Washington University Press Search Results Page

Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People

The Burden of Conservation in Modern China

By Micah S. Muscolino

State-led conservation transformed Gansu's landscape—rural communities bore the costs

From the 1940s to the 1960s, soil and water conservation measures transformed both the arid, erosion-prone environment of China’s Loess Plateau and the lives of rural people....

Contested Taiwan

Sovereignty, Social Movements, and Party Formation

By Lev Nachman

Where statehood is contested, questions of identity and territory define the political landscape

Despite maintaining de facto sovereignty, states like Taiwan find themselves unrecognized in today’s international system because another power claims the state as part...

The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyun

Literary Expression and the Natural World

By Ping Wang

The father of Chinese landscape poetry in time and place

During the dark centuries between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 CE and the golden age of reunified China under the Tang and Song...

Ethnic Branding in Contemporary China

Buyi and the Paradox of Difference

By Yu Luo

An ethnic group at the crossroads of uniqueness and confirmity in Southwestern China

The Buyi people face a dilemma. On the one hand, they work hard to maintain their culture—both out of pride and to attract...

India's Mithila Painting

By David L. Szanton, Paula Richman

A woman's art form transforms from home to high art

Since at least the fifteenth century, Hindu women in the Mithila region of northern India have been painting images of deities, flora and fauna symbolizing fertility...

Bronze Mirrors in Ancient China

Artistry and Technique

By Kin Sum Li

Examines mass production in antiquity

Highly decorated mirrors are widely sought by museums with collections of Chinese art and are the most actively exchanged items in the art market of ancient Chinese bronzes. Featuring intricate designs...

A Gāndhārī Abhidharma Text

British Library Kharosthī Fragment 28

By Collett Cox

Early Buddhist manuscript recording a previously unknown scholastic text about existence

This volume offers a transcription, edition, translation, and analysis of a previously unknown scholastic text, an important discovery for scholars of early Indian Buddhist doctrine....

Satirical Tibet

The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo

By Timothy Thurston. Foreword by Stevan Harrell

What does comedy look like when the wrong punchline can land you in jail?

Humor has long been a vital, if underrecognized, component of Tibetan life. In recent years, alongside well-publicized struggles for religious freedom and...

Chinese Characters across Asia

How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese

By Zev Handel

A fascinating story of writing across cultures and time

While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by well over...

Crafting a Tibetan Terroir

Winemaking in Shangri-La

By Brendan A. Galipeau. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

How wine has transformed Tibetan land and lives

Set in the Sino-Tibetan border region renamed "Shangri-La" by the Chinese government for tourism promotion, Crafting a Tibetan Terroir considers how the deployment of the French notion of...

Necropolitics of the Ordinary

Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore

By Ruth E. Toulson

Can a state make its people forget the dead?

Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted with high population density and rapid economic growth, the government has ordered the...

Three Impeachments

Guo Xiu and the Kangxi Court

By R. Kent Guy

A probe into corruption in late Imperial China

At the beginning of China's long eighteenth century or "High Qing" era, a time of peace and prosperity when the foundations of Manchu rule under the Qing dynasty...

Korean Pop Culture beyond Asia

Race and Reception

By David C. Oh, Benjamin Min Han

Showcases the dynamism of cross-cultural engagement with Korean media

Korean media has exploded in popularity across the globe in the past decade: BTS and other K-pop groups have packed stadiums, Parasite garnered record-breaking critical success, The...

Transpacific, Undisciplined

By Lily Wong, Christopher B. Patterson, Chien-ting Lin

Remaps the scope and methods of the transpacific approach

Antinuclear coalitions centering Native survivance from Okinawa to the Dakotas to Micronesia, refugee figures and automated empathy in virtual reality, cross-strait erotic intimacy in Taiwanese teahouses, art...

Good Wife, Wise Mother

Educating Han Taiwanese Girls under Japanese Rule

By Fang Yu Hu

Traces Japan's efforts to modernize Taiwan through gendered educational practices

In Good Wife, Wise Mother, female education and citizenship serve as a lens through which to examine Taiwan’s uniqueness as a colonial crossroads between Chinese and...

China's Camel Country

Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier

By Thomas White. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

How animal conservation became a defense against cultural erasure

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...

The Xi Jinping Effect

By Ashley Esarey, Rongbin Han

Assesses the broad impact of China's influential leader

The Xi Jinping Effect explores the relationship between the People's Republic of China's current "paramount leader"—arguably the most powerful figure since Mao Zedong (1893–1976)—and multiple areas of political...

Mumbai on Two Wheels

Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility

By Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria

Cyclists from India reimagine transportation infrastructure for all

Mumbai is not commonly seen as a bike-friendly city because of its dense traffic and the absence of bicycle lanes. Yet the city supports rapidly expanding and eclectic...

Games and Play in Chinese and Sinophone Cultures

By Li Guo, Douglas Eyman, Hongmei Sun

From ancient gameboards to Honor of Kings, games as cultural agents

Games as global and connected phenomena have been examined in the rising scholarly field of game studies, but relatively little has been published on the...

The Dong World and Imperial China’s Southwest Silk Road

Trade, Security, and State Formation

By James A. Anderson

Brings a borderlands perspective to the history of China

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...