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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1501
Tanya Storch, “The History of Chinese Buddhist ...
Tanya Storch‘s recent book, The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka (Cambria, 2014), focuses on the development of Chinese Buddhist catalogs from their first appearance in the third century to the ei...
74 min
1502
Mark Dennis and Darren Middleton, eds., “Approa...
What does it mean to be a martyr? What does it mean to be an apostate? How should we understand people who choose one or the other? These are the questions asked by Shusaku Endo in his novel Silence, in which he tells the story of Japanese Catholics an...
63 min
1503
Eugene N. Anderson, “Food and Environment in Ea...
Eugene N. Anderson‘s new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming and beyond, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China (University of Pennsylvania Press,
60 min
1504
Sarah M. Allen, “Shifting Stories: History, Gos...
Sarah M. Allen‘s new book looks at the literature of tales in eighth- and ninth-century China. Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narratives from Tang Dynasty China (Harvard University Asia Center,
67 min
1505
Wilt Idema, “The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhu...
Wilt Idema‘s new book traces a story and its transformations through hundreds of years of Chinese literature. The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu Xun (Columbia University Press, 2014) collects and translates variations of the tale of Master Z...
63 min
1506
Kristina Kleutghen, “Imperial Illusions: Crossi...
Kristina Kleutghen‘s beautiful new book offers a fascinating window into the culture of illusion in China in the eighteenth century and beyond. Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces (University of Washington Press,
71 min
1507
Byonghyon Choi, “The Annals of King T’aejo: Fou...
Byonghyon Choi‘s new book makes a key document of Korean and world history available in English in a volume that will be tremendously useful for both scholarship and teaching. The Annals of King T’aejo: Founder of Korea’s Choson Dynasty (Harvard Univer...
47 min
1508
Kenneth M. Swope, “The Military Collapse of Chi...
Our interview with Kenneth M. Swope about his book, The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-44 (Routledge, 2014), published through Routledge, is an effort to address an oversight in how New Books in Military History has generally overlooke...
60 min
1509
Meir Shahar and John Kieschnick, “India in the ...
In India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), eleven scholars (including editors John Kieschnick and Meir Shahar) examine the Chinese reception of Indian ideas and myth,
59 min
1510
Charlotte Eubanks, “Miracles of Book and Body: ...
In Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011), Charlotte Eubanks examines the relationship between MahÄyÄna Buddhist sÅ«tras and the human body,
71 min
1511
Tamara T. Chin, “Savage Exchange” (Harvard Univ...
Tamara Chin‘s new book is a tour de force and a must-read for anyone interested in early China, the history of economy, or inter-disciplinarity in the humanities. Focusing on the reign of Han Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 BCE),
67 min
1512
R. Keller Kimbrough, “Wondrous Brutal Fictions:...
In his recent book, Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from the Early Japanese Puppet Theater (Columbia University Press, 2013), R. Keller Kimbrough provides us with eight beautifully translated sekkyÅ and ko-jÅruri.
78 min
1513
Paola Iovene, “Tales of Futures Past: Anticipat...
Paola Iovene‘s new book is a beautiful exploration of visions of the future as they have shaped a range of texts, genres, and editorial practices in Chinese literature from the middle of the twentieth century through the beginning of the twenty-first c...
63 min
1514
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
1515
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
1516
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
1517
Peter Peverelli, "One Turbulent Year - China 19...
An interview with Peter Peverelli
59 min
1518
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
1519
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
1520
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
1521
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
1522
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
1523
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
1524
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
1525
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