New Books in East Asian Studies

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking to Peggy Wang about her new book, The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art (Minnesota University Press, 2021). In the book, Wang asks readers to reconsider the term “global” and “world” in relation to the (often simplistically interpreted) artistic projects of some of the most famous Chinese artists of the postsocialist period. A meticulously researched chapter is devoted to: Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Sui Jianguo, Zhang Peili, and Lin Tianmiao. In each case, Wang argues that their oeuvres are critical projects that are shaped by and comment upon artists’ and art critics’ self-understanding as Chinese actors in ambivalent relation to the newly accessible “Western art world.” The book’s theoretical claims will of course speak to scholars of art history as well as Chinese literature and culture. I would be remiss not to mention, however, how excited I am by the teaching potential of this text, both as a foundation from which to understand the complexity of contemporary Chinese art and a wonderful model for students just learning research methodologies.Julia Keblinska is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Center for Historical Research at the Ohio State University specializing in Chinese media history and comparative socialisms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Following the globalization of Tibetan Buddhism in the second half of the twentieth century, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist teachings such as Mahāmudrā have become increasingly popular around the world. Drawn by teachings that seem to promise practitioners fast-tracked enlightenment through powerful meditative practices and the blessings of the personal principal Guru, Mahāmudrā has not only maintained followers from Tibet and Bhutan, but has also attracted scholars and practitioners from the West.In A Timely Message from the Cave, Dagmar Schwerk points out that while the globalization of Tibetan Buddhism has helped the Mahāmudrā practitioner community grow on a global scale, it has also brought numerous seemingly new challenges, such as disputes with respect to the correct transmission and authenticity of Tantric teachings. By investigating the commentarial writings of Je Gendun Rinchen (1926­–1997), the Sixty-Ninth Je Khenpo of Bhutan (the Chief Abbot of Bhutan), Schwerk finds that these disputes cover topics that were already well-established in premodern disputes between Buddhist masters and were often at the core of earlier Mahāmudrā controversies. Schwerk’s close readings of Je Gendun Rinchen’s commentary, The Timely Messenger (dus kyi pho nya), reveals that contrary to the global popular conception of Mahāmudrā, “the three traditional scholarly activities of a Tibetan or Bhutanese Buddhist master are nowadays as essential as ever for the preservation, continuation, and viability of a lineage: explication, debate, and composition.”As one of the pioneering works on Bhutanese Buddhism in the twentieth century, Schwerk’s A Timely Message from the Cave centers on Je Gendun Rinchen, who was one of the most renowned and influential Buddhist masters in twentieth-century Bhutan. Relying on textual sources as well as archival materials, fieldwork, and even online sources such as social media posts on Facebook and YouTube, Schwerk maps out a transregional Buddhist intellectual network centered on this Bhutanese scholar, as well as the reception history of the Mahāmudrā controversy in Tibet and Bhutan as a whole.In her analysis and annotated translations of Je Gendun Rinchen’s intellectual repertoire, Schwerks shows that for Bhutanese Buddhists “A mere reliance on the mostly common heritage of the Tibetan branch… was no longer considered sufficient anymore.” Arguing for “the importance of moving away from a focus on Tibet in order to begin to better understand Bhutanese doctrinal and exegetical positions and their developments,” Schwerk invites futures scholars of Himalayan Buddhism to pay further attention “to the general aspect of new inter- and intra-sectarian exchanges and additional cross-linked Bhutanese-Tibetan literal productions as well as their scope and significance.” Daigengna Duoer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

How has digital communication technologies impacted the dynamics of political contention in China? What is the role of mobile technology in the country with the world’s largest number of mobile and internet users? Why is there little domestic resistance about surveillance and technology-related privacy risks in China during the pandemic? Jun Liu, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, shares his book Shifting Dynamics of Contention in the Digital Age: Mobile Communication and Politics in China (Oxford UP, 2020) with the Nordic Asia Podcast.In his talk with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden and affiliated PhD at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Jun Liu introduces his work on mobile communication and political activism based on first-hand in-depth interview and fieldwork data. He also draws on one of his latest papers to explain how China’s unprecedented measures to mobilise its diverse surveillance apparatus played a crucial part in the country’s containment of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.Jun Liu’s research stands at the intersection of communication, technology, politics, and society, with particular attention to the social, cultural, and political implications of digital communication. Drawing upon theories from communication, sociology, and political science, his research focuses on how digital technology interacts with socio-cultural forms and settings and generates new power dynamics in politics in specific cultural and institutional contexts such as authoritarian regimes like China.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars’ work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures.On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang’s thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro’s GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies’ taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more!David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah.Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

The Thirties and Forties were some of the first instances of aerial bombardment of civilian populations—and an indication of their destructive power. We often point to the Nazi bombing in Guernica, Spain in 1937—immortalized by Pablo Picasso—as the first instance of what happens when “the bomber gets through”, to paraphrase then-Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.But just a few months later, across a continent, the world got a glimpse of what bombardment would look like in one of the world’s most built-up and international cities of the time: Shanghai, and “Bloody Saturday”: August 14th, 1937.Paul French’s Bloody Saturday: Shanghai's Darkest Day (Penguin Australia: 2018), recently republished by Penguin’s Southeast Asia arm, is a short telling of what happened on that fateful day.In this interview, Paul and I talk about what happened in Shanghai on August 14th, and what it tells us about the nature of the city, the foreigners that lived there, and how the rest of the Sino-Japanese War developed.Paul French was born in London, educated there and in Glasgow, and lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin Group USA: 2012) was a New York Times Bestseller, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Mystery Writers of America Edgar award winner for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction. Both Midnight in Peking and City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai (Picador USA: 2018) are currently being developed for television. More can be found on Paul French’s blog China Rhyming.In our interview, we also mention another one of Paul’s works: Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao (Hong Kong University Press: 2009)You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Bloody Saturday. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate 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

