New Books in East Asian Studies

Rodolfo Maggio, a senior researcher at the University of Helsinki, discusses Sino-Pacific relations focusing on the peaceful 2024 elections in the Solomon Islands. He explores the influence of China, language challenges, and the role of community leaders in maintaining peace and addressing economic inequalities.

Dr. Alfred Peredo Flores discusses US settler militarism in Guam, focusing on land dispossession, racialization of labor, and military policing of intimate relationships. The podcast explores Chamoru resilience and resistance against US military presence and the impact of tourism on the island.

Viren Murthy explores the historical context of pan-Asianism and its resistance to imperialism. The podcast delves into the unity of Asian nations, critiques of capitalism, racial connotations, and contrasting perspectives on subjectivity in Asia. It also touches on the evolution of pan-Asianist thought, the interplay of neoliberalism, Pan-Asianism, and socialism in China, and the complexities of historical ideologies.

Huan Jin discusses the Taiping Civil War's impact on Chinese literature and culture from 1850-1880, exploring the transformation of literary norms under extreme violence. Topics include the reinvention of literary conventions, the influence of Western ideas, and diverse perspectives on heaven and time in 19th-century Chinese writings.

Anri Yasuda discusses how major Japanese authors illuminated society through aesthetic sentiments from 1890-1930. They explored comparisons with visual arts, challenged representations in a changing world, and displayed ambivalence towards cosmopolitanism. Beauty and art enabled these authors to surpass 'literary' concerns.

Wendy Matsumura critiques Japan studies for overlooking colonial violence and advocates for understanding imperialism through anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity. She explores the struggles of racialized and colonized people against imperialist violence and stresses the importance of tracing colonial sensibility for grappling with its enduring consequences.

Author Joanne Leow discusses 'Counter-Cartographies: Reading Singapore Otherwise,' exploring resistance to postcolonial development through cultural texts. The podcast covers government control of space, artistic expression, environmental impacts, and challenges to official narratives in Singapore. It also delves into the importance of excavating hidden histories, displacements due to land reclamation, and artistic strategies for navigating state restrictions.

In 1971, the New York Times called the Taiwanese-Chinese chef, Fu Pei-Mei, the “the Julia Child of Chinese cooking.”But, as Michelle T. King notes in her book Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-Mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food (Norton, 2024), the inverse–that Julia Child was the Fu Pei-Mei of French cuisine–might be more appropriate. Fu spent decades on Taiwanese television, wrote three seminal cookbooks on Chinese cuisine, ran a famous cooking academy and even provided important culinary advice to those making packaged food and airline meals.And this all starts from humble beginnings, when she was an amateur–and not very good–home cook arriving in Taiwan from mainland China.In this interview, Michelle and I talk about Fu Pei-Mei, her humble beginnings and rise to the heights of Chinese cooking, and what Fu’s work tells us about Chinese cuisine.Michelle T. King is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she specializes in modern Chinese gender and food history. She can be followed on Instagram at @michtking.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Chop Fry Watch Learn. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Asians on Demand: Mediating Race in Video Art and Activism (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) explores a multilingual archive of contemporary queer and feminist videos by Asian diasporans in North America, Europe, and East Asia. It grapples with the pressing question of how media representation can critique and advance social justice for racialized minorities in the wake of today’s unprecedented rise of onscreen diversity.Feng-Mei Heberer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. She is also a faculty affiliate of the department’s Asian Film and Media Initiative. Her research interests lie at the junctures of labor, transnational migration, and Asian diaspora, and her work draws heavily on the insights of ethnic studies, queer studies, feminist studies, and critical area studies. In addition, she researches and works in film curation and community arts and culture organizing.Ailin Zhou is a PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include transnational Chinese cinema, Asian diasporic visual culture, contemporary art, and feminist and queer theories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Building a Nation at War: Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II (Harvard UP, 2022) argues that the Chinese Nationalist government’s retreat inland during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), its consequent need for inland resources, and its participation in new scientific and technical relationships with the United States led to fundamental changes in how the Nationalists engaged with science and technology as tools to promote development.The war catalyzed an emphasis on applied sciences, comprehensive economic planning, and development of scientific and technical human resources—all of which served the Nationalists’ immediate and long-term goals. It created an opportunity for the Nationalists to extend control over inland China and over education and industry. It also provided opportunities for China to mobilize transnational networks of Chinese-Americans, Chinese in America, and the American government and businesses. These groups provided technical advice, ran training programs, and helped the Nationalists acquire manufactured goods and tools. J. Megan Greene shows how the Nationalists worked these programs to their advantage, even in situations where their American counterparts clearly had the upper hand. Finally, this book shows how, although American advisers and diplomats criticized China for harboring resources rather than putting them into winning the war against Japan, US industrial consultants were also strongly motivated by postwar goals.J. Megan Greene is Professor of History at the University of Kansas. Her field of study is the history of the Republic of China under the KMT both in China and on Taiwan. She is also the author of The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization (Harvard University Press, 2008), a study of industrial science policy in China and Taiwan under the KMT.Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies