New Books Network
East Asian Studies
East Asian Studies May 7, 2021

Empire and Righteous Nation

600 Years of China-Korea Relations

Odd Arne Westad

Hosted by Ed Pulford
Being arguably each side’s most enduring international bond, the China-Korea relationship has long been of great practical and symbolic importance to both. Moreover, as Odd Arne Westad observes in his …

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Political Science May 3, 2021

Mobilizing for Development

The Modernization of Rural East Asia

Kristen E. Looney

Hosted by Susan Liebell
Dr. Kristen Looney’s Mobilizing for Development: The Modernization of Rural East Asia published by Cornell University in 2020 interrogates how countries achieve rural development and offers a new way of …
World Affairs May 3, 2021

India and Asian Geopolitics

The Past, Present

Shivshankar Menon

Hosted by Medha Prasanna
A clear-eyed look at modern India's role in Asia and the broader world. One of India's most distinguished foreign policy thinkers addresses the many questions facing India as it seeks to …
World Christianity April 30, 2021

Understanding Korean Christianity

Grassroot Perspectives on Causes, Culture, and Responses

K. Kale Yu

Hosted by Byung Ho Choi
The cultural landscape plays a momentous role in the transmission of Christianity. Consequently, the global expansion of the church has led to the increasing diversification of world Christianity. As a …
Medicine April 30, 2021

Mass Vaccination

Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China

Mary Augusta Brazelton

Hosted by Laura Stark
Mary Brazelton’s new book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell UP, 2019) could hardly be more timely. During the Covid-19 pandemic, China was in the headlines …
Japanese Studies April 29, 2021

Beyond Filial Piety

Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies

Jeanne Shea, Katrina Moore, and Hong Zhang

Hosted by Jingyi Li
Known for a tradition of Confucian filial piety, East Asian societies have some of the oldest and most rapidly aging populations on earth. Today these societies are experiencing unprecedented social …
East Asian Studies April 26, 2021

Defining Shugendo

Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion

Andrea Castiglioni, Fabio Rambelli, and Carina Roth

Hosted by Daigengna Duoer
Andrea Castiglioni, Fabio Rambelli and Carina Roth's edited volume Defining Shugendo: Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion (Bloomsbury, 2020) presents the newest studies on Shugendō-related practices and traditions from both Japanese and …
East Asian Studies April 23, 2021

A Monastery on the Move

Art and Politics in Later Buddhist Mongolia

Uranchimeg Tsultemin

Hosted by Daigengna Duoer
How, and why did a ger (yurt) develop into the largest and most important monastery in Mongolia, and how did it support the authority of its main resident, the Jebtsundampa …
East Asian Studies April 23, 2021

Japan's Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945-2019

Kenneth J. Ruoff

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Ken Ruoff’s Japan’s Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945-2019 (Harvard UP, 2020), is a revised and expanded version of the author’s The People’s Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945-199 …
East Asian Studies April 22, 2021

Building a Religious Empire

Tibetan Buddhism, Bureaucracy, and the Rise of the Gelukpa

Brenton Sullivan

Hosted by Daigengna Duoer
How did Geluk Buddhism become the most widespread school of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Asia and beyond? In Building a Religious Empire: Tibetan Buddhism, Bureaucracy, and the Rise of the Gelukpa (University …
East Asian Studies April 21, 2021

Into the Field

Human Scientists of Transwar Japan

Miriam L. Kingsberg Kadia

Hosted by Daigengna Duoer
How did Japanese academics study their "fields" in places like Manchuria and Inner Mongolia in the transwar decades? How did they transform in the postwar, under the US Occupation, and …
Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work April 16, 2021

Reinventing Licentiousness

Pornography and Modern China

Y. Yvon Wang

Hosted by Rachel Stuart
Y. Yvon Wang draws on previously untapped archives--ranging from police archives and surveys to ephemeral texts and pictures--to argue that pornography in China represents a unique configuration of power and …
Asian Review of Books April 15, 2021

Long Peace Street

A Walk in Modern China

Jonathan Chatwin

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
Changan Jie, or Long Peace Street, stretches across central Beijing. Along it are several critical historical sites, including Zhongnanhai, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City: all important to Beijing’s history …
East Asian Studies April 15, 2021

Wings for the Rising Sun

A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation

Jürgen P. Melzer

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Jürgen Melzer’s Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation (Harvard UP, 2020) traces the history of Japanese aviation from its origins with hot-air balloons in the …
Japanese Studies April 13, 2021

Flowering Tales

Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan

Takeshi Watanabe

Hosted by Jingyi Li
Telling stories: that sounds innocuous enough. But for the first chronicle in the Japanese vernacular, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), there was more to worry about than a …
Japanese Studies April 9, 2021

Transpacific Correspondence

Dispatches from Japan's Black Studies

Yuichiro Onishi and Fumiko Sakashita

Hosted by Felicity Stone-Richards
Transpacific Correspondences: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies, an essay collection edited by Dr. Yuichiro Onishi and Dr Fumiko Sakashita, introduces a little-known, but critical history of Black Studies in Japan …
Asian Review of Books April 8, 2021

Tokyo Before Tokyo

Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo

Timon Screech

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In 1800, the Shogun’s chief minister wrote the following about the city of Edo: "Someone said that if Edo did not have frequent fires, then people would be more showy …
East Asian Studies April 6, 2021

Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance

Essays on the Shishuo xinyu

Jack W. Chen

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu (Harvard UP, 2021) is a study of the Shishuo xinyu, the most important anecdotal collection of medieval China—and arguably of the …
Journal of Asian American Studies Podcast April 6, 2021

Roundtable on Asian Migrant Sex Work

Alison Clancey, Kelly Go, Lily Wong, and Yuri Doolan

Hosted by Christopher Patterson
This episode features three interviews with organizers and scholars concerned with Asian migrant sex work: SWAN Vancouver (Alison Clancey and Kelly Go), Dr. Lily Wong, and Dr. Yuri Doolan. On …
Japanese Studies April 1, 2021

The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900)

A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan

Christopher Joby

Hosted by Jingyi Li
In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (Brill, 2020), Christopher Joby offers the first book-length account of …