New Books in East Asian Studies
Episodes
Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, "Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy" (Hachette, 2023)
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Among the Braves Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battles for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy (Hachette, 2023) Shibani Mahtani and T...
Andrew David Jackson, "The Late and Post-Dictatorship Cinephilia Boom and Art Houses in South Korea" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Andy Jackson’s The Late and Post-Dictatorship Cinephilia Boom and Art Houses in South Korea (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) examines an une...
James St. André, "Conceptualising China through Translation" (Manchester UP, 2023)
23 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Conceptualising China through Translation (Manchester University Press, 2023) by Dr. James St Andre provides an innovative methodology for investigat...
Hannah Gould and Gwyn McClelland, "Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats" (Penn State UP, 2023)
23 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A uniquely powerful marker of ethnic, gender, and class identities, scent can also overwhelm previously constructed boundaries and transform social-se...
Paul D. Barclay, "Kondo the Barbarian: A Japanese Adventurer and Indigenous Taiwan's Bloodiest Uprising" (Eastbridge Books, 2023)
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kondo the Barbarian: A Japanese Adventurer and Indigenous Taiwan's Bloodiest Uprising (Eastbridge Books, 2023) is a gripping and revealing account of...
Hwisang Cho, "The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea" (U Washington Press, 2020)
20 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why did the letter-writing culture of Korea diversify in the sixteenth century? How did this “epistolary revolution” change textual norms, modes o...
Sujin Lee, "Wombs of Empire: Population Discourses and Biopolitics in Modern Japan" (Stanford UP, 2023)
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2007, Japan’s health minister referred to women ages 15-50 as “birthing machines.” The context was a speech about Japan’s declining birthra...
Douglas S. Duckworth, "Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature" (Oxford UP, 2019)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature (Oxford UP, 2019) offers an engaging philosophical overview of Tibetan Buddhist thought. Integrating c...
Comics Journalism in Taiwan: The Reporter File
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode’s host, Adina Zemanek, invited Sherry Lee, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy CEO of the non-profit, independent media organization The...
Maria Repnikova, “Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
06 Jan 2024
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...
M. Sheehy and K-D Mathes, "The Other Emptiness: Rethinking the Zhentong Buddhist Discourse in Tibet" (SUNY Press, 2019)
05 Jan 2024
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...
Amanda Kennell, "Alice in Japanese Wonderlands: Translation, Adaptation, Mediation" (U Hawaii Press, 2023)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the first translations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books appeared in Japan in 1899, Alice has found her way into nearly every facet of Japanese l...
Timothy Brook, "The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ming China in 1642 had suffered a series of disasters. Floods, and then drought had destroyed successive rice crops, sending the price of grain to ast...
Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018)
31 Dec 2023
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, whi...
Denise Y. Ho, “Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
30 Dec 2023
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...
Grammar, Identity, and Ideology in Early 20th-Century Japan
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever felt that the grammar of Asian languages does not fit with the framework that we use to describe them? In the late 19th century, Asian g...
Matthieu Felt, "Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan" (Harvard UP, 2023)
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, recor...
Scott D. Seligman, "Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On an August night in 1933 Harbin in then-Japanese controlled Manchuria–Semyon Kaspe, French citizen, famed concert musician, and Russian Jew, is ab...
Kristian Petersen, “Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab” (Oxford UP, 2017)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In his monumental new book, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017), Krist...
Alyssa M. Park, “Sovereignty Experiments: Korean Migrants and the Building of Borders in Northeast Asia, 1860-1945" (Cornell UP, 2019)
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Even in states where borders and sovereignty are supposedly well established, large movements of transnational migrants are seen to present problems, ...
Jeremy Yellen, "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War" (Cornell UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a challenging transn...
Nobuko Ishitate-Okunomiya Yamasaki, "Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire" (Routledge, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Analysing materials from literature and film, this book considers the fates of women who did not or could not buy into the Japanese imperial ideology ...
Jie Li, "Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China" (Columbia UP, 2023)
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the latest episode of New Books in Chinese Studies! I am your host, Julia Keblinska, and today I will be talking today to Jie Li, about her...
Thomas Kelly, "The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2023)
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why would an inkstone have a poem inscribed on it? Early modern Chinese writers did not limit themselves to working with brushes and ink, and their te...
James Cummings, "The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan: Sociality, Space and Time" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan: Sociality, Space and Time (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) by Dr. James Cummings explores the everyday lives of ga...
Philip Snow, "China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord" (Yale UP, 2023)
22 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In a...
Olga V. Solovieva, "The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, Or the Art of Speaking Differently" (Oxford UP. 2023)
22 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Olga V. Solovieva's book The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, Or the Art of Speaking Differently (Oxford UP. 2023) offers a new historical pe...
Elise Hu, "Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital" (Dutton, 2023)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In August, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to complain about how U.S. regulations are holding local sunscreens back compared...
Wayne Soon, "Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History" (Stanford UP, 2020)
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Wayne Soon about his book Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History (Stanford UP, 2020). In 1938, one year into the Second Si...
June Hee Kwon, "Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers" (Duke UP, 2023)
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Migration is a theme intertwined with hopes and dreams. In Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers (Duke UP, 2023), Jun...
Gary J. Bass, "Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia" (Knopf, 2023)
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of t...
Jean Yen-chun Lin, "A Spark in the Smokestacks: Environmental Organizing in Beijing Middle-Class Communities" (Columbia UP, 2023)
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental organising in Beijing emerged in an unlikely place in the 2000s: new gated residential communities. After rapid population growth and ho...
Tristan G. Brown, "Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to another episode of New Books in Chinese Studies. I am your host, Julia Keblinska, and I am speaking today to Prof. Tristan Brown about his ...
Humanitarian Issues of Immigration in Japan: From Historical Background to Current Policies
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Japan has historically maintained extended periods of isolationist policies and continues to uphold some of the strictest immigration laws in the worl...
Susan Blumberg-Kason, "Bernardine's Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China" (Post Hill Press, 2023)
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1929, Bernardine Szold Fritz left Paris on a train bound for China. She was on her way to her fourth wedding, and her fourth husband: An American i...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 2: What Is Modernity?
06 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of modernity as a distinct time period in history – one that is said to start at different places, but which always includes us. Yet ...
Lawrence Zhang, "Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2023)
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Qing dynasty's office purchase system (juanna) allowed men to legally and openly pay for appointments in the civil service — enabling them to sk...
Book Chat: Eco-translation from Taiwan and Wu Ming-yi’s The Stolen Bicycle 單車失竊記, with Darryl Sterk
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, our host, Ti-han, invited Dr Darryl Sterk, a Canadian eco-translator who is now based in Lingnan University in Hong Kong and dedicate...
Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilisation
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The “barbarian” nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. T...
Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2023)
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastr...
Henrietta Harrison, "The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and the British Empire" (Princeton UP, 2021)
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and the British Empire (Princeton UP, 2021) is a fascinati...
Jeffrey Angles, ed., "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again: The Original Novellas by Shigeru Kayama" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this month, Toho Studios released “Godzilla Minus One”—the 37th film in the now almost seven-decade-old franchise. Godzilla has gone th...
Andrew Monaghan and Richard Connolly. "The Sea in Russian Strategy" (Manchester UP, 2023)
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The common perception of Russia's status as a great power is often portrayed as being based largely on land power. Being the largest country in the wo...
Harry Harootunian, "Archaism and Actuality: Japan and the Global Fascist Imaginary" (Duke UP, 2023)
19 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Archaism and Actuality: Japan and the Global Fascist Imaginary (Duke UP, 2023) eminent Marxist historian Harry Harootunian explores the formation...
Sauna Culture in Japan
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, Finland’s sauna culture was added to the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the United Nations Educational, Scientific...
Kimberley Ens Manning, "The Party Family: Revolutionary Attachments and the Gendered Origins of State Power in China" (Cornell UP, 2023)
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kimberley Ens Manning's book The Party Family: Revolutionary Attachments and the Gendered Origins of State Power in China (Cornell UP, 2023) explor...
Kai Jun Chen, "Porcelain for the Emperor: Manufacture and Technocracy in Qing China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Porcelain for the Emperor: Manufacture and Technology in Qing China (University of Washington Press; 2023) looks at the history of court-sponsored p...
Emily H. C. Chua, "The Currency of Truth: Newsmaking and the Late-Socialist Imaginaries of China's Digital Era" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
China’s news sector is a place where newsmakers, advertising executives, company bosses, and Party officials engage one another in contingent and ev...
A Chinese-American Buddhist Healer (Pierce Salguero and Kin Cheung)
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with Kin Cheung, a scholar of contemporary Buddhism at Moravian University. We talk about his research on a Chinese-Amer...
Huwy-min Lucia Liu, "Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death" (Cornell UP, 2023)
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death (Cornell UP, 2023) tells the story of how economic reforms and changes in the manageme...
Wu Jieh-min, "Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model" (Harvard UP, 2022)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Taiwan has been depicted as an island facing the incessant threat of forcible unification with the People’s Republic of China. Why, then, has Taiwan...
Fuchsia Dunlop, "Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food" (Norton, 2023)
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese labourers began to sojourn and settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake...
