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  • A brief stay in France was, for many Chinese workers and Chinese Communist Party leaders, a vital stepping stone for their careers during the cultural and political push to modernize China after World War I. For the Chinese students who went abroad specifically to study Western art and literature, these trips meant something else entirely. Set against the backdrop of interwar Paris, Paris and the Art of Transposition: Early Twentieth Century Sino-French Encounters (U Michigan Press, 2023) uncovers previously marginalized archives to reveal the artistic strategies employed by Chinese artists and writers in the early twentieth-century transnational imaginary and to explain why Paris played such a central role in the global reception of modern Chinese literature and art.
    While previous studies of Chinese modernism have focused on how Western modernist aesthetics were adapted or translated to the Chinese context, Angie Chau does the opposite by turning to Paris in the Chinese imaginary and discussing the literary and visual artwork of five artists who moved between France and China: the painter Chang Yu, the poet Li Jinfa, the art critic Fu Lei, the painter Pan Yuliang, and the writer Xu Xu. Chau draws the idea of transposition from music theory where it refers to shifting music from one key or clef to another, or to adapting a song originally composed for one instrument to be played by another. Transposing transposition to the study of art and literature, Chau uses the term to describe a fluid and strategic art practice that depends on the tension between foreign and familiar, new and old, celebrating both novelty and recognition—a process that occurs when a text gets placed into a fresh context.
    Angie Chau is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature and Film at the University of Victoria.
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  • Between 1565 and 1815, the so-called Manila galleons enjoyed a near-complete monopoly on transpacific trade between Spain’s Asian and American colonies. Sailing from the Philippines to Mexico and back, these Spanish trading ships also facilitated the earliest migrations and displacements of Asian peoples to the Americas. Hailing from Gujarat, Nagasaki, and many places in between, both free and enslaved Asians boarded the galleons and made the treacherous transpacific journey each year. Once in Mexico, they became “chinos” within the New Spanish caste system.
    Dr. Diego Javier Luis chronicles this first sustained wave of Asian mobility to the early Americas. Uncovering how and why Asian peoples crossed the Pacific, he sheds new light on the daily lives of those who disembarked at Acapulco. There, the term “chino” officially racialized diverse ethnolinguistic populations into a single caste, vulnerable to New Spanish policies of colonial control. Yet Asians resisted these strictures, often by forging new connections across ethnic groups. Social adaptation and cultural convergence, Luis argues, defined Asian experiences in the Spanish Americas from the colonial invasions of the sixteenth century to the first cries for Mexican independence in the nineteenth.
    The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History (Harvard University Press, 2024) speaks to an important era in the construction of race, vividly unfolding what it meant to be “chino” in the early modern Spanish empire. In so doing, it demonstrates the significance of colonial Latin America to Asian diasporic history and reveals the fundamental role of transpacific connections to the development of colonial societies in the Americas.

    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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  • Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II (Knox Press, 2024) combines research conducted in over eighteen research facilities in five nations to explore Imperial Japan's atrocities from 1927 to 1945 during its military expansions and reckless campaigns throughout Asia and the Pacific. This book brings together the most recent scholarship and new primary research to ascertain that Japan claimed a minimum of thirty million lives, slaughtering far more than Hitler's Nazi Germany. Japan's Holocaust shows that Emperor Hirohito not only knew about the atrocities his legions committed, but actually ordered them. He did nothing to stop them when they exceeded even the most depraved person's imagination, as illustrated during the Rape of Nanking as well as many other events. Japan's Holocaust will document in painful detail that the Rape of Nanking was not an isolated event during the Asian War but rather representative of how Japan behaved for all its campaigns throughout Asia and the Pacific from 1927 to 1945.
    Mass murder, rape, and economic exploitation was Japan's modus operandi during this time period, and whereas Hitler's SS Death's Head outfits attempted to hide their atrocities, Hirohito's legions committed their atrocities out in the open with fanfare and enthusiasm. Moreover, whereas Germany has done much since World War II to atone for its crimes and to document them, Japan has been absolutely disgraceful with its reparations for its crimes and in its efforts to educate its population about its wartime past. Shockingly, Japan continues, in general, to glorify is criminals and its wartime past.
