday we may say that we never saw it coming. After seventy-five years of peace in the Pacific, a new challenger to American power has emerged, on a...
Hye-Kyung Lee, "Cultural Policy in South Korea: Making a New Patron State" (Routledge, 2018)
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why does Korean cultural policy matter? In Cultural Policy in South Korea: Making a New Patron State (Routledge, 2018), Hye-Kyung Lee, a Senior Lectur...
Emily Wilcox, "Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy" (U California Press, 2018)
18 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What is “Chinese dance,” how did it take shape in during China’s socialist period, and how has this socialist form continued to influence Post-M...
Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace" (Harper, 2018)
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Thomas Chamberlin has written a book about the Cold War that makes important claims about the nature and reasons for genocide in the last half of...
Marc Gallicchio and Waldo Heinrich, "Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945" (Oxford UP, 2017)
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Serious and casual scholars and readers interested in the Pacific War would do well to commit reading Marc Gallicchio’s and Waldo Heinrich’s massi...
Tsering Döndrup, "The Handsome Monk and Other Stories" (Columbia UP, 2019)
12 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A series of stories ranging from two-page narrative excerpts to 90+ page novellas, The Handsome Monk and Other Stories (Columbia University Press, 201...
Thomas S. Mullaney, “The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China” (Stanford UP, 2019)
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Chinese landscape is dramatically changing. Modernization has drastically altered Chinese infrastructure, urban zones, waterways, and even rural s...
Jennifer Dixon, "Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan" (Cornell UP, 2018)
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Dixon’s Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), investigates the Japanese and Turkis...
Cathal J. Nolan, "The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost" (Oxford UP, 2019)
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could...
Megan Bryson, “Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China” (Stanford UP, 2016)
05 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Megan Bryson, Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, centers gender as an analytical framework in the study of Buddhism. The benefit of t...
Cindy Yik-Yi Chu, "The Chinese Sisters of the Precious Blood and the Evolution of the Catholic Church" (Palgrave, 2016)
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The history of Christianity in China has been dominated by accounts of men and of male institutions. In this important new work, Cindy Yik-Yi Chu, who...
Kerim Yasar, "Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945" (Columbia UP, 2018)
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 (Columbia UP, 2018) explores the soundscapes of modernity ...
Jinhua Dai (ed. Lisa Rofel), "After the Post-Cold War: The Future of Chinese History" (Duke UP, 2018)
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Although not all that well known to English-speaking audiences, cultural critic and Peking University professor Jinhua Dai’s incisive commentaries a...
F. Grillo and R. Nanetti, "Democracy and Growth in the 21st Century: The Diverging Cases of China and Italy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Francesco Grillo (co-authored with Raffaella Nanetti) about his latest book, Democracy and Growth in the 21st Century: The Divergin...
Anne A. Cheng, "Ornamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her original and thought-provoking book Ornamentalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anne A. Cheng illustrates the longstanding relationship betw...
Jeremy Black, "The World at War, 1914-1945" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In one of his latest books, The World at War, 1914-1945 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Professor of History at Exeter University, Jeremy Black, the mos...
Kimberly Chong, "Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China" (Duke UP, 2018)
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What do management consultants do, and how do they do it? These two deceptively simple questions are at the centre of Best Practice: Management Consul...
Gregory Smits, "Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650" (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Conventional portrayals of early Ryukyu are based on official histories written between 1650 and 1750. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Gregory S...
David Woodbridge, "Missionary Primitivism and Chinese Modernity: The Brethren in Twentieth-Century China" (Brill, 2019)
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on new archival resources, and opening up an entirely new research agenda in the field, David Woodbridge has written an outstanding new book. ...
Matthew W. King, "Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire" (Columbia UP, 2019)
16 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After the fall of the Qing empire, amid nationalist and socialist upheaval, Buddhist monks in the Mongolian frontiers of the Soviet Union and Republic...
Jane Caple, "Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
09 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, I speak with Prof. Jane Caple about her recently published book, Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet (University of Hawai...
Christina Yi, "Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea" (Columbia UP, 2018)
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The fact that Korea’s experience of Japanese imperialism plays a role in present-day Japan-Korea relations is no secret to anyone. Questions of guil...