Gitte Marianne Hansen and Fabio Gygi, "The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan" (NIAS, 2022)
04 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan (NIAS Press, 2022) is an edited volume of ethnographic research organized ...
David Veevers, "The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire" (Ebury Press, 2023)
04 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the British Empire is a familiar one: Britain came, it saw, it conquered, forging a glorious world empire upon which the sun never set. I...
Timothy Brook, "The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
03 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1644, after close to three centuries of relative stability and prosperity, the Ming dynasty collapsed. Many historians attribute its demise to the ...
Akiko Takeyama, "Involuntary Consent: The Illusion of Choice in Japan’s Adult Video Industry" (Stanford UP, 2023)
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a world dominated by the notion of autonomy, free choice, and consent, Akiko Takeyama takes us on a thought-provoking journey into the heart of Jap...
Mingwei Song, "Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction" (Columbia UP, 2023)
29 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I am talking today to Mingwei Song about his new book, Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia UP, 2023). The book is a sweep...
David C. Atherton, "Writing Violence: The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature" (Columbia UP, 2023)
23 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Edo-period Japan was a golden age for commercial literature. A host of new narrative genres cast their gaze across the social landscape, probed the re...
Ji Li, "At the Frontier of God's Empire: A Missionary Odyssey in Modern China" (Oxford UP, 2023)
22 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
To a lively cast of international players that shaped Manchuria during the early twentieth century, At the Frontier of God's Empire: A Missionary Ody...
Shellen Xiao Wu, "Birth of the Geopolitical Age: Global Frontiers and the Making of Modern China" (Stanford UP, 2023)
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1850s until the mid-twentieth century, a period marked by global conflicts and anxiety about dwindling resources and closing opportunities af...
Chris Fraser, "Late Classical Chinese Thought" (Oxford UP, 2023)
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Late Classical Chinese Thought (Oxford University Press, 2023) is Chris Fraser's topically organized study of the Warring States period of Chinese ph...
Parks M. Coble, "The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China's Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Parks M. Coble's book The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China's Civil War (Cambridge UP, 2023) revisits one of the most st...
Margaret Hillenbrand, "On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China" (Columbia UP, 2023)
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Margaret Hillenbrand’s On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China (Columbia UP, 2023) examines the negative cultural forms that have emerged in resp...
Buddhist Healing in Contemporary Japan (with Rev. Nathan Jishin Michon)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Pierce Salguero talks with Rev. Nathan Jishin Michon, a postdoctoral fellow at Ryukoku University and an ordained priest in the Shingon Buddhist tr...
Christopher P. Atwood, "The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources" (Hackett, 2021)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview we deep dive into the historiographical issues of the texts in The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources (Hackett, 2021), edi...
Angelina Chin, "Unsettling Exiles: Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong and the Southern Periphery During the Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2023)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The conventional story of Hong Kong celebrates the people who fled the mainland in the wake of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China i...
Anne Allison, "Being Dead Otherwise" (Duke UP, 2023)
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In contemporary Japan, death isn’t what it used to be. Anne Allison’s Being Dead Otherwise (Duke UP, 2023) examines the changing realities of d...
Albert Welter, "The Future of China's Past: Reflections on the Meaning of China's Rise" (SUNY Press, 2023)
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Albert Welter's book The Future of China's Past: Reflections on the Meaning of China's Rise (SUNY Press, 2023) examines how China's traditional cult...
The Future of the EAST: A Discussion of Yasheng Huang
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Exams, autocracy, stability, and technology have been hallmarks of Chinese society for centuries — from ancient times through to the present. Is tha...
Ben Whaley, "Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Whaley’s Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games (U Michigan Press 2023) examines the pathbreaking engagemen...
Hieyoon Kim, "Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea" (U California Press, 2023)
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before South Korea became the democracy and media powerhouse that it is today, it underwent several decades of authoritarian rule during the Cold War ...
Kristin Surak, "The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires" (Harvard UP, 2023)
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our lives are in countless ways defined by our citizenship. The country we belong to affects our rights, our travel possibilities, and ultimately our ...
Aaron Skabelund, "Inglorious, Illegal Bastards: Japan's Self-Defense Force During the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Inglorious, Illegal Bastards: Japan's Self-Defense Force During the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2022), Aaron Herald Skabelund examines how the Self-Def...
Jeffrey Angles, ed., "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again: The Original Novellas by Shigeru Kayama" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Tōhō Studios and directed by Ishirō Honda, creating a gl...
Kerry Brown, "China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do we talk about China? It’s a question every analyst, academic, policymaker, and reporter probably needs to ask themselves. Is China, as some o...
