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History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000

By Sumit Guha

In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the result of both remembering and forgetting...

The Crown and the Capitalists

The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation

By Wasana Wongsurawat

Despite competing with much larger imperialist neighbors in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Thailand—or Siam, as it was formerly known—has succeeded in transforming itself into a rival modern nation-state over the last two centuries. Recent...

The Way of the Barbarians

Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China

By Shao-yun Yang

Shao-yun Yang challenges assumptions that the cultural and socioeconomic watershed of the Tang-Song transition (800–1127 CE) was marked by a xenophobic or nationalist hardening of ethnocultural boundaries in response to growing foreign threats. In that...

International Impact of Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910-1945

By Yong-Chool Ha

In recent years, discussion of the colonial period in Korea has centered mostly on the degree of exploitation or development that took place domestically, while international aspects have been relatively neglected. Colonial discourse, such as...

Making the Modern Slum

The Power of Capital in Colonial Bombay

By Sheetal Chhabria

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Bombay was beset by crises such as famine and plague. Yet, rather than halting the flow of capital, these crises served to secure it. In colonial Bombay,...

The Shaman's Wages

Trading in Ritual on Cheju Island

By Kyoim Yun

Breaking from previous scholarship on Korean shamanism, which focuses on mansin of mainland Korea, The Shaman’s Wages offers the first in-depth study of simbang, hereditary shamans on Cheju Island off the peninsula’s southwest coast. In...

Two Centuries of Manchu Women Poets

An Anthology

By Wilt L. Idema

This anthology presents substantial selections from the work of twenty Manchu women poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The poems, inspired by their daily life and reflections, provide fascinating insights into the experiences and...

Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor

A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Story Collection

By Aina the Layman. With Ziran the Eccentric Wanderer. Robert E. Hegel

Written around 1660, the unique Chinese short story collection Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor (Doupeng xianhua), by the author known only as Aina the Layman, uses the seemingly innocuous setting of neighbors swapping yarns...

Symptoms of an Unruly Age

Li Zhi and Cultures of Early Modernity

By Rivi Handler-Spitz

Symptoms of an Unruly Age compares the writings of Li Zhi (1527–1602) and his late-Ming compatriots to texts composed by their European contemporaries, including Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Emphasizing aesthetic patterns that transcend national boundaries,...

The Snow Leopard and the Goat

Politics of Conservation in the Western Himalayas

By Shafqat Hussain. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Following the downgrading of the snow leopard’s status from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2017, debate has renewed about the actual number of snow leopards in the wild...

The Kongs of Qufu

The Descendants of Confucius in Late Imperial China

By Christopher S. Agnew

The city of Qufu, in north China’s Shandong Province, is famous as the hometown of Kong Qiu (551–479 BCE)—known as Confucius in English and as Kongzi or Kong Fuzi in Chinese. In The Kongs of...

Tasting Paradise on Earth

Jiangnan Foodways

By Jin Feng

Preparing and consuming food is an integral part of identity formation, which in contemporary China embodies tension between fast-forward modernization and cultural nostalgia. Jin Feng’s wide-ranging exploration of cities in the Lower Yangzi Delta—or Jiangnan,...

Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy

By Lei Xue

Eulogy for Burying a Crane (Yi he ming) is perhaps the most eccentric piece in China’s calligraphic canon. Apparently marking the burial of a crane, the large inscription, datable to 514 CE, was once carved...

The Nuosu Book of Origins

A Creation Epic from Southwest China

By Mark Bender, Qingchun Luo, Jjivot Zopqu

Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295745701.s01

The Nuosu people, who were once overlords of vast tracts of farmland and forest in the uplands of southern Sichuan and neighboring provinces, are the largest division of the Yi ethnic group...

The Khmer Rouge Trials in Context

By Toshihiro Abe

When a tribunal was formed in 2006 to address the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, many expected the Cambodian model for victim empowerment to open a new path for international judiciary initiatives. However, the local...

Tea and Solidarity

Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka

By Mythri Jegathesan

Beyond nostalgic tea industry ads romanticizing colonial Ceylon and the impoverished conditions that beleaguer Tamil tea workers are the stories of the women, men, and children who have built their families and lives in line...

Climate Change and the Art of Devotion

Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550-1850

By Sugata Ray

In the enchanted world of Braj, the primary pilgrimage center in north India for worshippers of Krishna, each stone, river, and tree is considered sacred. In Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata Ray...

China Gothic

The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral

By Anthony E. Clark. Foreword by Leland M. Roth

As China struggled to redefine itself at the turn of the twentieth century, nationalism, religion, and material culture intertwined in revealing ways. This phenomenon is evident in the twin biographies of North China’s leading Catholic...

Unruly Figures

Queerness, Sex Work, and the Politics of Sexuality in Kerala

By Navaneetha Mokkil

The vibrant media landscape in the southern Indian state of Kerala, where kiosks overflow with magazines and colorful film posters line roadside walls, creates a sexually charged public sphere that has a long history of...

Holy Science

The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism

By Banu Subramaniam

Behind the euphoric narrative of India as an emerging world power lies a complex and evolving relationship between science and religion. Evoking the rich mythology of comingled worlds where humans, animals, and gods transform each...