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  • The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the turbulent end of China’s imperial system, violent revolutionary movements, and the fraught establishment of a republican government. During these decades of reform and revolution, millions of far-flung “overseas Chinese” remained connected to Chinese domestic movements.
    Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918 (Stanford UP, 2023) uses rich archival sources and a new network approach to examine how reform and revolution in North American Chinatowns influenced political change in ChinaPo and the transpacific Chinese diaspora from 1898 to 1918. Historian Zhongping Chen focuses on the transnational activities of Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen, and other politicians, especially their mobilization of the Chinese in North America to join reformist or revolutionary parties in patriotic fights for a Western-style constitutional monarchy or republic in China. These new reformist and revolutionary parties, including the first Chinese women’s political organization, led transpacific movements against American anti-Chinese racism in 1905 and supported constitutional reform and the Republican Revolution in China around 1911, achieving transpacific expansion through innovative use of cross-cultural political ideologies and intertwined institutional and interpersonal networks. Through network analysis of the origins, interrelations, and influences of Chinese reform and revolution in North America, this book makes a significant contribution to modern Chinese history, Asian American and Asian Canadian history, and Chinese diasporic scholarship.
    Zhongping Chen is Professor of History at the University of Victoria. He is also the author of Modern China’s Network Revolution: Chambers of Commerce and Sociopolitical Change in the Early Twentieth Century (Stanford University Press, 2011). He has been working on several digital projects such as “Victoria’s Chinatown: A Gateway to the Past and Present of Chinese Canadians” and “Chinese Canadian Artifacts Project."
    Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.
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  • With comics franchises getting turned into multi-billion dollar revenue opportunities and consumer technology companies dominating daily headlines — the trappings of “geekdom” have made their way into the global mainstream over the past few days. As part of this trend, Japanese-style anime has also gained immense transnational popularity, arguably becoming part of the “new cool”.
    It’s against this backdrop that Jinying Li dives into the sociocultural landscape of anime with her book Anime’s Knowledge Cultures: Geek, Otaku, Zhai (University of Minnesota Press, March 2024). However, instead of diving into the “Japaneseness” of anime and otaku culture, Anime’s Knowledge Cultures helps frame anime within a more globalized sense of “geekdom” — especially with the rise of post-80s millennial zhai in China’s cultural and economic spheres.
    Li is an Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Her research and teaching focuses on media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. She is also a filmmaker who’s worked on various animations, features, and documentaries, including the noted Chinese 2016 animation feature Big Fish and Begonia.
    With this academic and domain expertise, Li’s book illuminates phenomena like fansubs, danmaku “bullet-style” subtitles, and geek “complexes” to audiences who are interested in the theoretical and practical implications of anime’s global popularity. Tune into this episode about Anime’s Knowledge Cultures to learn more—listen to the end for some special anime and movie recommendations.
    Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.
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  • Japan is often imagined as a nation with a long history of whaling. In The Gods of the Sea: Whales and Coastal Communities in Northeast Japan, c.1600-2019 (Cambridge UP, 2023), Fynn Holm argues that for centuries some regions in early modern Japan did not engage in whaling. In fact, they were actively opposed to it, even resorting to violence when whales were killed. Resistance against whaling was widespread especially in the Northeast among the Japanese fishermen who worshiped whales as the incarnation of Ebisu, the god of the sea. Holm argues that human interactions with whales were much more diverse than the basic hunter-prey relationship, as cetaceans played a pivotal role in proto-industrial fisheries. The advent of industrial whaling in the early twentieth century, however, destroyed this centuries-long equilibrium between humans and whales. In its place, communities in Northeast Japan invented a new whaling tradition, which has almost completely eclipsed older forms of human-whale interactions. This title is also available as Open Access.
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  • In December 1937, the Chinese capital, Nanjing, falls and the Japanese army unleash an orgy of torture, murder, and rape. Over the course of six weeks, hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are killed. At the very onset of the atrocities, the Danish supervisor at a cement plant just outside the city, 26-year-old Bernhard Arp Sindberg, opens the factory gates and welcomes in 10,000 Chinese civilians to safety, beyond the reach of the blood-thirsty Japanese. He becomes an Asian equivalent of Oskar Schindler, the savior of Jews in the European Holocaust.
    Bernhard Sindberg: The Schindler of Nanjing (Casemate, 2024) follows Sindberg from his childhood in the old Viking city of Aarhus and on his first adventures as a sailor and a Foreign Legionnaire to the dramatic 104 days as a rescuer of thousands of helpless men, women, and children in the darkest hour of the Sino-Japanese War. It describes how after his remarkable achievement, he receded back into obscurity, spending decades more at sea and becoming a naturalized American citizen, before dying of old age in Los Angeles in 1983, completely unrecognized. In this respect, too, there is an obvious parallel with Schindler, who only attained posthumous fame.
    The book sets the record straight by providing the first complete account of Sindberg's life in English, based on archival sources hitherto unutilized by any historian as well as interviews with surviving relatives. What emerges is the surprising tale of a person who was average in every respect but rose to the occasion when faced with unimaginable brutality, discovering an inner strength and courage that transformed him into one of the great humanitarian figures of the 20th century and an inspiration for our modern age, demonstrating that the determined actions of one person--any person--can make a huge difference.
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  • Today’s guest is Charles B. Jones, Associate Professor and Director of the Religion and Culture graduate program in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America. He will be speaking with us about his new book Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice, just published in the Pure Land Buddhist Studies series with University of Hawaiʻi Press.
    Jones is the author is several articles and books, including Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State 1660-1990, which was a foundational work in the field and the first history of its type to be published in any language. Now, Jones is once again breaking new ground with this study of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, which is the first book in any western language to provide a comprehensive overview of the Chinese Pure Land tradition, a notably understudied area in western-language Buddhist Studies scholarship.
    In this work, Jones explores many of the core doctrines, practices and controversies of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, situating them historically and in the modern period, drawing on a wealth of previously unexamined primary sources, many of which he is making available to readers in English translation for the first time. This book challenges readers to rethink many longstanding assumptions about Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, including the nuanced relation of self-power and other-power as conceived in the Chinese tradition, the notion of Pure Land as a so-called “easy” path appealing to non-elite practitioners, debates about the nature of the Pure Land itself and how it is thought to exist in the world, the multifaceted practice of nian fo (念佛, nembutsu in Japanese or “buddha-recollection”), as well as the deeply fraught question of the historical development of the lineage of Pure Land “patriarchs”. This work will be of interest to all scholars of Buddhist Studies, and a valuable classroom resource for teaching Pure Land Buddhism, Buddhist Studies and Chinese Religions.
    Lina Verchery is a PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies at Harvard University. She specializes in the study of modern Chinese Buddhist monasticism, with a secondary focus in Religion and Film. She can be reached at [email protected] or via her website www.linaverchery.com.
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  • On the podcast today, I am joined by Mai Corlin, who is researcher at the department of cross-cultural and regional studies in the University of Copenhagen. Mai will be talking about her new book, The Bishan Commune and the Practice of Socially Engaged Art in Rural China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
    Mai’s book examines the new rural reconstruction movement in Bishan village, Anhui province. She uses the Bishan Commune as a case study to explore the ways that art and culture can revive regional economies. The book´s focus is the socially engaged art projects in the Chinese countryside, with the artists and intellectuals who are involved, the villagers they meet and the local authorities with whom they negotiate. In recent years an increasing number of urban artists have turned towards the countryside in an attempt to revive rural areas perceived to be in a crisis. The vantage point of this book is the Bishan Commune. In 2010, Ou Ning drafted a notebook entitled Bishan Commune: How to Start Your Own Utopia. The notebook presents a utopian ideal of life based on anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s idea of mutual aid. In 2011 the Commune was established in Bishan Village in Anhui Province. The main questions of this book thus revolve around how an anarchist, utopian community unfolds to the backdrop of the political, social and historical landscape of rural China, or more directly: How do you start your own utopia in the Chinese countryside?
