Best East Asia Podcasts (2024)

1
Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky, "Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022) 1:05:13

26d ago1:05:13

1:05:13

In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global infrastructure production today is focused squarely on Asia. Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia (U Hawaii Press, 2022) investigates the deeper implications of that pivot to the East. Written by lead…

1
Anna Lora-Wainwright, "Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China" (MIT Press, 2021) 50:37

1h ago50:37

50:37

Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (MIT Press, 2021) by Dr. Anna Lora-Wainwright digs deep into the paradoxes, ambivalences, and wide range of emotions and strategies people develop to respond to toxicity in everyday life. An examination of the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and of the varying forms of acti…

1
Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, "Confucian Feminism: A Practical Ethic for Life" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 58:31

1h ago58:31

58:31

In Confucian Feminism: A Practical Ethic for Life (Bloomsbury, 2024), Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee expands the theoretical horizons of feminism by using characteristic Confucian terms, methods, and concerns to interrogate the issue of gender oppression and liberation. With its theoretical roots in the Confucian textual tradition, this is the first re-im…

1
Christopher Smith, "Samurai with Telephones: Anachronism in Japanese Literature" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 42:02

1h ago42:02

42:02

What is going on when a graphic novel has a twelfth-century samurai pick up a telephone to make a call, or a play has an ancient aristocrat teaching in a present-day schoolroom? Rather than regarding such anachronisms as errors, Samurai with Telephones: Anachronism in Japanese Literature (U Michigan Press, 2024) develops a theory of how texts can u…

1
Andrew G. Walder, “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed” (Harvard UP, 2015) 1:20:27

1h ago1:20:27

1:20:27

"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 effec…

1
Xiaoming Wang, "Muslim Chinese: The Hui in Rural Ningxia" (de Gruyter, 2019) 48:25

43m ago48:25

48:25

As the predominantly Muslim Chinese who claim ancestry from Persian and Arabic-speaking regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, the Hui people in China have received relatively little attention in anthropology. According to the 2010 census, the Hui are the largest Muslim group in China and its third largest ethnic minority with a total populat…

1
Satoru Hashimoto, "Afterlives of Letters: The Transnational Origins of Modern Literature in China, Japan, and Korea" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:13:16

25m ago1:13:16

1:13:16

When East Asia opened itself to the world in the nineteenth century, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean intellectuals had shared notions of literature because of the centuries-long cultural exchanges in the region. As modernization profoundly destabilized cultural norms, they ventured to create new literature for the new era. Satoru Hashimoto offers a n…

1
Helena F. S. Lopes, "Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:52:09

25m ago1:52:09

1:52:09

The South China enclave of Macau was the first and last European colonial settlement in East Asia and a territory at the crossroads of different empires. In Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War (Cambridge UP, 2023), Helena F. S. Lopes analyses the layers of collaboration that developed from neutrality in Ma…

1
Victor C. Shih, "Coalitions of the Weak: Elite Politics in China from Mao's Stratagem to the Rise of Xi" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 58:34

1d ago58:34

58:34

In Coalitions of the Weak (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Victor C. Shih investigates how leaders of one-party autocracies seek to dominate the elite and achieve true dictatorship, governing without fear of internal challenge or resistance to major policy changes. Through an in-depth look of late-Mao politics informed by thousands of historical…

1
S4E9 The Fragility of China: A Conversation with Dennis Unkovic 59:10

40m ago59:10

59:10

In this episode of Madison's Notes, we sit down with Dennis Unkovic to discuss his latest book, The Fragility of China (Encounter Books, 2024). Unkovic delves into the complex forces shaping China's political, economic, and social landscape. From the country's rising internal challenges to its evolving role on the global stage, Unkovic offers a nua…

1
Zach Fredman, "The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949" (UNC Press, 2022) 1:00:52

40m ago1:00:52

1:00:52

The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949 (UNC Press, 2022) explores the wartime partnership between China and the United States from the ground up. Beginning in 1941, and especially after Pearl Harbor, both sides had high hopes for wartime cooperation against Japan. But as The Tormented Alliance shows, ‘a m…

1
Critique, Wonder, and Chinese Anatomy, with Lan A. Li 1:01:43

1d ago1:01:43

1:01:43

In this episode of the Blue Beryl Podcast, Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with the show’s producer, Lan A. Li, a historian of Chinese science, medicine, and the body. We talk about their life-long practice of qigong, the limits of academic critique, and the integration of divergent epistemologies in studying Chinese anatomy. Along the way, we discuss…

1
Juan José Rivas Moreno, "The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) 53:14

10d ago53:14

53:14

Economic history has always emphasized the importance of long-distance trade in the emergence of modern financial markets, yet almost nothing is known about the Manila trade. The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) offers the first reconstruction of the capital market of Manila using new archival sou…

1
James A. Anderson, "The Dong World and Imperial China's Southwest Silk Road: Trade, Security, and State Formation" (U Washington Press, 2024) 31:05

9d ago31:05

31:05

From the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived. These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s relations with the emerging kingdoms in its borderlands. Local chiefs before the tenth century had considered the control of such contacts an importan…

1
Ian Williams, "Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy (Birlinn, 2024) 1:03:06

21d ago1:03:06

1:03:06

State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. However, none seems to capture the predatory, at times surreal, nature of the economy of the world’s most populous nation – nor the often bruising and mind-bending experience of doing business with the …

1
Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power" (Yale UP, 2024) 39:29

24d ago39:29

39:29

In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the Ming emperor to conduct trade relations with faraway England; none of the expeditions carrying the letters ever arrived. It’s an inauspicious beginning to the four centuries of foreign relations betw…

1
Caterina Fugazzola, "Words Like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China" (Temple UP, 2023) 59:58

13d ago59:58

59:58

After China officially “decriminalized” same-sex behavior in 1997, both the visibility and public acceptance of tongzhi, an inclusive identity term that refers to nonheterosexual and gender nonconforming identities in the People’s Republic of China, has improved. However, for all the positive change, there are few opportunities for political and ci…

1
Andrea E. Pia, "Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024) 1:17:06

19d ago1:17:06

1:17:06

On the podcast today, I am joined by anthropologist Andrea Pia (London School of Economics and Political Science) to talk about his new book, Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics and Climate in Southwest China (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024). In recent years, the People’s Republic of China has seen an alarmed public endorsing techno-political sustainabi…

1
Steven K. Bailey, "Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War" (Osprey, 2024) 51:29

1M ago51:29

51:29

On January 16, 1945, dozens of U.S. Navy aircraft took off for China’s southern coast, including the occupied British colony of Hong Kong. It was part of Operation Gratitude, an exercise to target airfields, ports, and convoys throughout the South China Sea. U.S. pilots bombed targets in Hong Kong and, controversially, in neutral Macau as they stro…

1
Gil Hizi, "Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today: A Keyword Approach" (Amsterdam UP, 2024) 1:01:18

1M ago1:01:18

1:01:18

On this podcast today, I am joined by three scholars: postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt, Gil Hizi; assistant professor at Sun Yat-sen University, Xinyan Peng; and lecturer and researcher at the University of Ghent, Mieke Matthyssen. All three guests join me to talk about their chapters in the new book, Self-Development…

1
Meg Rithmire, "Precarious Ties: Business and the State in Authoritarian Asia" (Oxford UP, 2023) 56:49

1M ago56:49

56:49

Developing Asia has been the site of some of the last century's fastest growing economies as well as some of the world's most durable authoritarian regimes. Many accounts of rapid growth alongside monopolies on political power have focused on crony relationships between the state and business. But these relationships have not always been smooth, as…

1
Thomas White, "China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier" (U Washington Press, 2024) 1:08:42

1M ago1:08:42

1:08:42

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minori…

1
Lynn M. Tesser, "Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics" (Stanford UP, 2024) 55:47

1M ago55:47

55:47

Why did a nation-state order emerge when nationalist activism was usually an elitist pursuit in the age of empire? Ordinary inhabitants and even most indigenous elites tended to possess religious, ethnic, or status-based identities rather than national identities. Why then did the desires of a typically small number result in wave after wave of new…

1
Peter Rose, "The Good War of Consul Reeves" (Blacksmith Books, 2024) 50:15

1M ago50:15

50:15

Macau was supposed to be a sleepy post for John Reeves, the British consul for the Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast. He arrived, alone, in June 1941, his wife and daughter left behind in China. Seven months later, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, invaded Hong Kong, and made Reeves the last remaining British diplomat for hundreds of miles, …

1
Yiu Fai Chow et al., "It’s My Party: Tat Ming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) 1:02:05

1M ago1:02:05

1:02:05

It’s My Party: Tat Ming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) is unique in focusing on just one band from one city – but the story of Tat Ming Pair, in so many ways, is the story of Hong Kong's recent decades, from the Handover to the Umbrella Movement to 2019's standoff. A comprehensive, theoret…

1
Jinhyun Cho, "English Language Ideologies in Korea: Interpreting the Past and Present" (Springer, 2017) 49:05

1M ago49:05

49:05

Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Jinhyun Cho, Senior Lecturer in the Translation and Interpreting Program of the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Her research interests are primarily in the field of sociolinguistics and sociolinguistics of translation & interpreting. Jinhyun's research focuses on intersections betw…

