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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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

From Forest Farm to Sawmill

Stories of Labor, Gender, and the Chinese State 

By Shuxuan Zhou

A worker-centered, woman-centered history of China's economic transformation

Socialist China’s state forestry and timber industries employed men as state workers and women as family dependents and collective workers who, beginning in the 1950s, turned rural land...

Glorious Qing

Decorative Arts in China, 1644-1911

By Claudia Brown

A guided tour through centuries of exquisitely crafted objects

With over 250 color illustrations, this companion volume to Claudia Brown's Great Qing: Painting in China, 1644–1911 covers an array of superbly crafted objects of art produced...

Tai Herbalism

By Susan Conway

Taiwan Lives

A Social and Political History

By Niki J. P. Alsford

Stories of migration, displacement, democratization, and transformation

From a cradle of Austronesian expansion to the dynamic economic powerhouse and successful democracy it is today, Taiwan is layered in colonial histories. In Taiwan Lives, Niki J. P....

Late Industrialization, Tradition, and Social Change in South Korea

By Yong-Chool Ha

Examines how primary social ties fueled economic growth

South Korea's rapid industrialization occurred with the rise of powerful chaebǒl (family-owned business conglomerates) that controlled vast swaths of the nation's economy. Leader Park Chung Hee's sense of...