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  • Peter Harmsen's book Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (Casemate, 2015) describes one of the great forgotten battles of the 20th century. At its height it involved nearly a million Chinese and Japanese soldiers while sucking in three million civilians as unwilling spectators and victims. It turned what had been a Japanese adventure in China into a general war between the two oldest and proudest civilizations of the Far East. Ultimately, it led to Pearl Harbor and to seven decades of tumultuous history in Asia. The Battle of Shanghai was a pivotal event that helped define and shape the modern world.
    Actors from a variety of nations were present in Shanghai during the three fateful autumn months when the battle raged. The rich cast included China's ascetic Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Japanese adversary, General Matsui Iwane, who wanted Asia to rise from disunity, but ultimately pushed it toward its deadliest conflict ever. Claire Chennault, later of "Flying Tiger" fame, was among the figures emerging in the course of the campaign, as was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In an ironic twist, Alexander von Falkenhausen, a stern German veteran of the Great War, abandoned his role as a mere advisor to the Chinese army and led it into battle against the Japanese invaders.
    In its sheer scale, the struggle for China's largest city was a sinister forewarning of what was in store for the rest of mankind only a few years hence. It demonstrated how technology had given rise to new forms of warfare, or had made old forms even more lethal. Amphibious landings, tank assaults, aerial dogfights and most importantly, urban combat, all happened in Shanghai in 1937. It was a dress rehearsal for World War II--or perhaps more correctly it was the inaugural act in the war--the first major battle in the global conflict.
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  • “The things that are happening to North Korea are happening to all of us…they are part of the human community. To say that this is just a problem for North Korea is to say that North Koreans are not part of the human community.” In her new book, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record (Columbia University Press, 2019), Sandra Fahy gives a thorough and compelling analysis of testimonies and reports on North Korea. Fahy explores the United Nation’s report as well as North Korea’s response to the report. The book also tackles issues of famine and hunger, information control, movement within the country and outside it, in addition to other pertinent issues. The book is full of detailed reporting on the issues but is still written in an accessible way in order to help readers understand more about North Korea and its people.
    Sarah E. Patterson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan.
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  • For all the talk of China being a peaceful country with no aggressive intentions, it has behaved like most other rising powers – spending lots of money on its military. But what do we know of how that military is used? James A. Siebens is the editor of China’s Use of Armed Coercion: To Win Without Fighting (Routledge, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett-Jones.
    Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.
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  • In 1864, on a midsummer’s day, Kawai Koume, a 60-year old matriarch of a samurai family in Wakayama, makes a note in her diary, which she had dutifully written in for over three decades.
    There are reports of armed clashes in Kyoto. It’s said that the emperor has ordered the expulsion of the foreigners, and it’s also said that a large band of vagabond soldiers has gathered in Senju in Edo. It’s said that in Edo people are wearing their [winter] kimono linings, and in Nikko it has been snowing. I don’t know if it’s true. But really, every day we hear nothing but disturbing rumors.
    The Meiji Restoration, which ousts the shogun and restores the emperor’s power, happens four years later.
    Koume’s diary is the central document in Simon Partner’s latest book Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration (Columbia University Press, 2023)
    In this interview, Simon and I talk about Kawai Koume, her diary, and everything she witnessed in the decades covered by her journal.
    Simon Partner is professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of three previous books that chronicle modern Japanese history through the lives of ordinary people such as farmers, shopkeepers, and housewives, including most recently The Merchant’s Tale: Yokohama and the Transformation of Japan (Columbia University Press: 2018).
    You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Koume’s World. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.
    Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.
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  • Max Ward’s Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan (Duke University Press, 2019) analyzes the trajectory and transformations of the implementation of Japan’s 1925 Peace Preservation Law from its conception until the early years of the 1940s. The law, which began as a state effort to tamp down radicalism and “dangerous thought” (mostly Marxism) and preserve and protect imperial sovereignty, spawned a massive apparatus populated by both state and nonstate actors dedicated to ideologically converting and rehabilitating thought criminals. In addition to being a case study of the nature and ideology of punishment and repentance for thought crimes in late Imperial Japan—and the way in which the emperor functioned as a “ghost in the machine” animating the pursuit of political repression—Ward’s book also provides insight into the policing of ideological threats and its relationship to national identity politics. Thought Crime follows the evolution and transformation of the Peace Preservation Law and its attendant social and institutional structures from interwar attempts to repress dangerous thought to a system of mass ideological conversion, and finally to the consequences of its integration into practices of total mobilization during wartime.
