Tag: NBEAS

Podcasts

China from Empire to Nation-State: An Interview

Michael Gibbs Hill’s new translation renders into English, for the first time, the introduction and overview to Wang Hui’s 4-volume Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (Xiandai Zhongguo sixiangde xingqi, 2004). China from Empire to Nation-State (Harvard University Press, 2014) thus makes available to an English-reading audience a fascinating perspective on the history and historiography of modern China in the context of a larger global frame. Hill’s translation offers a view … Continue reading China from Empire to Nation-State: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature: An Interview

Wai-yee Li’s recent book explores writing around the Ming-Qing transition in seventeenth-century China, paying careful attention to the relationships of history and literature in writing by women, about women, and/or in a feminine voice. In a series of chapters that showcase exceptionally thoughtful, virtuosic readings of a wide range of texts, Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014) considers how conceptions … Continue reading Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Courtly Visions: An Interview

In pre-modern Japan, Ise monogatari (also known as the Ise Stories or Tales of Ise) was considered to be one of the three most important works of literature in the Japanese language. Joshua S. Mostow’s new book focuses on the reception and appropriation of these stories from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries.  Paying special attention to the relationship of image and text in these works, Courtly Visions: The Ise Stories and the Politics of Cultural … Continue reading Courtly Visions: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

The Undiscovered Country: An Interview

Melek Ortabasi’s new book explores the work of Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), a writer, folk scholar, “eccentric, dominating crackpot,” “brilliant, versatile iconoclast” and much more. The Undiscovered Country: Text, Translation, and Modernity in the Work of Yanagita Kunio (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014) expands how we understand and evaluate his work by contextualizing it in terms of translation studies, simultaneously informing how we think about (and with) translation. … Continue reading The Undiscovered Country: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

China Under Mao: An Interview

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that 1949 was actually the beginning, not the end, of the Chinese revolution.” Building from this premise, Andrew G. Walder’s new book looks at the ways that China was transformed in the 1950s in order to understand why and how Mao’s decisions and initiatives – among those of other leaders – had the effects that they did. Written … Continue reading China Under Mao: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China: An Interview

Eugene N. Anderson’s new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming and beyond, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) pays careful attention to a wide range of contexts of concern with nature and its resources. Readers of Anderson’s book will find fascinating discussions of rice agriculture and fermentation, the … Continue reading Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

China’s War Reporters: An Interview

Parks Coble’s new book is a wonderful study of memory, war, and history that takes the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 and its aftermath as its focus. China’s War Reporters: The Legacy of Resistance against Japan (Harvard University Press, 2015) look closely at writing done by journalists and intellectuals during the war, as well as the “re-remembering” of the war in modern China. Collectively, the chapters of China’s War Reporters argue that the … Continue reading China’s War Reporters: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

The Resurrected Skeleton: An Interview

Wilt Idema’s new book traces a story and its transformations through hundreds of years of Chinese literature. The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu Xun (Columbia University Press, 2014) collects and translates variations of the tale of Master Zhuang in his encounter with a skeleton who comes back to life and wreaks all sorts of havoc in the lives of those around him. (In some versions, Zhuang … Continue reading The Resurrected Skeleton: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Working Skin: An Interview

Joseph D. Hankins’s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. Taking readers on a journey from Lubbock, Texas to Tokyo, India, and back again, Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan (University of California Press, 2014) brings a diverse range of ethnographic experiences to bear on understanding the … Continue reading Working Skin: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Yellow River: An Interview

David A. Pietz’s new book argues that China’s water challenges are historically grounded, and that these historical realities are not going to disappear anytime soon. Using a careful history of water and environmental management to inform our understanding of water-related challenges in contemporary China, Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2015) asks, how did China reach its current state of water … Continue reading Yellow River: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi