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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1526
Jini Kim Watson, “The New Asian City: Three-Dim...
Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban transformation in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.
69 min
1527
Shih-Shan Susan Huang, “Picturing the True Form...
Shih-Shan Susan Huang‘s beautiful new book explores visual culture of religious Daoism, focusing on the tenth through the thirteenth centuries. Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Harvard University Asia Center,
68 min
1528
Carl S. Yamamoto, “Vision and Violence: Lama Zh...
Lama Zhang, the controversial central figure in Carl S. Yamamoto‘s new book may or may not have participated in animal sacrifice, sneezed out a snake-like creature, and engaged in other acts of putative sorcery early in his life.
67 min
1529
Christopher Nugent, “Manifest in Words, Written...
Christopher Nugent‘s wonderful recent book will change the way you read. At the very least, Manifest in Words, Written on Paper: Producing and Circulating Poetry in Tang Dynasty China (Harvard University Asia Center,
73 min
1530
Jason Josephson, “The Invention of Religion in...
In 1853, the Japanese were required to consider what the word religion meant when western powers compelled the Tokugawa government to ensure freedom of religion to Christian missionaries. The challenge this request posed was based on the fact that prio...
64 min
1531
Shawn Bender, “Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in...
Since the “taiko boom” of the closing decades of the 20thcentury, taiko drumming has arguably become Japan’s most globally successful performance medium. Shawn Bender‘s recent book takes us through the history and spaces of this art,
63 min
1532
Giusi Tamburello, “Concepts and Categories of E...
What is the relationship between language and the emotions? Where ought we look for evidence of emotion in historical and literary texts? Is it possible to talk about the emotional states of entire cultures or groups of peoples, and if so,
56 min
1533
Qiliang He, “Gilded Voices: Economics, Politics...
Using the example of pingtan storytelling to reexamine the history of cultural reform in the People’s Republic of China, Qiliang He‘s new book integrates political history and performance studies to challenge some widely-held assumptions about the hist...
71 min
1534
Amy Stanley, “Selling Women: Prostitution, Mark...
With prose that is as elegant as the argument is clear, Amy Stanley‘s new book tells a social, cultural, and economic history of Tokugawa Japan through the prism of prostitution. Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets,
65 min
1535
Par Cassel, “Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritor...
Extraterritoriality was not grafted whole onto East Asian societies: it developed over time and in a relationship with local precedents, institutions, and understandings of power. Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteent...
66 min
1536
Alan Christy (trans.), Amino Yoshihiko, “Rethin...
We don’t often make the chance to properly acknowledge the importance of translation to the understanding of history, let alone to talk about it at any length. Alan Christy has done a wonderful service in his careful, elegant,
71 min
1537
Gregory Crouch, “China’s Wings” (Bantam Books, ...
When I was a kid I loved the movie “The Flying Tigers.” You know, the one with John Wayne about the intrepid American volunteers sent to China to fight the Japanese before the United States really could fight the Japanese.
53 min
1538
Volker Scheid and Hugh MacPherson, “Integrating...
Volker Scheid and Hugh MacPherson‘s Integrating East Asian Medicine into Contemporary Healthcare (Churchill Livingstone, 2011) is the result of a wonderfully transdisciplinary project that aims to bring scholars and practitioners of East Asian medicine...
63 min
1539
Marnie Anderson, “A Place in Public: Women’s Ri...
In the late nineteenth century the Japanese elite embarked on an aggressive, ambitious program of modernization known in the West as the “Meiji Restoration.” In a remarkably short period of time, they transformed Japan: what was a thoroughly traditiona...
45 min
1540
Miryam Sas, “Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan...
Miryam Sas’ Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is an exceptionally rich study that has a great deal to offer scholars across the humanities.
63 min
1541
Kenneth Brashier, “Ancestral Memory in Early Ch...
If New Books in East Asian Studies were an All-Powerful Force of Good In The Universe and if one of the perks that came along with being an All-Powerful Force of Good In The Universe were to ensure that certain books got major awards,
73 min
1542
Roel Sterckx, “Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in...
Roel Sterckx‘s book Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge University Press, 2011) had me at drunken seances. (Drunken seances! Do you really need another excuse to read it?) It is a compelling and engaging read,
68 min
1543
Roger Hart, “The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebr...
Roger Hart‘s The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) is the first book-length study of linear algebra in imperial China, and is based on an astounding combination of erudition and expertise in both Chinese history and...
66 min
1544
Daniel Vukovich, “China and Orientalism: Wester...
Using materials that range from poetry and fiction to historiography and film, China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the P.R.C. (Routledge, 2011) proposes a sharp critique of the way that China’s history from 1949-1979 has been unders...
74 min
1545
Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang, “Ten Thousan...
What do walking backward, water calligraphy, and belting out popular songs in public have in common? All of them can be conceived as techniques for cultivating life, or yangsheng, and they are all featured in Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang‘s wonderf...
66 min
1546
Ethan Segal, “Coins, Trade, and the State: Econ...
What did money mean to the people of medieval Japan? In Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011), Ethan Segal takes readers through a fascinating exploration of the politics, society,
61 min
1547
Merry White, “Coffee Life in Japan” (University...
Merry (Corky) White‘s new book Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, 2012) opens with a memory of stripping naked and being painted blue in an underground coffeehouse, and closes with a guide to some of the author’s favorite cafes in Ja...
49 min
1548
Gail Hershatter, “The Gender of Memory: Rural W...
When I teach my course on gender, sexuality, and human rights, my students invariably want to talk about China’s one-child policy. They imagine living in a state where the government tells you how many children you can have – and they’re horrified.
74 min
1549
Xiaofei Tian, "Visionary Journeys: Travel Writi...
An interview with Xiaofei Tian
66 min
1550
E. Taylor Atkins, "Primitive Selves: Koreana in...
An interview with E. Taylor Atkins
54 min