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  • In his new book, Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German Japanese Relations, 1919-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University Ricky W. Law examines the cultural context of Tokyo and Berlin’s political rapprochement in 1936. This study of interwar German-Japanese relations is the first to employ sources in both languages. Transnational Nazism was an ideological and cultural outlook that attracted non-Germans to become adherents of Hitler and National Socialism, and convinced German Nazis to identify with certain non-Aryans. Because of the distance between Germany and Japan, mass media was instrumental in shaping mutual perceptions and spreading transnational Nazism. This work surveys the two national media to examine the impact of transnational Nazism. When Hitler and the Nazi movement gained prominence, Japanese newspapers, lectures and pamphlets, nonfiction, and language textbooks transformed to promote the man and his party. Meanwhile, the ascendancy of Hitler and his regime created a niche for Japan in the Nazi worldview and Nazified newspapers, films, nonfiction, and voluntary associations.
    Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at [email protected] or on twitter @craig_sorvillo.
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  • On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over sixty percent of the community. In Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests, and Catholic Survivor Narratives (Routledge, 2019), Gwyn McClelland presents a collective biography, where nine Catholic survivors share personal and compelling stories about the aftermath of the bomb and their lives since that day. 
    Examining the Catholic community’s interpretation of the A-bomb, this book not only uses memory to provide a greater understanding of the destruction of the bombing, but also links it to the past experiences of religious persecution, drawing comparisons with the ‘Secret Christian’ groups which survived in the Japanese countryside after the banning of Christianity. 
    Through in-depth interviews, it emerges that the memory of the atomic bomb is viewed through the lens of a community which had experienced suffering and marginalisation for more than 400 years. Furthermore, it argues that their dangerous memory confronts Euro-American-centric narratives of the atomic bombings, whilst also challenging assumptions around a providential bomb. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki presents the voices of Catholics, many of whom have not spoken of their losses within the framework of their faith before. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and war history.
    I asked Gwyn about three questions that we could face when reflecting on the complex survivor narratives provided by the Catholic victims of the nuclear Holocaust in Japan, or more precisely, what the book refers to as the "dangerous memory in Nagasaki."  

    Do Nagasaki Christians and their unique intercultural Mariology (i.e., Maria kannon and Maria with a keloid scar) present any issues to today's theology (especially with regard to their possible reception by the Vatican)?

    How was John Paul II's visit to Nagasaki, which put an emphasis on human responsibility regarding war atrocities, received among the survivors who embraced the traditional interpretation of their losses as a sacrificial hansai (a burnt offering) or a part of setsuri (providence)? 

    How can the nation of Japan (both Catholics and the rest of the country) move forward in light of the dangerous memory of Nagasaki? 

    The author's responses to these questions reflected his intellectual virtue as a patient witness to the extraordinary life stories of the war victims in Nagasaki. The interview ends with a note of undying hope, the future possibility of transformative reconciliations that can move the whole country forward, while doing justice to dangerous memories.   
    Gwyn McClelland holds a Master of Divinity from the University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Japanese history from Monash University. He is the winner of the 2019 John Legge prize for best thesis in Asian Studies, awarded by the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA).
    Takeshi Morisato is a philosopher and sometimes academic. He specializes in comparative and Japanese philosophy but he is also interested in making Japan and philosophy accessible to a wider audience.
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  • In this captivating translation of the imaginative prose essay collection Wild Grass (1927) and experimental memoir Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk (1928), Eileen J. Cheng expertly showcases the range and imagination of Lu Xun (1881–1936), generally considered to be the father of modern Chinese literature. Combined, these two books include stories and essays that touch on a wide range of topics including fallen leaves, alms seekers, dreams, dead fires, and all the different individuals who inspired Lu Xun’s writing. Through surreal prose and unreliable narrators, the books consider wide-reaching questions: What does it mean to be human? How can we know anything? Is pursuing self-knowledge necessary, even if it is impossible?
    Each translation is accompanied by an introduction that effectively situates the story within the life and work of Lu Xun. As a whole, Eileen’s translation Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk (Harvard University Press, 2022) is an intriguing read, and for anyone who is used to Lu Xun’s more straightforward prose, it is entirely eye-opening, showing a radically different side to this canonical writer.
    Sarah Bramao-Ramos is a Research Assistant Professor at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. She can be reached at [email protected]
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  • In this vivid and highly original reading of recent Chinese history, Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Dr. Xuelei Huang documents the eclectic array of smells that permeated Chinese life from the High Qing through to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology and critically engaging with scholarship in the expanding fields of sensory and smell studies, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses. Drawing on unexplored archival materials, readers are introduced to the 'smellscapes' of China from the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century via perfumes, food, body odours, public health projects, consumerism and cosmetics, travel literature, fiction and political language. This pioneering and evocative study takes the reader on a sensory journey through modern Chinese history, examining the ways in which the experience of scent and modernity have intertwined.
    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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  • Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature is marginalized on several fronts. In the international literary space, which privileges the West, Malaysia is considered remote. The institutions of modern Chinese literature favor mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Within Malaysia, only texts in Malay, the national language, are considered national literature by the state. However, Mahua authors have produced creative and thought-provoking works that have won growing critical recognition, showing Malaysia to be a laboratory for imaginative Chinese writing.
    Highlighting Mahua literature’s distinctive mode of evolution, Cheow Thia Chan demonstrates that authors’ grasp of their marginality in the world-Chinese literary space has been the impetus for—rather than a barrier to—aesthetic inventiveness. He foregrounds the historical links between Malaysia and other Chinese-speaking regions, tracing how Mahua writers engage in the “worlding” of modern Chinese literature by navigating interconnected literary spaces. Focusing on writers including Lin Cantian, Han Suyin, Wang Anyi, and Li Yongping, whose works craft signature literary languages, Chan examines narrative representations of multilingual social realities and authorial reflections on colonial Malaya or independent Malaysia as valid literary terrain. Delineating the inter-Asian “crossings” of Mahua literary production—physical journeys, interactions among social groups, and mindset shifts—from the 1930s to the 2000s, he contends that new perspectives from the periphery are essential to understanding the globalization of modern Chinese literature. By emphasizing the inner diversities and connected histories in the margins, Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature (Columbia UP, 2022) offers a powerful argument for remapping global Chinese literature and world literature.
    Cheow Thia Chan is assistant professor of Chinese studies at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include modern Chinese literature, Singapore and Malaysian Chinese Literature, Southeast Asian Chinese Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Urban Studies.
    Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.
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  • On the podcast today, I am joined by Professor Anru Lee, who is professor of anthropology at John Jay College, the City University of New York. Anru will be talking about her new book, Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan, which was published just last year in 2023 by University of Hawai’i Press.
    Haunted Modernities interrogates the nature of shared expressions of history, sentiment and memory as it investigates the role of the tragic death of twenty-five unwed women who drowned in a ferry accident on their way to work in factories in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone. By exploring the ways in which the deceased young women were perceived to “haunt” the living and the diverse renovations recommended, Professor Anru Lee illuminates how women workers in Taiwan have been conceptualized in the last several decades. In their proposals to renovate a memorial tomb in honor of their death, the interested parties forged specific accounts of history, transforming the collective burial site according to varying definitions of “heritage” as Taiwan shifted to a postindustrial economy, where factory jobs were no longer the main source of employment. Their plans engaged with acts of remembering—communal and individual—to create new ways of understanding the present. Haunted Modernities is a beautiful piece of scholar work that elucidates how “history” and “memory” are not simply about the past but part of a forward-looking process that emerges from the social, political, and economic needs of the present, legitimized and validated through its associations with the past.
    Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China.
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