Jeremy Black, "Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World" (Encounter Books, 2019)
01 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Are you tired of the constant refrain from our campus radicals and their bien-pensant allies in the intelligentsia that the United States and the Unit...
Pang Yang Huei, "Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958" (Hong Kong UP, 2019)
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958 occurred at the height of the Cold War. Mao’s China bombarded Nationalist-controlled islands, and U.S. ...
Pu Wang, "The Translatability of Revolution: Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture" (Harvard Asia Center, 2018)
23 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With questions over how ideas are translated across borders and between languages as acute as ever today, it is sometimes easy to forget that our effo...
Craig Benjamin, "Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE-250 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the late second century BCE, a series of trading route developed between China in the east and Rome’s empire in the west. Craig Benjamin’s Empi...
Federico Varese, "Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories" (Princeton UP, 2011)
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tonight we are talking with Federico Varese about his new book Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories (Princeton University ...
Leta Hong Fincher, "Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China" (Verso, 2018)
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, five activists were detained by the police in China for their plans to distribute anti-sexual haras...
Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Chinatown Opera Theater in North America" (U Illinois Press, 2017)
03 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of popular entertainment in American immigrant communities is only just beginning to be told. Chinatown Opera Theater in North America by Na...
Levi S. Gibbs, "Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China" (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How does music link people across time and space? How do singers modulate their repertoires to forge links with audiences both within and across local...
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...
Ian Johnson, "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao" (Pantheon, 2017)
13 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017), was called "a masterpiece of observation and empath...
Suk-Young Kim, "K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance" (Stanford UP, 2018)
13 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Given its expanding multimedia presence in Asia and around the world for many years now, K-pop is a phenomenon that is hard to ignore. This “animal ...
Sayaka Chatani, "Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies" (Cornell UP, 2018)
11 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sayaka Chatani’s Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies (Cornell University Press, 2018) tackles the fraught...
Emily Baum, "The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Emily Baum’s The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018 as part ...
Christine Loh, "Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong" (Hong Kong UP, 2018)
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There can be little doubt that Hong Kong has stood out as a particularly intense East Asian news hotspot in recent years. Whether reports have focused...
Christopher Goscha, "Vietnam: A New History" (Basic Books, 2016)
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
More than forty year after its end the Vietnam War casts a long shadow over our understanding of Vietnam’s modern history. But the acute focus on th...
Alfredo Toro Hardy, "The Crossroads of Globalization. A Latin American View" (World Scientific Publishing. 2019)
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Crossroads of Globalization. A Latin American View (World Scientific Publishing Co. 2019) explores the complex interaction of several forces shapi...
Pema Tseden, "Enticement" (SUNY Press 2018)
19 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Though most renowned for his award-winning Tibetan films, Pema Tseden, is also a prolific author and translator. Enticement (State University of New Y...
Jieun Baek, "North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society" (Yale UP, 2016)
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With recent events having raised hopes that significant change may be afoot in North Korea, it is important to remember that DPRK society has in fact ...
Monica Kim, "The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History" (Princeton UP, 2019)
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Monica Kim provides a fresh look at the Korean War with a people-centered approach that studies the experiences of prisoners of war. As the first majo...
Eiko Maruko Siniawer, "Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan" (Cornell UP, 2018)
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Eiko Maruko Siniawer’s Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018) is an absorbing look at the multiple and changing ways that w...
Andray Abrahamian, "North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths" (McFarland, 2018)
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At an often-stressful time in global affairs, and with the very idea of the ‘international community’ seemingly under threat, it can be beneficial...
Jonathan Fulton, "China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies" (Routledge, 2018)
17 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Fulton's China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018) sheds light on China’s increasing economic role at a moment that the ...
Van Jackson, "On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and The Threat of Nuclear War" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
16 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and The Threat of Nuclear War (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Van Jackson succinctly explains the major ...
Derek Hird and Geng Song, "The Cosmopolitan Dream: Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age" (Hong Kong UP, 2018)
15 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
China’s global rise has been analysed from many perspectives in recent years. But pressing questions over how understandings of gender – and parti...
Anne Reinhardt, "Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860–1937" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At a time when trade between China and the outside world is rarely out of the news, it remains important to remember that in centuries past global com...