1
James M. Scott, "Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb" (Norton, 2024) 57:29

1M ago57:29

57:29

In our interview about Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), James M. Scott discusses the principles and personalities involved in the most destructive air attack in history. Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies…

1
Fabio Rambelli, "Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) 57:24

2M ago57:24

57:24

In Japan, a country popularly perceived as highly secularized and technologically advanced, ontological assumptions about spirits (tama or tamashii) seem to be quite deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric. From ancestor cults to anime, spirits, ghosts, and other invisible dimensions of reality appear to be pervasive. In Spirits and Animism in Cont…

1
Tarryn Li-Min Chun, "Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China" (U Michigan Press, 2024), "Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China ... 1:08:22

2M ago1:08:22

1:08:22

Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China (University of Michigan Press, 2024) offers a fascinating approach to modern Chinese theater history by placing the stage at the center of the story. Combining vivid readings of plays with technical manuals and how-to guides, Tarryn Li-Min Chun charts how stage technology c…

1
Christopher Brown, "Mapping Taiwanese Cinema, 2008-2020: Environments, Poetics, Practice" (Edinburgh UP, 2024) 1:21:47

2M ago1:21:47

1:21:47

Accounting for the unique characteristics of Taiwan’s cinema from 2008 to 2020, Mapping Taiwanese Cinema, 2008-2020: Environments, Poetics, Practice (Edinburgh UP, 2024) examines how filmmakers have depicted and imagined the island’s diverse environments. Drawing on cinema, cartography, and cultural studies, Christopher Brown argues that by refocus…

1
Christopher Lovins, "King Chŏngjo: An Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea" (SUNY Press, 2019) 1:12:34

2M ago1:12:34

1:12:34

Though traditionally regarded as a monarch who failed to arrest the gradual decline of his kingdom, the Korean king Chŏngjo has benefited in recent decades from a wave of new scholarship which has reassessed both his reign and his role in Korean history. The latest to do so is Christopher Lovins, who in his book King Chŏngjo: An Enlightened Despot …

1
Eyck Freymann, "One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World" (Harvard UP, 2020) 1:07:44

2M ago1:07:44

1:07:44

China’s One Belt One Road policy, or OBOR, represents the largest infrastructure program in history. Yet little is known about it with any certainty. How can something so large be so bewildering? In One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2020), Eyck Freymann, a DPhil Candidate in China Studies at the Univer…

1
Francisca Yuenki Lai, "Maid to Queer: Asian Labor Migration and Female Same-Sex Desires" (Hong Kong UP, 2021) 1:03:37

2M ago1:03:37

1:03:37

Maid to Queer: Asian Labor Migration and Female Same-Sex Desires (Hong Kong UP, 2021) is the first book about Asian female migrant workers who develop same-sex relationships in a host city. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong, the book explores the meanings of same-sex relationships…

1
Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, "Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age" (Columbia UP, 2023) 57:37

2M ago57:37

57:37

In the late nineteenth century, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Chinese writing system. The Chinese characters, they argued, were too cumbersome to learn, blocking the channels of communication, obstructing mass literacy, and impeding scientific progress. What had sustained a civi…

1
Le Lin, "The Fruits of Opportunism: Noncompliance and the Evolution of China's Supplemental Education Industry" (U Chicago Press, 2022) 1:42:01

2M ago1:42:01

1:42:01

An in-depth examination of the regulatory, entrepreneurial, and organizational factors contributing to the expansion and transformation of China’s supplemental education industry. Like many parents in the United States, parents in China, increasingly concerned with their children’s academic performance, are turning to for-profit tutoring businesses…

1
Muslimness in China 1:04:10

2M ago1:04:10

1:04:10

In this episode Salman Sayyid talks to Haiyun Ma about Muslimness in China. This is the second episode in this series which addresses this topic: in a previous episode we spoke to Darren Byler about Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan. In this episode, our focus is slightly different, and encompasses many Muslim groups in China. Haiyun Ma, assistant p…

1
Na'ou Liu, "Urban Scenes" (Cambria Press, 2023) 1:01:08

2M ago1:01:08

1:01:08

"In this tango palace everything was swaying rhythmically to and fro, bodies of men and women, beams of colored light, brilliant wine glasses, red and green liquids, slender fingers, pomegranate-colored lips, and feverish eyes. Tables and chairs, together with the crowd of people, cast their reflections on the center of the shiny floor. Everyone wa…

1
Forgotten Ummah--Muslims in China 1:02:25

3M ago1:02:25

1:02:25

This episode is the first of two episodes this season on Muslims in China. Here Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward talk to Darren Blyer about his book Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City (Duke UP, 2022). Darren is a sociocultural anthropologist at Simon Fraser University, whose book explores how islamophobia and c…

