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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1551
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
1552
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
1553
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
1554
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
1555
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
1556
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
1557
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
1558
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
1559
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
1560
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
1561
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
1562
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
1563
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
1564
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
1565
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
1566
Xiaofei Tian, "Visionary Journeys: Travel Writi...
An interview with Xiaofei Tian
66 min
1567
E. Taylor Atkins, "Primitive Selves: Koreana in...
An interview with E. Taylor Atkins
54 min
1568
Hank Glassman, “The Face of JizÅ: Image and Cu...
In this episode, we talk with Prof. Hank Glassman who’s written a new book titled The Face of Jizo : Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). Jizo is a Buddhist Bodhisattva whose presence has become ubiquitous th...
54 min
1569
Rowan K. Flad, "Salt Production and Social Hier...
An interview with Rowan K. Flad
71 min
1570
Robert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, E...
There are three Americans in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One is Horace Wilson, the professor of English who brought his students outside for a game in 1872, thus introducing baseball to Japan. Another is Wally Yonamine,
59 min
1571
Laurence Monnais, C. Michele Thompson, and Ayo ...
Southern Medicine for Southern People: Vietnamese Medicine in the Making (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) gives me hope for the future of edited volumes. Not only is it a fascinating and coherent treatment of the history and practice of Vietnamese...
66 min
1572
Andrew Field, “Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabare...
“To think of Shanghai is to think of its nightlife: the two are synonymous.” From here, Andrew Field takes us on a dance across modern Chinese history, through its nightscapes and ballrooms, into the sprawls of its settlements and the pages of its pict...
86 min
1573
Timothy Brook, “The Troubled Empire: China in t...
Tim Brook‘s The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2010) rewards the reader on many levels. Though it provides an excellent introduction to Yuan and Ming history for both students and a...
87 min
1574
Carol Benedict, “Golden-Silk Smoke: A History o...
Carol Benedict‘s Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010 (University of California Press, 2011)is many things at the same time; among other things, it’s both an exceptionally rich account of an object (or set of objects) that were c...
86 min
1575
Erik Mueggler, “The Paper Road: Archive and Exp...
First things first: this is an outstanding book. In the course of The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet (University of California Press, 2011), Erik Mueggler weaves together the stories of two botan...
94 min