I’m so delighted to share the news that Dominic Pettman‘s and my book of short stories (inspired by Vilém Flusser’s work on the theory of gesture) is now available! Head on over to the Punctum Press site, where you can download a free ebook or link over to buy a paper copy. I love these stories so much. We’re plotting a book launch in NYC … Continue reading Metagestures: A Book!
Long time no post! I’ve been hibernating while on leave, but there’s so much to tell and leave is over and I’ll be posting a bunch in the weeks to come. First off, here are the first drafty bits of what seems to be taking shape as a kind of weird magical lifestyle guide/cookbook, now available at The Invisible College. Also check out Carrie Jenkins’s … Continue reading Glass, and Light, and Cotton, and Celery: Bits of a new lifestyle guide/cookbook
New website ahoy! Translating Vitalities is a collective of artists, anthropologists, medical and healing practitioners, historians, and other humanists and non-humanists who regularly come together in the service of making collaborative work to understand lifeworlds and their translations and transformations. We now have a website that will archive and share work that grows from the project, and you can find us here: https://translatingvitalities.com/. Continue reading Translating Vitalities: A Website
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 2) What were the broader consequences of their behavior?” The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (Princeton University Press, 2017) considers how military institutions shaped the lives of ordinary people on China’s southeast coast … Continue reading The Art of Being Governed: An Interview
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, 2017) takes as its central case study the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) and The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars that the CCAS published. Tracing the history of the organization from its founding in the midst of the global … Continue reading The End of Concern: An Interview
“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 (1949-1976) and beyond. Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China (Cambridge University Press, 2017) argues that “curating revolution taught people how to take part in revolution,” and it develops that argument in a series of case studies … Continue reading Curating Revolution: An Interview
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 result. But how is this happening, what are the consequences, and is “economy” necessarily the most productive frame in which to understand these transformations in attention and distraction? Yves Citton’s new book explores these questions in … Continue reading The Ecology of Attention: An Interview
Over at The Invisible College, we just posted a new pair of reflections on space, home, work, and their relationships. You can head over there to explore our contributions on doors and corners, including my little essay on doors, fleas, Kafka, and thunderstorm soup. Continue reading Doors
“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 David Hull. Not just for boys (big or small), The Pidgin Warrior is a moving, hilarious novel set in 1930s Shanghai during wartime. Hull’s translation is a sensitive and humane rendering of characters that are by turns laughable and … Continue reading The Pidgin Warrior: An Interview
In the first of what will be a series of FridayConversations, Carrie Jenkins & I had a glass of Skypewine and talked about the genesis of the Invisible College. You can find the conversation by clicking over here. Cheers! Continue reading The Making Of The Invisible College: A Skypewine Conversation
Carla Nappi 