1
Everyday Architecture in Context: Public Markets in Hong Kong (1842-1981) (Chinese U of Hong Kong Press, 2023) 52:50

3M ago52:50

52:50

How do public markets, as ordinary as they seem, carry the weight of a city’s history? How do such everyday buildings reflect a city’s changing political, social, and economic needs, through their yearslong transformations in forms, functions, and management? Today’s book is: Everyday Architecture in Context: Public Markets in Hong Kong, 1842-1981 …

1
On Sino-Vietnamese Border Relations 48:04

3M ago48:04

48:04

In this episode, host SEAC Director John Sidel talks with Dr Qingfei Yin, SEAC Associate and Assistant Professor of International History at LSE. Dr Qingfei Yin talks about her new book State Building in Cold War Asia Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border (due out with Cambridge University Press in August 2024), explains how she be…

1
Matthew H. Sommer, "The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:26:55

3M ago1:26:55

1:26:55

The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China (Columbia University Press, 2024) is a fascinating study of transgender lives and practices in late imperial China. This book takes as its core subject matter six court cases from Qing China that involve people who moved away from the gender they were assigne…

1
Kate McDonald on Asian Mobility History as Labor History 1:13:33

3M ago1:13:33

1:13:33

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Kate McDonald, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, about her fascinating research on the history of mobility in Asia and how it looks different when we approach it as a history of work and labor. The pair traverse McDonald’s career from her current project, The Ricks…

1
Kristie Flannery, "Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) 59:13

3M ago59:13

59:13

Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) offers a new interpretation of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippine islands. Drawing on the rich archives of Spain’s Asian empire, Dr. Kristie Patricia Flannery reveals that Spanish colonial officials and Catholic missionaries forged alliances with Indige…

1
Christina Yi et al., "Passing, Posing, Persuasion: Cultural Production and Coloniality in Japan's East Asian Empire" (U Hawaii Press, 2023) 1:16:35

3M ago1:16:35

1:16:35

Passing, Posing, Persuasion: Cultural Production and Coloniality in Japan's East Asian Empire (U Hawaii Press, 2023) interrogates the intersections between cultural production, identity, and persuasive messaging that idealized inclusion and unity across Japan’s East Asian empire (1895–1945). Japanese propagandists drew on a pan-Asian rhetoric that …

1
Ed Pulford, "Past Progress: Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:10:14

3M ago1:10:14

1:10:14

Anxiety may have been abounding in the old Cold War West that progress - whether political or economic - has been reversed, but for citizens of former-socialist countries, murky temporal trajectories are nothing new. Grounded in the multiethnic frontier town of Hunchun at the triple border of China, Russia, and North Korea, Ed Pulford traces how se…

1
Mark Baker, "Pivot of China: Spatial Politics and Inequality in Modern Zhengzhou" (Harvard Asia Center, 2024) 52:18

3M ago52:18

52:18

China’s modern history has been marked by deep spatial inequalities between regions, between cities, and between rural and urban areas. Contemporary observers and historians alike have attributed these inequalities to distinct stages of China's political economy: the dualistic economy of semicolonialism, rural-urban divisions in the socialist perio…

1
Muslim Literacies in China 31:41

3M ago31:41

31:41

Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr Ibrar Bhatt about heritage literacies, particularly as they are practiced by Chinese Muslims. Bhatt is the author of A Semiotics of Muslimness in China (Cambridge UP, 2023). About the book: A Semiotics of Muslimness in China examines the semiotics of Sino-Muslim heritage literacy in a way that integrates its Perso-Arab…

1
Steven K. Bailey, "Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War" (Osprey, 2024) 1:18:05

3M ago1:18:05

1:18:05

In January 1945, the final year of the Pacific War, Japanese-held Hong Kong became the site of coordinated attacks by the U.S. Navy on Japanese warships and aircraft. Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War (Osprey, 2024) by Steven K. Bailey tells the story of what those air raids were like for the men who lived through them. Targ…

1
Yanagawa Seigan, "The Same Moon Shines on All: The Lives and Selected Poems of Yanagawa Seigan and Kōran" (Columbia UP, 2024) 54:00

3M ago54:00

54:00

Yanagawa Seigan (1789–1858) and his wife Kōran (1804–79) were two of the great poets of nineteenth-century Japan. They practiced the art of traditional Sinitic poetry—works written in literary Sinitic, or classical Chinese, a language of enduring importance far beyond China’s borders. Together, they led itinerant lives, traveling around Japan teach…

1
Stephanie Balkwill, "The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century" (U California Press, 2024) 1:06:54

3M ago1:06:54

1:06:54

In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she had transformed herself into Empress Dowager Ling, one of the most powerful politicians of her age and one of the first of many Buddhist women to wield incredible influence in dynastic East Asia. In th…

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