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.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
1501
Sherman Cochran and Andrew Hsieh, “The Lius of ...
I like to think of Sherman Cochran and Andrew Hsieh‘s new book as Downton Abbey: Shanghai Edition. It is that gripping, and will keep you turning the pages that eagerly. At the same time, The Lius of Shanghai (Harvard University Press,
71 min
1502
David J. Silbey, “The Boxer Rebellion and the G...
Historian David Silbey returns to New Books in Military History with his second book, The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China (Hill and Wang, 2012). The popular uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion has long only been vaguely understood,
74 min
1503
Fabio Lanza, “Behind the Gate: Inventing Studen...
The history of modern China is bound up with that of student politics. In Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing (Columbia University Press, 2010), Fabio Lanza offers a masterfully researched, elegantly written,
72 min
1504
William Marotti, “Money, Trains, and Guillotine...
Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei was prosecuted in the 1960s for producing work that imitated money. His single-sided, monochrome prints of the 1,000 yen note generated a wide-ranging set of debates over the nature of obscenity,
73 min
1505
Perry Link, “An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Met...
Rhythm, metaphor, politics: these three features of language simultaneously enable us to communicate with each other and go largely unnoticed in the course of that communication. In An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor,
64 min
1506
Ian Condry, “The Soul of Anime” (Duke UP, 2013)
You may come for the Astro Boy or Afro Samurai, but you’ll stay for the innovative ways that Ian Condry‘s new book brings together analyses of transmedia practice, collaboration, and materialities of democracy.
69 min
1507
Erica Fox Brindley, “Music, Cosmology, and the ...
Erica Fox Brindley‘s recent book explores the centrality of music to early Chinese thought. Making broad use of both received and newly excavated texts, Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China (SUNY Press,
69 min
1508
Jonathan E. Abel, “Redacted: The Archives of Ce...
There is much to love about Jonathan Abel‘s new book. Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan (University of California Press, 2012) brilliantly takes readers into the performance of different modes of censorship in the early and mid-twe...
74 min
1509
Nathan Hesselink, “SamulNori: Contemporary Kore...
The name of the group is deceptively simple: Samul (“four objects”) + Nori (“folk entertainment”) = SamulNori. Nathan Hesselink‘s new book traces the transformations of this complex contemporary Korean drumming ensemble from its first concert in a cram...
78 min
1510
Aminda M. Smith, “Thought Reform and China’s Da...
Aminda M. Smith‘s fascinating new book traces the history of transformations in the way that the PRC understood social control, deviance, and thought reform. Thought Reform and China’s Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance,
70 min
1511
Endymion Wilkinson, “Chinese History: A New Man...
There are some books that are so fundamental to work in an academic field that practitioners refer to them simply by the author’s last name. Many of us had respectfully and affectionately referred to Endymion Wilkinson‘s Chinese History: A Manual,
70 min
1512
Elizabeth J. Perry, “Anyuan: Mining China’s Rev...
Anyuan was a town of coal miners. It was a place where local secret societies held power, where rebellion and violence were part of the life of local laborers, and where the Chinese Communist revolution was experienced especially early and particularly...
68 min
1513
Gennifer Weisenfeld, “Imaging Disaster: Tokyo a...
Gennifer Weisenfeld‘s gorgeous and thoughtful new book explores the visual culture that emerged in the wake of the Kanto earthquake of 1923. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 (University of California Pr...
66 min
1514
Bruce Rusk, “Critics and Commentators: The ‘Boo...
What makes something a poem? What defines “poetry,” and how has that changed over space and time? Critics and Commentators: The ‘Book of Poems’ as Classic and Literature (Harvard University Press, 2012) considers such questions as they chart a path thr...
78 min
1515
Kevin Gray Carr, “Plotting the Prince: Shotoku ...
Kevin Gray Carr‘s beautiful new book explores the figure of Prince Shotoku (573? – 622?) the focus of one of the most widespread visual cults in Japanese history. Introducing us to a range of stories materialized in both verbal and visual narratives,
67 min
1516
Barbara R. Ambros, “Bones of Contention: Animal...
It opens with a parakeet named Homer, and it closes with a dog named Hachiko. In the intervening pages, Barbara Ambros explores the deaths, afterlives, and necrogeographies of pets in contemporary Japan. Bones of Contention:Animals and Religion in Cont...
72 min
1517
Michael Gibbs Hill, “Lin Shu, Inc.: Translation...
What do “Rip van Winkle,” Oliver Twist, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Aesop’s Fables have in common? All of them were translated into Chinese by Lin Shu (Lin Qinnan, 1852-1924), a major force in the literary culture of late Qing and early Republican China.
68 min
1518
Richard J. Smith, “The I Ching: A Biography” (P...
Texts have lives. They grow, travel, transform, fade, and are reborn into new and other lives. In The I Ching: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2012), Richard J. Smith has given us a wonderfully readable (and assignable, and shareable,
71 min
1519
Gene Cooper, “The Market and Temple Fairs of Ru...
Gene Cooper‘s new book is a multi-sited ethnographic study of market and temple fairs in the region of Jinhua, a city on the east coast of China and the home of Hengdian, “China’s Hollywood.” The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red Fire (Routle...
74 min
1520
Barak Kushner, “Slurp!: A Social and Culinary H...
I bet you’ve never heard of the “Smash the Baltic Fleet Memorial Togo Marshmallow.” I hadn’t either, before reading Barak Kushner‘s lively and illuminating new book on the history of ramen in Japan. Grounded in ample research that incorporates archival...
67 min
1521
Jack W. Chen, “The Poetics of Sovereignty: On E...
After coming to power in a series of violent and deceptive acts, including tricking his father into cuckolding the Emperor, Li Shimin went on to become a ruler whose reign as Emperor Taizong has been hailed as a model of good government throughout East...
71 min
1522
Thomas David DuBois, “Religion and the Making o...
Do historians of East Asia sufficiently account for the role of religious communities in the construction of history? Of course, there are histories of the Taiping Rebellion, and groups like Soka Gakkai or Falungong.
60 min
1523
Michael David Kaulana Ing, “The Dysfunction of ...
How did the authors of the one of the most important Confucian ritual texts in early China recognize, explain, and cope with mistakes and dysfunction in ritual? The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism (Oxford University Press,
67 min
1524
Cosima Bruno, “Between the Lines: Yang Lian’s P...
Cosima Bruno‘s new book asks us to consider a deceptively simple question: what is the relationship between a poem and its translation? In the course of Between the Lines: Yang Lian’s Poetry through Translation (Brill, 2012),
55 min
1525
Christopher Bush, “Ideographic Modernism: China...
Orientalism, the ideograph, and media theory grew up together. In Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media (Oxford University Press, 2010), Christopher Bush offers a wonderfully trans-disciplinary account of modernism through the figure of the ideo...
77 min