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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1476
David Spafford, “A Sense of Place: The Politica...
So many history books take for granted that a story about the past needs to focus on change (gradual or dramatic, transformative or subtle) as its motivating narrative and argumentative core. In A Sense of Place: The Political Landscape in Late Medieva...
73 min
1477
Michael J. Hathaway, “Environmental Winds: Maki...
Globalization is locally specific: global connectivity looks different from place to place. Given that, how are global connections made? And why do they happen so differently in different places? In Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest C...
73 min
1478
David Tod Roy, “The Plum in the Golden Vase or,...
By any measure, David Tod Roy‘s translation The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei, Vol. 1-5 (Princeton University Press, 1993-2013) is a landmark achievement for East Asian Studies, translation studies, and world literature.
73 min
1479
David Novak, “Japanoise: Music at the Edge of C...
Thinking about “Noise” in the history and practice of music means thinking in opposites. Noise is both a musical genre, and is not. It both produces a global circulation and emerges from it. It has depended on the live-ness of embodied performance whil...
76 min
1480
Timothy J. Brook, “Mr. Selden’s Map of China: D...
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 certificate,” for $10 million to the Library of Congress. The opening is the illumination of a grave as you,
72 min
1481
Andrea S. Goldman, “Opera and the City: The Pol...
Before the twentieth century, opera was a kind of cultural glue: it was both a medium of mass-communication, and a powerful shaper and reflector of the popular imagination in the way TV and film are today. In Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture...
70 min
1482
Darryl E. Flaherty, “Public Law, Private Practi...
In global narratives of modern legal history, Asia tends to fall short relative to Europe and the US. According to these narratives, while individuals in the West enjoyed political participation and protection, people in Japan did not,
63 min
1483
Ian Jared Miller, “The Nature of the Beasts: Em...
A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (University of California Press,
78 min
1484
Sienna R. Craig, “Healing Elements: Efficacy an...
Two main questions frame Sienna R. Craig‘s beautifully written and carefully argued new book about Tibetan medical practices and cultures: How is efficacy determined, and what is at stake in those determinations?
72 min
1485
Aaron S. Moore, “Constructing East Asia: Techno...
We tend to understand the modernization of Japan as a story of its rise as a techno-superpower. In East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945 (Stanford University Press, 2013),
68 min
1486
Rowan K. Flad and Pochan Chen, “Ancient Central...
One of the most exciting approaches in the contemporary study of China is emerging from work that brings together archaeological and historical modes of reading texts and material objects to tell a story about the past.
73 min
1487
Henrietta Harrison, “The Missionary’s Curse and...
Henrietta Harrison‘s new book is the work of a gifted storyteller. In its pages, the reader will find Boxers getting drunk on communion wine, wolf apparitions, people waking up from the dead, ballads about seasickness, and flying bicycles.
63 min
1488
John P. DiMoia, “Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedi...
For a patient choosing among available forms of healing in the medical marketplace of mid-20th century South Korea, the process was akin to shopping. In Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation-Building in South Korea Since 1945 (Stanford...
83 min
1489
Paul O’Connor, “Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and...
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 minorities in the East? This was one of the questions Paul O’Connor,
57 min
1490
Louise Young, “Beyond the Metropolis: Second Ci...
During the interwar period (1918-1937), the city began to take its modern shape in Japan. At the same time, development in the Japanese provinces became a capitalist frontier in a new phase of industrial revolution.
67 min
1491
Fabian Drixler, “Mabiki: Infanticide and Popula...
The book opens on a scene in the mountains of Gumna, Japan. A midwife kneels next to a mother who has just given birth, and she proceeds to strangle the newborn. It’s an arresting way to begin an inspiring new book by Fabian Drixler.
71 min
1492
Christine Yano, “Pink Globalization: Hello Kitt...
This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga,
66 min
1493
Jonathan Hay, “Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorativ...
Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) is a study of domestically produced, portable decorative arts in early modern China. Decorative objects connect us, visually and physically,
67 min
1494
John Osburg, “Anxious Wealth: Money and Moralit...
John Osburg‘s new book explores the rise of elite networks of newly-rich entrepreneurs, managers of state enterprises, and government officials in Chengdu. Based on extensive fieldwork that included hosting a Chinese TV show and spending many evenings ...
71 min
1495
James A. Milward, “The Silk Road: A Very Short ...
James A. Milward‘s new book offers a thoughtful and spirited history of the silk road for general readers.The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013) is part of the Oxford “A Very Short Introduction” series.
67 min
1496
T. J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes, eds., “Chin...
T. J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes have produced a volume that will change the way we learn about and teach the history of health and healing in China and beyond. Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Harvard University Press,
67 min
1497
Matthew W. Mosca, “From Frontier Policy to Fore...
Matthew Mosca‘s impressively researched and carefully structured new book maps the transformation of geopolitical worldviews in a crucial period of Qing and global history. From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transform...
63 min
1498
Beverly Bossler, “Courtesans, Concubines, and t...
Beverly Bossler‘s new book will be required reading for anyone interested in women and gender in China’s history. Covering nearly five centuries of transformations, it also offers a fascinating rethinking of the histories of neo-Confucian thought,
58 min
1499
Mark Byington, ed., “Early Korea: The Rediscove...
Early Korea is a resource like no other: in an ongoing series of volumes produced by the Early Korea Project at the Korea Institute of Harvard University, the series provides surveys of Korean scholarship on fundamental issues in the study of early Kor...
73 min
1500
Maki Fukuoka, “The Premise of Fidelity: Science...
Zograscope. Say it with me: zograscope. ZooooOOOOOoooograscope. There are many optical wonders in Maki Fukuoka’s new book The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in 19th-Century Japan (Stanford University Press, 2012),
68 min