AsiaNow

AAS 2023 Election Nominees and Ballot Issues

We are pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the fall 2023 AAS elections. The online ballot will open on September 14, and all current AAS Members will receive an email with instructions for accessing it. Election day (when the ballot is closed and votes recorded) will be November 14. Newly elected representatives will […]

Generation and the Politics of Memory in China: Sociologist Bin Xu on Chairman Mao’s Children

Back in September 2017, I interviewed Emory University sociologist Bin Xu about his first book, The Politics of Compassion: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China (Stanford University Press, 2017). At the end of our exchange, Xu told me about his next project—an examination of collective memory among the zhiqing, or 17 million “educated […]

Women in Japanese Studies

Excerpt: Women in Japanese Studies

Bringing together stories and reflections spanning more than thirty years, Women in Japanese Studies: Memoirs from a Trailblazing Generation will be released by AAS Publications in December 2023. Edited by Alisa Freedman (University of Oregon), the volume includes chapters from thirty-one scholars, who share stories of achievements, frustrations, and choices—both professional and personal. In Japan […]

AsiaNow Speaks with Tao Jiang

Tao Jiang is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, and the author of Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China, published by Oxford University Press, which received Honorable Mention of the 2023 Joseph Levenson Prize for distinguished scholarship on pre-1900 China. To begin with, please tell us what your […]

The Vietnam Studies Group 2024 Graduate Paper Prize Competition

Deadline: Friday September 29, 2023 The Vietnam Studies Group (VSG) is pleased to announce a call for submissions for its annual graduate student paper prize competition. The competition encourages the direct involvement of graduate students in the growth of Vietnamese studies and supports their professional development. The competition is open to full- and part-time graduate […]

AsiaNow Speaks with Michael K. Bourdaghs

Michael K. Bourdaghs is Robert S. Ingersoll Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, and author of A Fictional Commons: Natsume Sōseki and the Properties of Modern Literature, published by Duke University Press and winner of the 2023 Honorable Mention, John Whitney Hall Prize. To begin with, please tell us what your […]

ACLS Statement on SCOTUS Ruling on Affirmative Action

Published at the American Council of Learned Societies website: July 5, 2023 Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities to be unlawful, thus rejecting widely accepted practices meant to encourage diversity that have been part of US higher education for more than fifty years. The […]

AsiaNow Speaks with Aurelia Campbell

Aurelia Campbell is Associate Professor at Boston College and author of What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming, published by University of Washington Press and winner of the 2023 AAS Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize. To begin with, please tell us what your book is about. My book is about the […]

Call for Papers — The Presence of the Public in Southeast Asian Studies: Epistemologies and Experiences

The Southeast Asia Council (SEAC) of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is seeking paper proposals from up-and-coming scholars – including graduate students – to join a “JSEAS-SEAC” panel on the topic of “The Presence of the Public in Southeast Asian Studies: Epistemologies and Experiences” (Click button below for eligibility). We seek to recruit early […]

Cover image of Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China

Historian Ghassan Moazzin on Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China

Solid, stately buildings line Shanghai’s waterfront Bund, their ornate facades standing in stark contrast to the sleek skyscrapers of Pudong across the Yangtze River. Today, Pudong is the city’s financial district, but a century ago the heart of Shanghai’s financial sector beat on the Bund. One by one, foreign banks arrived in the late 19th […]

Ford Motor Company headquarters building in Dearborn, Michigan.

Ford and My Family

By Katherine In-Young Lee Katherine In-Young Lee is associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the essay “Ford and My Family,” available for download at the button below, Lee begins with a moment from her childhood in Canton, Michigan, where she grew up in an environment marked by “a special […]