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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1576
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
1577
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
1578
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
1579
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
1580
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
1581
Xiaofei Tian, "Visionary Journeys: Travel Writi...
An interview with Xiaofei Tian
66 min
1582
E. Taylor Atkins, "Primitive Selves: Koreana in...
An interview with E. Taylor Atkins
54 min
1583
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
1584
Rowan K. Flad, "Salt Production and Social Hier...
An interview with Rowan K. Flad
71 min
1585
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
1586
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
1587
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
1588
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
1589
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
1590
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
1591
Marta Hanson, “Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese...
Marta Hanson‘s book is a rich study of conceptions of space in medical thought and practice. Ranging from a deep history of the geographic imagination in China to an account of the SARS outbreak of the 21st century,
83 min
1592
Dennis Frost, “Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, ...
In the celebrity firmament that circles around us, sports stars are among the brightest lights. Kobe, Tiger, Messi, Márta, Sachin, and Serena can be recognized from most points on the globe.But other stars are visible only in certain lands: Yuna Kim,
65 min
1593
Tong Lam, “A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys ...
We tend to take for granted that we have bodies, that these bodies are knowable and measurable, and that we understand how to relate our own bodies to those of the people around us. To put it more simply: if I were to ask you how tall you were, how...
81 min
1594
Mark Rowe, “Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial,...
Mark Rowe‘s new book Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism (University of Chicago Press, 2011) is a fascinating study of the life of Buddhism in Japan by looking at the many facets of death in mode...
76 min
1595
Andrew F. Jones, “Developmental Fairytales: Evo...
Simply put: you should read Andrew F. Jones‘s new book, Developmental Fairytales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture (Harvard UP, 2011). It is both an immense pleasure to read, and a truly brilliant study of the ways that a discourse of d...
65 min
1596
Daqing Yang, “Technology of Empire: Telecommuni...
Daqing Yang‘s Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883-1945 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is a gift to both historians of East Asia and scholars of science and technology studies (STS).
72 min
1597
Yi-Li Wu’s book, “Reproducing Women: Medicine, ...
In what must be one of the most well-organized and clearly-written books in the history of academic writing, Yi-Li Wu‘s book, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China (University of California Press, 2010),
70 min
1598
Peter Mauch, “Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisabu...
Peter Mauch‘s Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is an exhaustively researched and very rich biographical account of the man who was Japan’s ambassador to the US in the years leading...
60 min
1599
Bryan J. Cuevas, “Travels in the Netherworld: B...
Today on “New Books in Buddhist Studies” we’ll be going to hell and back with Bryan Cuevas in a discussion of his new book Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet(Oxford University Press, 2008).
58 min
1600
Andrew Morris, “Colonial Project, National Game...
My Little League baseball career spanned the late Seventies and early Eighties. During those summers, I always set aside the afternoon in August when the championship game of the Little League World Series was broadcast on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.
57 min