Re-Orienting China: Travel Writing and Cross-Cultural Understanding (U Regina Press, 2016) challenges the notion of the travel writer as imperialistic, while exploring the binary opposition of self/other. Featuring analyses of rarely studied writers on post-1949 China, including Jan Wong, Jock T. Wilson, Peter Hessler, Leslie T. Chang, Hill Gates, and Yi-Fu Tuan, Re-Orienting China demonstrates the transformative power of travel, as it changes our preconceived notions of home and abroad.Drawing on her own experience as a Chinese expat living in Canada, Leilei Chen embraces the possibility of productive cross-border relationships that are critical in today's globalized world.Leilei Chen is a literary translator, bilingual writer, instructor, and researcher. She published the Mandarin version of Steven Grosby's Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) with Nanjing’s Yilin Press in 2017 and Hong Kong’s Oxford University Press in 2020. She is the author of Re-orienting China: Travel Writing and Cross-cultural Understanding (University of Regina Press, 2016). Her poetry and prose translations, and poetry and personal essays appear in literary anthologies such as Home: Stories Connecting Us All (Embracing Multicultural Community Development, 2017), Looking Back, Moving Forward (Mawenzi House, 2019), Beyond the Food Court: An Anthology of Literary Cuisines (Laberinto Press, 2020); as well as in journals and magazines in Canada and beyond. She teaches at the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta and serves as Vice President (West Canada) of the Literary Translators Association of Canada.Clara Iwasaki is an assistant professor in the East Asian Studies department at the University of Alberta. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Controversy over the medicinal uses of wild animals in China has erupted around the ethics and efficacy of animal-based drugs, the devastating effect of animal farming on wildlife conservation, and the propensity of these practices to foster zoonotic diseases. In Mao's Bestiary: Medicinal Animals and Modern China (Duke UP, 2021), Liz P. Y. Chee – Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute and Lecturer at Tembusu College, both at the National University of Singapore – traces the history of the use of medicinal animals in modern China. While animal parts and tissue have been used in Chinese medicine for centuries, Chee demonstrates that the early Communist state expanded and systematized their production and use to compensate for drug shortages, generate foreign investment in high-end animal medicines, and facilitate an ideological shift toward legitimating folk medicines. Among other topics, Chee investigates the craze for chicken blood therapy during the Cultural Revolution, the origins of deer antler farming under Mao and bear bile farming under Deng, and the crucial influence of the Soviet Union and North Korea on Chinese zootherapies. In the process, Chee shows Chinese medicine to be a realm of change rather than a timeless tradition, a hopeful conclusion given current efforts to reform its use of animals.Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

A thirtieth‑century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red‑haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises.In Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art (Yale UP, 2018), Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams, creating an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture.Raditya Nuradi is a Phd student at Kyushu University. He works on religion and popular culture, particularly anime pilgrimages. His research explores pilgrims’ experiences through materiality and space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Proposing the concept of transformance, a conscious and rigorous process of self-cultivation toward a reconceptualized body, Liang shows how theater practitioners of minoritized cultures adopt transformance as a strategy to counteract the embodied practices of ideological and economic hegemony. This book observes key Taiwanese contemporary theater practitioners at work in forging five reconceptualized bodies: the energized, the rhythmic, the ritualized, the joyous, and the (re)productive. By focusing on the development of transformance between the years of 2000–2008, a tumultuous political watershed in Taiwan’s history, the author succeeds in bridging postcolonialism and interculturalism in her conceptual framework.Ideal for scholars of Asian and postcolonial theater, Bodies and Transformance in Taiwanese Contemporary Theater shows how transformance, rather than performance, calibrates with far greater precision and acuity the state of the body and the culture that it seeks to create.Peilin Liang is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore. She is the director of A Home on the Island, a transnational Practice as Research (PaR) project in applied theater.Li-Ping Chen is Postdoctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow in the East Asian Studies Center 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

It’s a great pleasure to welcome Colin Thubron to the Asian Review of Books podcast. Travel writer and novelist, Colin has written countless books that bring faraway sights and peoples to English-speaking readers–many of which covered regions in China, Russia, Central Asia and elsewhere on the Asian continent.In this episode, Colin and I talk about The Amur River: Between Russia and China (Harper, 2021), which traces the path of the Amur from its origins in Mongolia to its end-point in the Pacific Ocean. We also discuss what means to be a travel writer in today’s world—which has undergone a recent and rapid expansion, and even more recent and rapid collapse, of travel.Colin Thubron is an acclaimed travel writer and novelist, and the winner of many prizes and awards. His first books were about the Middle Eas—Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. But later he was drawn to the lands which he says his generation was brought up to fear: the Soviet Union and Communist China.In 1982 he traveled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey described in Among the Russians (Ulverscroft: 1989). From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind The Wall: A Journey Through China (Random House: 1987), The Lost Heart of Asia (Random House: 1994), In Siberia (Penguin: 2000), Shadow of the Silk Road (Chatto & Windus: 2006) and To a Mountain in Tibet (Chatto & Windus: 2011).You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Amur River. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate 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