Tina Chen and Charlotte Eubanks, "Global Asias: Tactics & Theories" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

Jul 11, 2025

Guest

Charlotte Eubanks

Guest

Tina Chen

Tina Chen, the Director of Penn State's Global Asias Initiative, and Charlotte Eubanks, a Professor of comparative literature and Japanese studies, dive into their new book, which challenges conventional academic silos in the study of Asia. They explore the collaborative nature of Global Asias scholarship, emphasizing innovative methods and interdisciplinary dialogues. The guests also discuss the role of language in shaping academia and the significance of open access in promoting engagement. Their insights advocate for a more inclusive and dynamic understanding of Asian studies.

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INSIGHT

Global Asias as Architectural Space

Global Asias acts as an architectural space that facilitates dialogue across disciplinary and regional divides without demanding consensus.
This approach values disagreement and dynamic engagement over fixed paradigms, fostering richer intellectual exchange.

INSIGHT

Building Infrastructures for Dialogue

Global Asia's concept emphasizes building infrastructures that enable intellectual exchange rather than dictating content or approach.
The focus on infrastructure rather than institutional consolidation enables sustained multidisciplinary collaboration.

INSIGHT

Book's Target Audiences and Uses

The book targets graduate students, established scholars curious about Global Asias, and teachers wanting to integrate new methods into their syllabi.
It offers annotated bibliographies and pedagogy forums to support teaching and broader engagement with Global Asias.

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Global Asias: Tactics & Theories is the inaugural volume in an exciting new series that explores critical concerns animating Global Asias scholarship. It challenges the silos of academic knowledge formation that currently make legible and organize the study of Asia and its multiple diasporas. Transits, Indigeneity, Epistemology, Language, and A/Geography: These keywords highlight potential overlaps and points of disagreement between area studies, ethnic studies, and diaspora studies. Through an inventive approach and structure, the book exemplifies how the collaborative ethos of Global Asias praxis can catalyze new methods of scholarship and pedagogy—and create innovative models of academic knowledge-production. The editors offer a substantive overview of the emergent multidisciplinary field of Global Asias followed by a set of collaboratively authored research forums and pedagogical materials by a varied group of scholars working across ranks, disciplines, fields, geographies, and languages. Global Asias: Tactics & Theories will be an indispensable guide for anyone interested in learning more about this emerging field. It is crafted to provide resources for a wide range of readers: researchers, teachers, students, and administrators. The diversity and originality of the materials and approaches reflect a broad understanding of scholarly work that resists mastery by building structures of intellectual experimentation that embrace disagreement and differences. Readers will discover provocative conversations that redefine what it means to work in, at, for, and around Global Asias—not as a settled object of knowledge but a dynamic praxis of engagement.

The volume is edited by Tina Chen and Charlotte Eubanks, with contributions by Omer Aijazi, Jenny Chio, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Neelima Jeychandran, Youngoh Jung, Junyoung Verónica Kim, Fiona Lee, Jerry Won Lee, Andrew Way Leong, Diego Javier Luis, Naveen Minai, Alexander Murphy, Carla Nappi, Kyle Shernuk, Erin Suzuki, Desirée Valadares, Jini Kim Watson, and Shaolu Yu.

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