Tag: China

Podcasts

Industrial Eden: An Interview

Brett Sheehan’s new book traces the interwoven histories of capitalism and the Song family under a series of five authoritarian governments in North China. Based on a wide range of sources a range of sources including family papers, missionary archives, corporate records, government documents, newspapers, oral histories, novels, and interviews, Industrial Eden: A Chinese Capitalist Vision (Harvard UP, 2015) explores a family of “capitalists without capitalism.” The book … Continue reading Industrial Eden: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Homesickness: An Interview

Carlos Rojas’s new book is a wonderfully transdisciplinary exploration of discourses of sickness and disease in Chinese literature and cinema in the long twentieth century. As its title indicates, Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation in Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2015) focuses particularly on what Rojas calls “homesickness,” a condition wherein “a node of alterity is structurally expelled from an individual or collective body in order … Continue reading Homesickness: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Vanishing into Things: An Interview

What is knowledge, why is it valuable, and how might it be cultivated? Barry Allen’s new book carefully considers the problem of knowledge in a range of Chinese philosophical discourses. Taking on the work of Confucians, Daoists, military theorists, Chan Buddhists, Neo-Confucian philosophers, and others, Vanishing into Things: Knowledge in Chinese Tradition (Harvard University Press, 2015) looks at the common threads and important differences in the ways that … Continue reading Vanishing into Things: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Taming Tibet: An Interview

Emily T. Yeh’s Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development (Cornell University Press, 2013) is an award-winning critical analysis of the production and transformation of the Tibetan landscape since 1950, construing development as a “state project that is presented as a gift to the Tibetan people” especially as it works to territorialize Tibet. Focusing on Lhasa and its environs, Yeh takes readers through key … Continue reading Taming Tibet: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Shanghai Homes: An Interview

Jie Li’s new book Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life (Columbia University Press, 2015) explores the history and culture of Shanghai alleyway homes by focusing on two physical spaces, both built in the early twentieth century by Japanese and British companies, and both located in the industrial Yangshupu district in the eastern part of what was the International Settlement in Shanghai. An old house, here, is a … Continue reading Shanghai Homes: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Shifting Stories: An Interview

Sarah M. Allen’s new book looks at the literature of tales in eighth- and ninth-century China. Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narratives from Tang Dynasty China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014) situates Tang tales in the context of social story exchange among elite men. Allen’s work not only contributes significantly to how we understand and frame concepts like fiction and fact, authorship, gossip, and collection, … Continue reading Shifting Stories: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Stories

Translating Recipes Part 10 & 11: Recipes, Time, Space, and “After”

The most recent parts of a multi-part series exploring time and space in (Manchu) recipe literature and in translation were just posted at The Recipes Project. You can find them here and here. This one focuses on exploring the work of “after”-ness in recipe literature, and it includes a relevant translation of our multiply-translated Manchu recipe. Links to the entire Translating Recipes series (so far) can be found on the … Continue reading Translating Recipes Part 10 & 11: Recipes, Time, Space, and “After”

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Tales of Futures Past: An Interview

Paola Iovene’s new book is a beautiful exploration of visions of the future as they have shaped a range of texts, genres, and editorial practices in Chinese literature from the middle of the twentieth century through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Tales of Futures Past traces ideas of the future through children’s books, popular science, science fiction, poetry, fiction, and other kinds of text and practice. … Continue reading Tales of Futures Past: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Savage Exchange: An Interview

Tamara Chin’s new book is awesome: it’s a tour de force and a must-read for anyone interested in early China, the history of economy, or inter-disciplinarity in the humanities. Focusing on the reign of Han Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 BCE), Savage Exchange carefully considers how this earliest period of expansion of China’s markets and frontiers inspired scholarly debates over the relationships of frontier, market, word, and world. … Continue reading Savage Exchange: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

The Annals of King T’aejo: An Interview

Byonghyon Choi’s new book makes a key document of Korean and world history available in English in a volume that will be tremendously useful for both scholarship and teaching. The Annals of King T’aejo translates an important excerpt from The Veritable Records of the Choson Dynasty, a historical record that documents important events and historical developments from the first 472 years of the Choson period in Korean history, … Continue reading The Annals of King T’aejo: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi