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About Carla Nappi
NBN Episodes hosted by Carla:
Chinese Studies
December 17, 2018
After Eunuchs
Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China
Howard Chiang
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia …
Communications
December 6, 2018
General Intellects
Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century
McKenzie Wark
Hosted by Carla Nappi
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for …
Literary Studies
November 20, 2018
Discognition
Steven Shaviro
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Steven Shaviro’s book Discognition (Repeater Books, 2016) opens with a series of questions: What is consciousness? How does subjective experience occur? Which entities are conscious? What is it like to …
East Asian Studies
October 17, 2018
Making Time
Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan
Yulia Frumer
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Yulia Frumer’s new book follows roughly three hundred years of transformations in how time was conceptualized, measured, and materialized in Japan. Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan (University …
European Studies
October 11, 2018
The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius
A Worldwide Descriptive Census, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions
Dániel Margócsy, Mark Somos, and Stephen N. Joffe
Hosted by Carla Nappi
The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius: A Worldwide Descriptive Census, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions (Brill, 2018) is a masterful new book that will long be on …
East Asian Studies
September 25, 2018
Forgotten Disease
Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine
Hilary A. Smith
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Hilary A. Smith’s new book examines the evolution of a Chinese disease concept, foot qi (jiao qi) from its documented origins in the fourth century to the present day. However …
Chinese Studies
September 13, 2018
The Art of Being Governed
Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China
Michael Szonyi
Hosted by Carla Nappi
At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower to the army?, and …
Chinese Studies
August 31, 2018
The End of Concern
Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies
Fabio Lanza
Hosted by Carla Nappi
If you work in Asian studies as a scholarly field, you should read Fabio Lanza’s new book. The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies (Duke University Press …
Art
August 27, 2018
Curating Revolution
Politics on Display in Mao's China
Denise Y. Ho
Hosted by Carla Nappi
“In Mao’s China, to curate revolution was to make it material.” Denise Y. Ho’s new book explores this premise in a masterful account of exhibitionary culture in the Mao period …
Anthropology
August 13, 2018
The Ecology of Attention
Yves Citton
Hosted by Carla Nappi
We are arguably living in the midst of a form of economy where attention has become a key resource and value, labor, class, and currency are being reconfigured as a …
Literary Studies
August 10, 2018
The Pidgin Warrior
Zhang Tianyi (tr. David Hull)
Hosted by Carla Nappi
“Big boys, the story in this little book is told for you.” Thus begins the preface to Zhang Tianyi’s The Pidgin Warrior (Balestier Press, 2017), as translated by the wonderful …
Art
August 2, 2018
Textures of Mourning
Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls
Reginald Jackson
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past …
Critical Theory
May 18, 2017
Face/On
Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other
Sharrona Pearl
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Sharrona Pearl's new book is an absolute pleasure to read. Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other (The University of Chicago Press, 2017) looks closely at facial allotransplantations …
Art
May 18, 2017
The Social Life of Inkstones
Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China
Dorothy Ko
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Dorothy Ko's new book is a must-read. Troubling the hierarchy of head over hands and the propensity to denigrate craftsmen in Chinese history, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and …
Anthropology
May 13, 2017
Synthetic
How Life Got Made
Sophia Roosth
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Sophia Roosth's wonderful new book follows researchers clustered around MIT beginning in 2003 who named themselves synthetic biologists. A historically informed anthropological analysis based on many years of ethnographic work …
East Asian Studies
May 13, 2017
A World Trimmed with Fur
Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule
Jonathan Schlesinger
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Jonathan Schlesinger's new book makes a compelling case for the significance of Manchu and Mongolian sources and archival sources in particular in telling the story of the Qing empire and …
Literary Studies
May 4, 2017
The Edge of Knowing
Dreams, History, and Realism in Modern Chinese Literature
Roy Bing Chan
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Roy Bing Chan's new book explores twentieth-century Chinese literature that emphasizes sleeping and dreaming as a way to reckon with the trauma of modernity, from the early May Fourth period …
Anthropology
May 4, 2017
Placing Outer Space
An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds
Lisa Messeri
Hosted by Carla Nappi
What kind of object is a planet? Lisa Messeri's new book asks and addressed this question in a fascinating ethnography that explores how scientific practices transform planets into places and …
East Asian Studies
May 2, 2017
The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History
Timothy Cheek
Hosted by Carla Nappi
In the preface to his new book, Timothy Cheek calls out a widespread tendency to focus on dissidents when engaging with Chinese intellectuals. (This is a problem insofar as we …
East Asian Studies
April 25, 2017
The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan
Marcia Yonemoto
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Were women a problem in early modern Japan? If they were, what was the nature of the problem they posed? For whom, and why? Marcia Yonemoto's new book explores these …
Anthropology
April 25, 2017
What Love Is
And What It Could Be
Carrie Jenkins
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Carrie Jenkins' new book is a model for what public philosophy can be. Beautifully written, thoughtful, and compellingly and carefully argued, What Love Is: And What it Could Be (Basic …
German Studies
April 25, 2017
The Dancing Bees
Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language
Tania Munz
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Tania Munz's new book is a dual biography: both of Austrian-born experimental physiologist Karl von Frisch, and of the honeybees he worked with as experimental, communicating creatures. The Dancing Bees …
European Studies
March 29, 2017
Measuring Shadows
Kepler's Optics of Invisibility
Raz Chen-Morris
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Raz Chen-Morris's new book traces a significant and surprising notion through the work of Johannes Kepler: in order to account for real physical motions, one has to investigate artificially produced …
Performing Arts
March 29, 2017
Learning to Kneel
Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching
Carrie J. Preston
Hosted by Carla Nappi
Carrie J. Preston's new book tells the story of the global circulation of noh-inspired performances, paying careful attention to the ways these performances inspired twentieth-century drama, poetry, modern dance, film …
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