New Books in East Asian Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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1401
Phoebe Chow, “Britain’s Imperial Retreat from C...
At the start of the twentieth century Britain’s relationship with China was defined by the economic and political dominance Britain exerted in the country as an imperial power, a dominance that would ebb over the next three decades.
45 min
1402
Quincy Carroll, “Up to the Mountains and Down t...
Quincy Carroll’s new novel Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside: A Novel (Inkshares, 2015) follows the experiences of a handful of expats teaching English in China, simultaneously offering a compelling story and a peek into various ways of m...
42 min
1403
Jayde Lin Roberts, “Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Pl...
In recent years, scholarship on Burma, or Myanmar, has undergone a renaissance. Jayde Lin Roberts’ Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese (University of Washington Press, 2016) is a bellwether of exciting new books to come,
60 min
1404
Laura Madokoro, “Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migran...
Laura Madokoro’s new book is a timely and important study of movement across national borders, migrants, and the refugee label in the global Cold War. Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard University Press,
67 min
1405
Richard Jean So, “Transpacific Community: Ameri...
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 understanding intellectual and cultural relations between China and America in the twentieth century and bey...
66 min
1406
Chris Miller, “The Struggle to Save the Soviet ...
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic modernity (and with it prosperity) while the Communist Soviet Union was not?
50 min
1407
Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup, eds., “Recoveri...
The essays in Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup’s new edited volume, Recovering Buddhism in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2016), collectively make a compelling argument that Buddhism and Buddhists played important roles in the modern transforma...
67 min
1408
Justin M. Jacobs, Xinjiang and the Modern Chine...
Justin M. Jacob‘s new book proposes that we understand modern China as a national empire, and traces the strategies of difference that have consistently marked Xinjiang as a part thereof. Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State (University of Washington ...
65 min
1409
Ruth Rogaski, “Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of ...
Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Press, 2014 reprint) has won four major prizes in fields ranging from history of medicine to East Asian his...
47 min
1410
Robert Peckham, “Epidemics in Modern Asia” (Cam...
Robert Peckham’s Epidemics in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores the crucial yet under-explored role that epidemics have played in both colonial and postcolonial Asia. At once broad in sweep and nuanced in analysis,
47 min
1411
Kate Merkel-Hess, “The Rural Modern: Reconstruc...
Kate Merkel-Hess‘s new book looks closely at a loose group of rural reformers in 1920s and 1930s China who were trying to create a rural alternative to urban modernity. Focusing on the Rural Reconstruction Movement of roughly 1933-1937,
67 min
1412
Pamela S. Turner, “Crow Smarts/Samurai Rising” ...
Award-winning author, Pamela S. Turner discusses two new books, Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the Worlds Smartest Bird (HMH Books for Young Readers, 2016), and Samurai Rising: The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune (Charlesbridge, 2016).
47 min
1413
Jessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: C...
Jessamyn R. Abel’s new book carefully traces the rise and transformations of an internationalist worldview in modern Japan, from its withdrawal from the League of Nations and admission into the UN, to successive attempts (both failed and successful) to...
59 min
1414
John Prados, “Storm Over Leyte: The Philippine ...
Narratives of the Pacific War frequently examine the 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf from the operational perspective, focusing on the desperate actions of the US Seventh Fleets escort carriers, Task Unit 77.4.3 (“Taffy 3”) against the much larger Japanese C...
52 min
1415
Kristin Stapleton, “Fact in Fiction: 1920s Chin...
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, 1919. Ba Jin was a teenager from a well-off family in Chengdu during this period.
64 min
1416
Ellen Widmer, “Fiction’s Family: Zhan Xi, Zhan ...
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 ramifications of that story for how we understand and produce relationships between fiction and history....
61 min
1417
Liam Brockey, “The Visitor: Andre Palmeiro and ...
The transmission of a religion closely connected to a particular culture into a very different religious and cultural environment is a difficult act of translation in which a balance must be struck between remaining true to doctrine while understanding...
75 min
1418
Akiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memo...
Akiko Takenaka’s new book looks carefully at Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial, examining its role in waging war, honoring the dead, promoting peace, and building a modern national identity. Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory,
68 min
1419
Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “Emperor Huizong” (Harv...
The Song Chinese emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1126 CE) has long been regarded as a failure due to his dynasty’s defeat in their war against the Jurchens. In Emperor Huizong (Harvard University Press, 2014), however,
41 min
1420
Richard L. Davis, “From Warhorses to Ploughshar...
Ruling as he did during the Five Dynasties period of Chinese history, the emperor Mingzong (r. 926-933) has not received the same degree attention from historians as have many of his counterparts. In From Warhorses to Ploughshares: The Later Tang Reign...
59 min
1421
Morgan Pitelka, “Spectacular Accumulation: Mate...
Morgan Pitelka’s new book looks closely at the material culture of the Three Unifiers of the late sixteenth century in Japan– Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu–in order to foreground the politics of culture in an age of civil war.
66 min
1422
Paul Roquet, “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospher...
Paul Roquet’s wonderful new book begins with an offering of jellyfish and proceeds to teach us how to read the air. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) looks carefully at the phenomenon of ambient subjectiv...
71 min
1423
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, “Demonic Warfare: Daoism...
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld’s new book looks closely at the relationship between vernacular novels and vernacular rituals in Ming China. Focusing on a particular novel called Canonization of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi),
60 min
1424
David Brophy, “Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolu...
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 the Uyghurs, the Turkic-speaking Muslims of Xinjiang. Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia...
67 min
1425
Noriko Manabe, “The Revolution Will Not Be Tele...
Noriko Manabe’s new book is a compelling analysis of the content, performance style, and role of music in social movements in contemporary Japan. Paying special attention to the constraints that limit and censor people–both ordinary citizens and musici...
63 min