New Books in East Asian Studies

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Society & Culture
History
1426
Gene Luen Yang, “Boxers & Saints” (First Second...
I love picking up a historical monograph in which the footnotes count for a quarter or more of the total pages. Most students don’t share this strange love of mine. I’m therefore always trying to figure out ways to bring in other sorts of works that wi...
65 min
1427
Joseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leathe...
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. Taking readers on a journey from Lubbock,
68 min
1428
Peter Peverelli, “One Turbulent Year – China 19...
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 then-isolated China, especially Western students. But, Dr.
59 min
1429
Peter Peverelli, "One Turbulent Year - China 19...
An interview with Peter Peverelli
59 min
1430
Rian Thum, “The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History...
In his fascinating new book, Rian Thum explores the craft, materiality, nature, and readership of Uyghur history over the past 300 years. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History (Harvard University Press, 2014) argues that understanding Uyghur history in t...
66 min
1431
Joshua S. Mostow, “Courtly Visions: The Ise Sto...
In pre-modern Japan, Ise monogatari (also known as the Ise Stories or Tales of Ise) was considered to be one of the three most important works of literature in the Japanese language. Joshua S. Mostow‘s new book focuses on the reception and appropriatio...
65 min
1432
Ernest P. Young, “Ecclesiastical Colony: China’...
In theory, Christian missionaries plan only on working in a country until an indigenous leadership can take over management of the church. Theory is one thing, but practice is quite another, as Dr. Ernest P.
59 min
1433
Melek Ortabasi, “The Undiscovered Country” (Har...
Melek Ortabasi‘s new book explores the work of Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), a writer, folk scholar, “eccentric, dominating crackpot,” “brilliant, versatile iconoclast” and much more. The Undiscovered Country: Text, Translation,
67 min
1434
Wai-yee Li, “Women and National Trauma in Late ...
Wai-yee Li‘s new book explores writing around the Ming-Qing transition in seventeenth-century China, paying careful attention to the relationships of history and literature in writing by women, about women, and/or in a feminine voice.
64 min
1435
Kathleen Lopez, “Chinese Cubans: A Transnationa...
Successive waves of migration brought thousands of Chinese laborers to Cuba over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The coolie trade, which was meant to replace waning supplies of slaves, was but the first. In the twentieth century,
66 min
1436
Michael Gibbs Hill, trans., Wang Hui, “China fr...
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 Chinese Thought (Xiandai Zhongguo sixiangde xingqi, 2004). China from Empire to Nation-State (Harvard Uni...
61 min
1437
Clark Chilson, “Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Bu...
Clark Chilson‘s new book, Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment (University of Hawai’i Press, 2014) examines secret groups of Shin (i.e., True Pure Land Buddhist) practitioners from the thirteenth century onw...
65 min
1438
Joan Kee, “Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa ...
Joan Kee‘s new book is a gorgeous and thoughtful introduction to the history of contemporary art in Korea. Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) traces the creation, promotion, reception,
66 min
1439
Kenneth Brashier, “Public Memory in Early China...
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 Asia Center, 2014) offers a history of identity and public memory in early China.
69 min
1440
Paul Copp, “The Body Incantatory: Spells and th...
Paul Copp‘s new book, The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on Chinese interpretations and uses of two written dharani during the last few centuries of the first ...
57 min
1441
Eugene Y. Park, “A Family of No Prominence: The...
Eugene Y. Park‘s A Family of No Prominence: The Descendants of Pak Tokhwa and the Birth of Modern Korea (Stanford University Press, 2014) traces this history by focusing on the Miryang Pak family. The history of transformations in the family’s social s...
65 min
1442
Chun-fang Yu, “Passing the Light: The Incense L...
Chan-fang Yu‘s new book, Passing the Light: The Incense Light Community and Buddhist Nuns in Contemporary Taiwan (University of Hawaii Press, 2013), focuses on a community of nuns in Taiwan founded in the early 1980s,
59 min
1443
Yong Zhao, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?...
China has had an amazing developmental path over the past thirty years. Decade long double digit economic growth numbers along with more assertion on the international stage have led to some concern of a “Rising China”,
43 min
1444
Robert Stolz, “Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, an...
Robert Stolz‘s new book explores the emergence of an environmental turn in modern Japan. Bad Water: Nature, Pollution; Politics in Japan, 1870-1950 (Duke University Press, 2014) guides readers through the unfolding of successive eco-historical periods ...
73 min
1445
Shengqing Wu, “Modern Archaics: Continuity and ...
Shengqing Wu’s gorgeous new book begins by exploring the image of the treasure pagoda to introduce readers to an aesthetics of ornamental lyricism in Chinese poetry at the turn of the twentieth-century. Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the...
66 min
1446
Todd A. Henry, “Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Ru...
Todd Henry’s new book is a wonderful study of public space as a laboratory for producing the experiences and engines of colonial society. Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea,
64 min
1447
Leslie Grant, “West Meets East: Best Practices ...
Teachers have recently become a target in the educational reform debate. Most would agree that great teachers are crucial for education. However, there is no singular formula for a great teacher. So then, what makes a great teacher?
46 min
1448
Lara Jaishree Netting, “A Perpetual Fire: John ...
Lara Netting’s new book explores the life, career, and work of one man as a window into the history and associated practices of “Chinese art” during a period of massive transformation in the China of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
62 min
1449
Albert Park and David Yoo, eds., “Encountering ...
Modernity and religion have often been seen as fundamentally at odds. However, the articles in Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America (University of Hawaii Press, 2014 ), edited by Albert L. Park and David K. Yoo,
78 min
1450
Jolyon Thomas, “Drawing on Tradition: Manga, An...
The worlds of cinema and illustrated fiction are replete with exciting data for the historian of religion. Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University Of Hawai’i Press, 2012), by author Jolyon Thomas,
65 min