Hongwei Bao, "Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance" (Routledge, 2022)
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance (Routledge, 2022), Hongwei Bao analyses queer theatre and performance in contemporary China. Boa documents...
Julia C. Schneider, "Nation and Ethnicity: Chinese Discourses on History, Historiography, and Nationalism (1900s-1920s)" (Brill, 2017)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Julia Schneider’s Nation & Ethnicity: Chinese Discourses on History, Historiography, and Nationalism (1900s-1920s), published with Brill in 2017, i...
Development and Migration in Contemporary Asia
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is migration good or bad for development? How does migration affect those who leave and those who stay behind? How are rural and urban livelihoods int...
A Better Way to Buy Books
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...
Tom Culham and Jing Lin, "Daoist Cultivation of Qi and Virtue for Life, Wisdom, and Learning" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daoist Cultivation of Qi and Virtue for Life, Wisdom, and Learning (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) explores Daoist philosophies of qi and virtue through i...
Tiantian Zheng, "Violent Intimacy: Family Harmony, State Stability, and Intimate Partner Violence in Post-Socialist China" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Based on ethnographic research with victims of intimate partner violence since 2014, Tiantian Zheng's Violent Intimacy: Family Harmony, State Stabili...
Tingting Hu, "Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals: The Representation of Women in Chinese Crime Films" (Liverpool UP, 2021)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How are women represented in Chinese crime films? In what ways do the representation reflect traditional Chinese values and contemporary Chinese socia...
Situating Religion and Medicine (with Michael Stanley-Baker)
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I sit down for an in-depth conversation with my good friend, Michael Stanley-Baker, a scholar of Chinese religion and medicine. We talk about Mi...
Altman Yuzhu Peng, "A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere" (Palgrave Pivot, 2020)
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere (Palgrave Pivot, 2020), Altman Yuzhu Peng articulates how feminism and pseudo-feminism be...
Gennifer Weisenfeld, "Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Airplanes, gas masks, and bombs were common images in wartime Japan. Yet amid these emblems of anxiety, tasty caramels were offered to children with p...
Suzy Kim, "Among Women Across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2023)
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2023), Suzy Kim follows Korean women’s engagement in a...
Beth Tsai, "Taiwan New Cinema at Film Festivals" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Taiwan New Cinema (first wave, 1982–1989; second wave, 1990 onward) has a unique history regarding film festivals, particularly in the way these fil...
Chuyun Oh, "K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media" (Routledge, 2022)
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media (Routledge, 2022) is about K-pop dance and the evolution and presence of its dance fandom on social m...
Don J. Wyatt, "Slavery in East Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Don J. Wyatt about his book Slavery in East Asia (Cambridge UP, 2022). In premodern China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, just as in t...
David Humphrey, "The Time of Laughter: Comedy and the Media Cultures of Japan" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Humphrey’s The Time of Laughter: Comedy and the Media Cultures of Japan (U Michigan Press, 2023) examines the roles of mediated laughter in ...
Paratroopers in the Pacific: A Conversation with James Fenelon
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the final episode of Season 3, Annika sits down with James Fenelon, a veteran-turned-historian, who served in the Army for over a decade and is a ...
Yiwen Li, "Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
13 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In her book, Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE (Cambridge UP, 2023), associate prof...
Book Chat: Literature in the Age of the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Study of the Taiwanese Writer Wu Ming-yi
13 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, our host, Ti-han, invited Dr Gwennaël Gaffric, a French literary translator and a specialist in Taiwanese eco-literature to talk abo...
Satsuki Takahashi, "Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape" (U Washington Press, 2023)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Both before and after the 2011 "Triple Disaster" of earthquake, tidal wave, and consequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, anth...
Vaudine England, "Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong" (Scribner, 2023)
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The legacy of the businessmen who built Hong Kong are all over the city. Bankers work in Chater House—named after Paul Chater, the Armenian business...
Robert Hellyer and Harald Fuess, "The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In world history, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 ranks as a revolutionary watershed, on a par with the American and French Revolutions. In this volume,...
Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are com...
Olga Fedorenko, "Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An ethnography of advertising in postmillennial South Korea, Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads (U Hawaii Press, 2022) d...
Ruth Yun-Ju Chen, "Good Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts" (U Washington Press, 2023)
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ruth Yun-Ju Chen is a historian of mid-imperial China (600–1400). Her research interests lie in the histories of medicine, publishing, and material ...
Jae DiBello Takeuchi, "Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan" (Mulitlingual Matters, 2023)
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jae DiBello Takeuchi's Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan (Mulitlingual Matters, 2023) examines dilemmas fa...